Roadtrip to Our Nation's Capital

For the July 4th holiday, we took the Bug down to Washington, DC to visit Uncle Shane and Ali. We had a great visit, and got to see some sights, too! We started our 5-hour drive at Bug's bedtime on Thursday evening, in the hopes that she'd sleep the entire way. It worked great, though Joker and I were pretty tired on Friday.

We went to the National Zoo on the Fourth. The Bug really likes animals, and she was able to get good views of the red pandas, the sloth bears, the gorillas, and the elephants (baby elephant even went for a swim, which I'd never seen before). As always, the biggest highlights were the other kids running around. At lunch, she showed off her new skill: doing "Cheers" with us before taking a drink from her bottle.

Saturday we took a day trip to Annapolis: walked around the lovely downtown, went for a boat tour of the harbor, and cracked crabs at an awesome place called Cantler's. Downstairs at the restaurant, they had tanks of horseshoe crabs, and some gnarly old dude lifted a couple of them up to show the Bug and me their mouths and their claws. Pretty cool - it's like gazing into a creepy dinosaur.

Sunday we toured Mount Vernon, which is a fantastic museum. The house gives a really interesting tour, the grounds are beautiful, and the Bug loved the lambs and horses at the barn. We decided to skip the Mall, but after a picnic on the Potomac we stopped at the incredibly powerful FDR Memorial on our way back into the city.

Vacations with the Bug are certainly different than those we used to do, but the Bug's schedule gives enough us plenty of flexibility to see some sights and have some fun! Plus, I firmly believe it's good for her to be dragged along, she can see and do different things, and she learns to go with the flow.