Washington DC Trip – July 2011

At the end of July Daniel and I went on our annual “couple trip” without the kids.  I was a little bit nervous for this one because Cynthia was still nursing, but I just pumped lots of milk for while we were gone, and took a pump to DC with us.  Everything went fine, thanks to my expert parents who were watching the kids.  It was going to be only my mom who stayed with them, but the day after we left my dad flew down also, as a surprise to the kids.  It was nice to know that they were in such good hands, so I could relax and enjoy the time away with Daniel.

We flew into Baltimore, Maryland, and actually spent the first night there before going to Washington, DC the next day.  Neither of us had been to Baltimore before, and we wanted to be able to spend some time there.

After we dropped our stuff off at our hotel we walked down to Camden Yards, where the Orioles play.  It is a really cool stadium.  We walked around, posed by the Babe Ruth statue, and then found the house where Babe Ruth was born.  

After that we walked down to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.  I love harbors.  It reminded me of Boston a little bit.  I spotted an H&M store (I went to one years ago – Ollie was a baby – when we had a sister trip in Virginia and I’ve always wanted to go back), so I went in and quick as lightning bought a shirt while Daniel sat outside and relaxed and took this picture:

Then we did some more walking around the harbor:

We walked to Obrycki’s Crab House for dinner to try some of their famous crabs.  While we were walking there, we noticed we were maybe entering a questionable area of Baltimore and we weren’t sure how much further the restaurant was, so we called a cab and he took us the rest of the way.  We asked him which areas of Baltimore we should be staying away from, and he gave us good advice on which streets to take when we were walking back to our hotel after dinner. 

I am not much of a seafood person but I decided to be brave and try the whole crab experience.  It was fun, and I’m glad I did.  The crab tasted less fishy than I had expected.  The kids loved seeing pictures of us with our bibs and our crab-pounding mallets.

After dinner we walked back to Inner Harbor, and then back to our hotel.  We loved Baltimore.

The next morning after breakfast we took a bus down to the train station.  We had bought Amtrak tickets to get from Baltimore to Washington, DC.  It was actually really fun taking the train.  I liked it.  We started getting wild ideas about taking a train trip with our kids one day.

Once we got to Union Station in DC, we walked to our hotel and dropped off our bags.  Then we walked up to Capitol Hill.  It was very hot and muggy.  We found a little pizza place for lunch, and then went over to the Capitol for a tour.  It was a good tour - interesting and informative.

Then we went to the Library of Congress and did another tour.  This building is so amazing!

That night we did a walking tour of the monuments and memorials in the National Mall.  It was nice to do it at night, when it wasn’t so hot. We saw:

The Washington Monument:

The White House (from a distance)

While we were standing around taking pictures and also listening to the tour guide talk about the Washington Monument, we noticed a family standing nearby. The dad was dressed normally, the mom had both a modest shirt and shorts (rare among the women tourists), and they had a bunch of little kids. Daniel said, “for sure that family is Mormon.”  I walked over and struck up a conversation with the lady, asking her how old her baby was. She asked if we had kids, and when I told her we had six, she mentioned that her husband was from Utah. I told her that we were originally from Utah, and then we both just looked at each other and laughed. We talked with them a lot during the rest of the tour – I love the instant connection the church can create with people.

Next up was the National World War II Memorial.

We also saw the Vietnam War Veteran’s Memorial, which is amazing, but I guess we didn’t take a picture of that.  It was getting dark, as you can see from the pictures of the Lincoln Memorial. 

After the tour we took a taxi to go find somewhere to eat dinner.  We were so tired and sore from walking all day.  We got dropped off on Capitol Hill, and decided to eat at Ted’s Bulletin, a restaurant I had seen on the Rockstar Diaries blog (she is a DC expert, after all).  It was a really cool restaurant, and I felt like ordering everything on the menu.  Maybe it was just because we were so worn out and so hungry, but it was one of my favorite meals of the trip.  Writing about it is making me want to go back. 

When we left the restaurant it was after eleven, but we managed to survive the long walk back to our hotel. We crossed over the Capitol building grounds on our way. 

Here is the view of the Capitol from our hotel room the next morning.  It was weird because this was the end of July, and all the budget talks were going on right there.

Our second day in DC we walked back down to the National Mall to see some of the Smithsonian museums.  We started out at the U.S. Botanic Garden. 

And then the National Museum of the American Indian.  This one was really interesting.  You really could spend days and days going through the Smithsonian museums;  there is so much to see and learn.

My favorite was the Air and Space Museum.  We decided to do a guided tour of that one;  we knew that if we didn’t, we would waste time just wandering around, and not know where to focus our time.  I’m so glad we did the tour!  Our guide was really knowledgeable, and had a lot of great stories and insights about different exhibits in the museum.  The tour was supposed to last about 90 minutes, and ours ended up being over 3 hours and we didn’t even care (which shows how interesting it was).  It’s funny how much you can actually learn at a museum when you don’t have kids there with you.

At one point in the tour, our guide noticed that Al Worden (a pilot for the Apollo 15 moon mission back in 1971) was sitting at a table signing books (he wrote one about his experiences on the moon).  He stopped the tour so we could go meet him.  Our kids couldn’t believe it when we told them we shook the hand of someone who has been on the moon. 

That evening we went to a baseball game at Nationals Park (we did that in Boston and Philadelphia, and have decided it’s a fun tradition for our trips – we’re trying to see how many baseball stadiums we can go to). 

When the game was over we walked back to our hotel, stopping at a Mexican restaurant for a late dinner on our way.

The next day we went to the National Zoo.  It’s part of the Smithsonian Institution, so admission is free – it felt funny just walking right into a zoo. 

My favorite thing at the zoo was seeing the gorillas.  There was a dad gorilla playing around with his little baby gorilla, and it was about the funniest and cutest thing I have ever seen at a zoo.  We stayed there for a long time, just watching them wrestle and play.  The dad was being so wild – he would wrestle and hug the baby, and then fling it over in the corner of his little loft area, or push him off onto the ground.  The baby kept running away and hiding, and then the dad would sit there and pout and make really sad faces until the baby would come back for more.  The cutest part was once when it ran across the room and then looked back at the dad and beat his chest really hard, just like grown-up gorillas do. 

After the zoo we walked down to the Potomac River to a little boathouse and rented a canoe.  We paddled up the river for awhile, until we got a good view of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.  Then we paddled around a little island, and back to the boathouse. 

Later that evening we walked over to the White House. 

The next day was our last day in DC, but we still fit in a lot.  First we took the Metro across the river to the Arlington National Cemetery.  We got tickets for the tourmobile, because by this point we were pretty tired from walking everywhere. 

The tomb of the unknown soldier:

Looking back across the river into DC:

After that we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  We took a lot of pictures of things we knew our kids would love (maybe we were missing them a little). 

Then we went to Ford’s Theatre, where President Lincoln was shot.  The house on the right is where they took him afterward;  he died there. 

We had wanted to go up to the top of the Washington Monument, but all the tickets were sold out.  Someone had told us that the old post office clock tower also had great views of the city, and tickets are free.  That was the last thing we did before we left for the airport.  It was fun looking down on the city and seeing all the places we had been.  I think maybe I should have done that when we first got there, because the whole time we were in DC I was pretty turned around about where things were (it always makes me laugh, because when we go on our trips, by the end of the first day Daniel pretty much has the whole map of the city engrained in his head, and he knows where everything is, whereas even by the end of our trips I am still turning the wrong direction when we step out of our hotel to go anywhere.  I am not intuitive about directions). 

At the Metro station, getting ready to go back to the hotel.  Then we ran to Union Station to catch our train back to the Baltimore Airport. 

We flew back to Austin and my dad picked us up from the airport.  It was good to be home and back with the kids.  I woke Cynthia up right away to nurse her.  She kept patting my face the whole time, and saying “mama, mama.”  I was relieved that she still remembered me and loved me.  At the beginning of the trip, of course I had been nervous that things weren’t going to go well, and that she’d be sad the whole time.  By the second day, though, I was nervous instead that she was too happy without us – I was talking to Tristan on the phone, and I asked him how Cindy was doing, and if she was sad or not.  He replied (trying to be helpful, I’m sure), “Oh, she’s not even a little bit sad, Mom!  She loves Grandma Orva so much, I don’t even think she remembers you at all!”  I have to admit that panicked me a little bit.  But really, it was wonderful how smoothly everything went. 

Thanks so much to my parents for making our trip possible!

July 2013–Family Road Trip (Part 2)

(see part one here)

Day 7:  Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

So we said goodbye to Cleveland, Ohio (and my phone) and headed toward Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  On the way we drove through Cuyahoga Valley National Park (we like to visit as many national parks as we can, so when we map out our trips we add in little detours if there are any nearby).  While in the Park we did a short walk to Brandywine Falls.  Normally it is a gentle cascading type of waterfall, but because of all the rain in the area there was lots of flooding going on, and the falls were super impressive.


When we made it to Pittsburgh we went straight to Primanti Bros. for some of their famous sandwiches.  Our waitress was very impressed with the number of kids we had, and put lots of extra piles of fries on our table for us.  I was surprised at what a friendly reception we got in Pittsburgh – we’re used to getting strange looks when we take our big crew on these road trips, but in Pittsburgh there were several people who stopped to congratulate us and compliment us on our large family.  It was nice. 


After lunch we drove over to the base of the Duquesne Incline and got ready to ride in one of the cable cars up to the top of Mt. Washington.                  


In the cable car, ready to go:

Our view as we headed up the track.  It was pretty cool.  Henry was being super dramatic about it, shouting out happily the whole time (“Oh my gosh! This is so amazing! Are we going to crash into that other car coming down?! I can’t believe this!!”).  And when Henry gets that excited about something, it’s hard not to get excited yourself.  (If you ever feel a lack of excitement in your life, come borrow Henry and he will find some random thing for you to get super excited about.  It’s pretty great.)


Looking back down on the river and the city:

I think Pittsburgh would be a cool place to live. 


Looking out the screened window on our way back down.  It seemed a little bit scarier and precarious going back down.  Just across the river on the right-hand side you can see a fountain in this picture – we were going to go visit it and let the kids play around, but after we got down off the incline and back to our car a giant rainstorm hit, so we headed to our hotel instead.   


After we got checked in Daniel and the boys (Tristan and Oliver), walked over to the baseball stadium.  They wanted to get there early in time for batting practice, but with lots of rain still in the forecast we weren’t really sure what would happen with the game.

The rest of us had fun hanging out at the hotel.  It was a really big hotel room with lots of open space.  We made some popcorn and arranged the furniture to be like a little movie theatre, and the kids watched Superman on TV.

Then we went down to the pool for some swimming. 


Cindy discovered the magic of goggles on this trip.  I love how she is using them to peer into 1 inch of water on the step:

When we got back up to the room I got the kids all bathed and cozy in jammies, and then they each got their own little cup of hot chocolate, which was very exciting.                                   


After that they settled in for some reading before bedtime.  It was a perfect evening for us. 


The boys were not quite so lucky over at their baseball game.  The game was delayed forever because of the stormy weather. 


While we were swimming at the hotel, we could look out the windows (the pool was indoors) and see that the storm was getting pretty crazy.  It rained really hard and got super windy.  Right outside the pool area we could see a big tree that had been knocked down and was blocking the whole street in front of our hotel.  At first I was frustrated that I couldn’t contact Daniel at the game to see how things were going because I didn’t have a cell-phone anymore, but then I figured out that I could write him an email on my kindle, and he could check it on his phone and write me emails back.  So we emailed back and forth and he updated me with the progress of the game.  He took these pictures of the sky on his phone while they waited.

It finally started about 3 hours late (around 10 pm), so they were pretty late getting back to our hotel room. 


Day 8:  Gettysburg, PA and Baltimore, MD

The next morning we started on our way to Baltimore, Maryland.  But first we stopped at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.  Here are the kids posing with Abraham Lincoln.  I can’t remember why Cynthia was so distressed.  I think it involved us taking away a caterpillar that Oliver had caught for her:


Me on the battlefield:

Cynthia at our hotel in Baltimore.  At each hotel she would usually find a quiet corner and take her backpack full of toys and make little set-ups. I think it helped her feel at home.  She really did so great on our trip.  She loves having the whole family all together, so since she was a little baby she has loved going in the car with everyone. 


We walked down to Inner Harbor, which was just a short walk from our hotel.  A few years ago on one of mine and Daniel’s trips we spent a night in Baltimore and really liked it.  We stayed at the same hotel and also spent a lot of time walking around Inner Harbor, so it was fun to be there with the kids this time. 


Inside the mall the kids got to watch some guys make fudge and then clap along as they performed their "that's the recipe for making fudge" song.  Then we bought some fudge for dinner.  We followed that up with a little shrimp from Bubba Gump's.  And then some milkshakes.  We weren't really sure what we were doing.

After we ate, Daniel and the boys walked over to the baseball game and the other kids and I stayed at the harbor and hung out for awhile.                                                                                          


Here is a recipe for some free fun on any road trip – go to a city with some sort of public fountain.  Let your kids run through it with their clothes on.  They will think it’s the best trip ever, and will remember that city always.  And you don’t even have to do anything except stand there and take pictures and laugh when your kids get sprayed in the face.





After everyone got nice and wet we walked back to the hotel and ate cookies in the lobby (free cookies in the lobby for dinner should also be added to the recipe for a successful road trip):

And then went swimming:

Henry and Cindy taking a quick break from the pool to do some drawing:

Then it was back up to the lobby for some hot chocolate and a movie (you can’t see it, but there is a TV in that little cubby area, and Planet of the Apes was on.  They loved this – they felt super fancy and grown-up.


I loved it, too – after all the time spent in the car and the rush to get places, it was great to have evenings when I could let the kids do things like relax in the fancy hotel lobby and drink hot chocolate.

On one of the commercial breaks we rushed up to our room, got everyone bathed and ready for bed, and then they got to watch the rest of the movie while tucked into bed.  They were so amazed that the same movie that was on down in the lobby was also on in our hotel room. 


Meanwhile, here are some pictures of the boys over at the Orioles game at Camden Yards.  It is an awesome ball park.  Daniel and I walked around there during our trip a few years ago, and Daniel knew he wanted to come back and go to a game there someday. 

Oliver and Tristan with Babe Ruth:                             


Filling out the scorecard:                                           


Oliver and Daniel with “the ball that got away”.  They had quite a few missed ball opportunities at this game that are still a little hard for them to talk about.  I might not have the story straight, but I think this one was headed right for Ollie, but when he reached out his mitt he misjudged it a little, and the guy behind him got it.  Everyone around was yelling at the guy to give it to the kid (meaning Ollie), but Oliver knew it wouldn’t mean anything to him since he hadn’t caught it, so he told the guy not to worry about it.  But he did get his picture taken with it.                    


Day 9:  Washington, DC and Richmond, VA

The next morning we drove to Washington, DC, where we met my sister and her four kids, who live just outside of DC.  The kids were excited for a day of sightseeing with their cousins.                 


I love cousins holding hands:                                                 


And kissing?                                                                      


We walked and walked and walked up past the capitol building to get to the restaurant we had picked for lunch.  The kids were good sports, but it was a lot further than we had thought it would be.

The girl table:                     


The boy table:                     





It rained on and off throughout the day.  We were happy Marian brought umbrellas to share.

Air and Space Museum.  Daniel took the older 6 with him so they could actually learn about some of the cool things there, and Marian and I stayed with the younger 4 and let them roam around and look at random things.  It worked out great.

American Art Museum.  I really love this picture:                                                        


Natural History Museum:

Elizabeth and Victor (2).  She was his little mother the whole time:                                     






The kids in front (kind of) of the White House.  It’s way, way back there.  But at least they saw it, and now they know where the President lives.                                                                     


After that Marian and her kids had to leave so they headed back to the car, but we kept on walking to see the rest of the memorials along the National Mall.

World War II Memorial:                                                          


It started raining pretty hard on us, but we kept on going (we were sad to be without Marian’s umbrellas).  Cynthia decided the best thing to do was fall asleep in the stroller. 

Vietnam Memorial Wall:                                                          


Lincoln Memorial:                                                                 


Cindy didn’t see it, but at least someday I can show her this picture and tell her she was there.

Looking back at the Washington Monument:                            


Pretending to fall off the steps at the back of the Lincoln Memorial:

Henry actually did fall off the steps at the back of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was pretty crazy.  I really don’t know how he didn’t break his head open.  They are giant concrete steps, and he fell backward, landed one step down, and then his momentum took him down one more step, where he landed on his head, and then flipped over one last time down to the grass at the bottom. 

Here’s Daniel re-enacting the fall with Henry:


Henry's Big Fall (A Re-enactment) from Joanne Mott on Vimeo.

Cindy still sleeping:                                                               


The Korean War Memorial:

The Jefferson Memorial:

We finally made it back to our car after lots of walking.  Then we drove to Richmond, Virginia, where we spent the night.  Everyone was pretty worn out.  These kids walked almost 10 miles that day.                


Day 10:  Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia

The last city we were headed to was Atlanta, Georgia.  On day 10 we woke up early and drove from Richmond out to Norfolk and Virginia Beach to see the Atlantic Ocean.  Then we drove through Charlotte, North Carolina, where we met up with some good friends from grad school for some great barbeque. 


We left Charlotte after dinner and then drove through a giant rainstorm (it was the heaviest rain I’ve ever driven in), and finally made it to Atlanta late that night.

Day 11:  Atlanta, Georgia

The next morning we hung out at the hotel for a little bit and ate breakfast, and then we all drove to Turner Field to drop Daniel and the boys off for batting practice and the baseball game.

The rest of us headed back to the hotel for some lunch and some swimming:

Trying to all jump in at the same time.  This always fails:

Good friends:               


Lizza teaching Henry how to slide dramatically down the railing into the pool:

Dressing up like fancy towel princesses:                               


Back inside the hotel for nap time/quiet time/reading time/writing-in-journal time (Lizza documented our whole trip in a journal.  It’s pretty great). 


Meanwhile, the boys were having fun at the game.  Afterward they got to go down on the field and run around the bases.

When the baseball game was over we drove down and picked them up and headed into downtown Atlanta.  We walked around, ate dinner at Baja Fresh, and let the kids play in the fountains at Centennial Park:


It started raining while we were out there, so most of us ran for cover.  Tristan, Oliver, and Henry stayed out in the rain.  It was a wet ride back to the hotel that evening. 


Day 12:  Drive home to Texas

I don’t really remember anything about this day.  It’s a long drive from Atlanta to home.  I always have mixed feelings when we finish up one of our trips – on one hand, I think we were ready to be home and back to a normal routine and not living out of suitcases.  But at the same time, it always feels sad that after so much planning and looking forward to it, it’s finally over.  I guess the only thing to do is to start planning next year’s!