Summer Adventures

Cuz I know how to show the kids a good time...  We've been doing some little mini adventures this summer.  Dexter has had a couple weeks at home without summer camp, and we planned a few little day trips to keep us busy between swim team practices and Acting Class at school and Mama's need to swim, bike, and run so she doesn't die at Iron Girl on Aug 7th.

Behold - Summer Adventures (the July edition):

Clearly the kids are psyched about being at the Fair Hill Horse Trials - so excited they're not even watching the horse jump the fence next to them.

They actually enjoy going to watch horses jump.  They check out all the fences in the area and decide which one has the best view.

It's the "Stop Taking My Picture" face from the kid who is desperate for a hair cut.

Pretending to be horses

Daddy spent July 4th weekend spreading mulch.  The kids were sad when it was gone, I think.  Erin did have a wonderful time being the "Mulch Director" and telling Daddy where to put the mulch.

On Tuesdays in the summer they have a program at Winterthur for kids, which means all three of us got in to Winterthur for an amazing, unheard-of price of $10.  At the very end of our day we checked out the kids stuff they were doing.  But our main focus was just the wonders of Winterthur - the Enchanted Woods, the fish in The Glade, and the Reflecting Pool.  I forgot how excellent Winterthur is for the kids - they had a wonderful time.  Here's a link to a video from our Winterthur adventures.

Dexter enjoyed dancing through the mushrooms

Magical

Mama Bird

So much fun feeding the fish

Erin named her favorite fish, and was calling them over to her.

Double the kids, double the trouble

Dex didn't believe there were reflections, as he could not see them from where he was standing.  He was impressed when I showed him this photo.

Also this week, my dear friend Dave Telesco and his son Joey visited us.  They drove up from Florida to go on a backpacking trip with Kenny and his son Anatoly, and then were kind enough to drive a bit out of their way to pay us an overnight visit before moving on to visit Joey's cousins outside of DC.  I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with Dave, and the kids LOVED playing with Joey (who is 12 now.  12!  Unbelievable).  Joey was a tremendously good sport, playing with Dexter and Erin both at the pool, playing with toys that were way too young for him in our basement, and soundly beating Dexter in a couple games of chess.  Dexter was super excited that Joey spent the night in his room - it was the first time that's ever happened.  Poor Joey probably didn't get much sleep.

Then we went to the lake for a week, which will get its own post some time.  It was wonderful and relaxing, and everyone was sad when we had to leave the lake house and return home.  So we tried to fit in some more summer adventures to make up for us being sad and missing the lake:

Superb playground in Rising Sun, that also has a little stream running through it.  The kids enjoyed looking at fish and throwing rocks in to the water, and Erin actually slid down a very large, very long tunnel slide.  This girl is getting brave in her old age.

That superb playground is conveniently right down the road from an EXCELLENT local ice cream place, Kilby Cream.

And Kilby Cream has its own superb playground, which the kids took advantage of after gobbling up their ice cream.

Sometimes  adventures don't even require us leaving the house.  After summer homework, Dexter and I were looking for a fun activity while Erin was sleeping.  We decided on making Rice Krispy Treats.

Take a wild guess at who cut the Rice Krispy Treats?  He cut the entire pan in to eight pieces.  Two pieces for everyone.  Two pieces that were exactly the size of Dexter's head.

Our most adventurous adventure of the summer happened Friday and Saturday, when I took the kids to Northern Virginia.  My dearest friend and college roommate Cristin was visiting her family for a few days, and since Northern Virginia is WAY closer than San Francisco, we went for a visit.  Erin demanded that Cristin play with her the entire time, and the following day Cristin sent me a message saying she kind of missed Erin bossing her around all day.

Erin enjoyed feeding Baby Levi, Cristin's nephew.

After we left Cristin and her huge crazy awesome family, we drove 15 minutes down the road to Crystal City and checked in to a hotel.  The kids were SO excited - they LOVE hotels.  And I was SO excited when this amazing person knocked on our hotel door:

Hooray, it's Gina!!  She's back from a two year tour of duty in Germany, and she was working at the Pentagon this week and staying in our hotel, as the furniture for her house had not yet been delivered.  Here she is showing the kids her normal uniform for work, and how all her fancy things go on to her uniform.  Gina is very fancy these days - Col. Oliver!  Steve (who is still in Germany), is fancy as well - General Oliver!  We have very fancy friends.

It was really nice for me to have Gina with us for an evening, as she's an excellent mom and jumped right in helping with the kids.  It made me smile to see her walking down the sidewalk holding both kids' hands, and to watch her move Erin's water glass away from the edge of the table approximately 136 times at dinner.  The kids very much enjoyed visiting the Air Force Memorial with Gina - we went there for a better view of the Pentagon.  And we all loved seeing Gina's house.  Dexter loves house tours.  The best part of Gina's house?  It has an ELEVATOR!  How cool is that?  Here's a link to a little movie from our visit.

Gina pointing out some DC landmarks to Dexter.

Gina and the kids

Gina never changes.  She pretty much looks exactly the same now as she did in high school.

While visiting with Gina was super fun, the kids were most excited about staying in a hotel.  They love, love, love hotels.  Like, enthusiastically and LOUDLY.  It it tremendously exhausting to be with them in a hotel because I have to tell them to be quiet about 3,275 times.  And sharing a room with them is not exactly restful.

The kids shared a bed.  It would have, on a normal night, taken them about three hours to settle down and sleep while sharing a bed.  But since we didn't even get in bed til 10, it only took about 30 minutes for them to crash.  A new record, I think.

From Gina's window we watched an excellent sunset, and also could see the Pentagon if you looked carefully down the road.  From our window you could see...

The POOL!  We spent over an hour on Saturday morning swimming in the pool.

We also spent a good ten minutes doing this, up and down, up and down, while waiting for the pool to open.  I believe the hotel was probably delighted to see us leave.

On our way out of town Dexter wanted to go to the Air Force Memorial again.  The previous night we were unable to go right next to the monument because one of the Air Force bands was there performing a free concert, and the memorial was their stage.  So Dex wanted to go back so he could touch his favorite spire of the monument.

I can't remember which one of these (exactly the same in every way) spires was Dexter's favorite.

But, hey.  Wish granted.  Go touch them.  And see some DC landmarks again - see the Washington Monument over Dexter's arm?

AND - look who joined us?  Gina spent the morning at her house with the painters, but they finished up and she was leaving right as we got to the Memorial, so she came over to see us for a few minutes before we hit the road.  Now that Gina is living two hours away again, we look forward to seeing her more often.

The car ride home from DC is never without traffic jams, and this trip was no exception.  I-95 is terrible, always.  We did avoid the terrible DC Beltway going home, though, and took I-395 right through the city, which was cool - we drove right past some fun stuff and waved at Jefferson through the window.

What to do in a traffic jam?  Take pictures on your phone, obviously...

Since we were going to go over the Rt 40 bridge instead of the much more expensive I-95 bridge (Gina, take note - get a commuter plan for the Hadem bridge on your EZ Pass.  Saves you dollars if you travel that way a lot), we decided we'd better make a pit stop in our old town of Havre de Grace.  We drove past the old townhouse, and then made a stop at the best chocolate store in the Universe:

Mmmmmm, Bomboys

And we finally made it home around 5.  The kids were super excited to see Daddy, and asked that he join us the next time we stay at a hotel.  Just so we can ALL lose sleep.

We've also been using the outdoor pool at the YMCA.  We went yesterday after Erin's nap to swim and to eat pizza for dinner.  Finally the pool is warm enough that Erin will get in without screaming and crying.  Which is nice, because when you spend a lot of money to use the outdoor pool, you kind of want all the family members to actually SWIM in it.

On tap this week is more swim team practice for Dexter (the last week - yay!), plus a free science camp at the library in the afternoon.  AND Dexter has qualified for the big league swimming championships that take place on Friday and Saturday this week.  He'll swim Freestyle and swim in the Medley Relay team on Friday morning (no idea what he swims in the medley.  My guess is backstroke).  Saturday morning he swims backstroke.  If he's one of the 12 fastest times he'll go back in the evening for the finals.  We're not expecting that to happen, but we do think it's pretty cool that he qualified for the big meet, and we're really proud of him.  He's got a big old engine in his strong long legs, and when he remembers to turn his engine on his backstroke is super fast.  Best of luck to our big fish this weekend - we hope he has lots of fun!