Ladybug Eggs

The kids actually saw the ladybugs mating, and then watched them lay the eggs.  Then the kids marked the tree with a knife as a sign "not to bother the eggs."  Hope all the animals and birds catch the meaning :)

DC: The National Arboretum

On Saturday the weather significantly warmed back up, so I decided to drive the kids over to the National Arboretum - just on the outskirts of town.  They were really craving some green space, and even though the ground was saturated from the rains the day before, they played and played and played in the gardens and open fields.

One cool thing about the arboretum is that a pair of bald eagles are currently nesting in the park.  We didn't get to see the actual eagles, but we did get to see their nest (from quite far away).

We waited at this fence a good while to see if the eagles would return to their nest.  Alas they did not.

The kids favorite part of the arboretum was the bonsai house.  They couldn't wait to tell Hubry all about the tiny trees so beautifully tended.

The entrance to the bonsai room

Songbird practicing her photography skills

"Mom, take a picture of me by this beautiful rock!"

Finally we meandered out to the original columns of the National Capital.  The Capital building required new pillars in the mid 1900's, so they eventually decided to move the old ones to a grassy meadow at the National arboretum.

DC: The Museums

On Friday, after the morning snow had subsided, we decided to take a taxi down to the museums (with our double stroller in tow).  We did this in part b/c of our miscalculations from the day before, and in part because Songbird had thrown up the night before, and though she was feeling much better she didn't quite feel up to walking.  So she got to see the museums from the comfort of the stroller :)

Our first stop was the National Museum of American History.  I have been there a few times before and really love it.  I love walking through the transportation section and seeing whaling boats and scrimshaw (all things that we read about in Seabird).  I love Julia Child's kitchen, and all the real artifacts that real people really used.  The kids liked it, too, but they were eager to move on to the next museum which promised dinosaur bones and animal skeletons.  So after a couple hours we called it quits and moved next door the the National Museum of Natural History.

I have to admit that it is truly amazing to see so many "stuffed" animals and animal skeletons.  We've been going through the Burgess animal book classifying mammals for school this year, and we saw so many of the animals we've been learning about.  It was fun to let the kids name the animals they were seeing and to put what they've been learning into practice.

Alas, I forgot the camera on this day, so we only have the pictures from our mind's eye.  Since the rain stopped by evening, we ended up walking back to our hotel.  It was a much more pleasant walk with all the kids along for the ride.

DC: The Mall

The day we went to the National Mall was a bit of a miscalculation.  We thought it would be nice exercise to walk to the Mall from our hotel, and then walk around and look at all the monuments.  The main problem was that it was a 40 minute walk to the Mall, and a lot of walking once we got there, and we had chosen (poorly) to only bring the umbrella stroller with us.  After hours of walking, somewhere just past the White House, the kids (and maybe the parents, too), started getting really cranky and tired. But we did end up making it back to the hotel - eventually :)

Not the best shot of Hubry, but we didn't take many photos this day, so it made the cut :)

Off in the distance you can see the Washington monument.

Washington DC: Smithsonian National Zoo

DC is very different from Williamsburg.  We were staying in the middle of the city, everything was busy and noisy, and we had to walk through crowds to get to our meals and anywhere else we wanted to go.  Hurry and I love walking through crowded cities when it's just the two of us, but it's definitely a bit more stressful with three littles in tow!  The kids did an awesome job overall, and aside from one night of throwing up (by our eldest who never gets sick), and one morning of snow, everything went pretty smoothly.

Since all the Smithsonian museums and such are free, we wanted to try and do as many things as possible. Our first day in the city the kids and I went to the zoo.  We got there around 11:30, left around 4:30, and aside from a quick lunch break were on our feet walking the entire time.  And...we just barely had enough time to see everything.  It was very well laid-out, and we especially enjoyed the reptile and bird houses.

The next morning in our hotel room we did some nature notebooking, and this was my attempt at a peacock :)

Some Photos from Williamsburg

Governor's Palace and Grounds

"Look!  A perfect  bed for me!!"

Arbor hallway on the palace grounds

Palace from the gardens

Look down to see the maze - the perfect place for a game of hide-and-seek!

Oh what a day!

Storming of the Palace

The Garden

Little beehives

Garden work is fun work

Cool tomato trellis in the background

Goofing Around

Afternoon in the Stocks

This isn't so bad.

I'm cute even in the stocks :)

Fife and Drum Corps and Canons

Colonial Williamsburg

Our days at Colonial Williamsburg were amazing!  We got there Sunday afternoon, so they just charged us for a one day ticket for admission both Sunday and Monday, and we both got half-off with our educator discounts, so with two free kids we paid less than $40 for our entire time!! Pretty amazing.  

Also, Sunday was the last day of Winter programming, which meant Monday was the first day of The Spring season.  The advantage to visiting during this time (not that we planned it necessarily) is that there are tons of family friendly programs.  I wonder if there is extra energy and excitement amongst the actors and actresses as well?  Anyhow, it was great.

Sunday afternoon we had just enough time to take a tour of the Governor's Palace and meander through the garden and mazes out back.  The weather was amazing, and the day couldn't have been more beautiful.  In the story of Felicity, she receives a very special invitation to a dancing lesson at the  Governor's Palace.  It was fun for Songbird to see the ballroom and connect it to that episode in the story.  We had just enough time to walk through the rest of the town and make a plan of execution for the next day.  Then it was off to dinner and back to the hotel for a quick pre-bed swim.  Did I mentione that Raindrop has been talking about swimming in the hotel for weeks now?  Yes, forget Colonial Williamsburg.  There is a pool, folks!

Monday morning we headed back to Colonial Williamsburg first thing.  Fiirst up was Storming of the Palace, which was a real-life reinactment of another event described in the Felicity books where the gun-power was stolen from the Magazine.  The townspeople did an excellent job bringing this scene to life - so excellent that the kids were a little nervous about what was happening around them.  We could tell the older two were getting into the drama, though the littlest kept hiding her face in the stroller. :)  When all was said and done, they decided not to storm the Palace this time but instead work for a peaceable solution.

Our next stop was the art museum where we joined a tour about Colonial fashion, something Songbird is especially interested in.  I have to say I was uber impressed with the kids attention to detail - something they have been practicing during our picture studies.  At the first painting we stopped at (High Life Below Stairs by John Collet, 1763) the kids were practically narrating the entire story, and at one point I stopped to ask the guide what kind of bird was coming out of the cage pecking on the servant's head, and Songbird answered, "I think it's a Magpie."  She was right, and later that night in the car we asked her how she knew it was a Magpie, or when she remembered learning about that kind of bird (since we don't have any near where we live. Her answer was so remarkable I have to record it here.  This is the story she told:

"Remember that time you read to us stories from the Veterinarian who lived in the English countryside?" (You mean James Herriot?)

"Yes, him.  Well remember the first story in the book about the black kitten?" (Yes, I remember that story.) (The story is Moses the Cat)

"Well in one of the first illustrations from that story, if you look closely in the background there is a fence gate with a magpie perched on top.  I remember thinking I hadn't seen that bird before.  But then when we checked out this particular version of the Hansel and Gretel story from the library there were Magpie's in the trees, and I remembered that was the bird from the story about the cat..."

So there you have it - the detailed way of how Songbird learned about Magpies...  

Another interesting thing we learned was that men's pockets were called fobs, and the little quarter pockets in men's and boy's jeans are also called fobs.  We also saw some women's stays that were made from Baleen whales - something we read about in Seabird.

After the fashion program at the art museum we made our way to the Raleigh Tavern where we joined in on a dance lesson.  This was so much fun I thought we should definitely try and find a square dance to attend somewhere near our home.  They taught us two different country line dances, though I can't remember what they were called or the names of any of the steps we were doing.

After dancing we walked acorss the street to the King's Tavern where we had lunch in a similar fashion as they would have in Colonial Times (though we had more choices and a cleaner environment).  The kids loved that we were eating in the "real" place they would have eaten.  And though we were underwhelmed with the food itself, the experience was definitely worth it.

After lunch we hurried over to the Capitol building where there was a reading of the Declaration of Independence (with actors and actresses gathered amongst all of us visitors).  I am glad to have heard it read all at once in that setting, and for the kids to have heard it as well.  It opened the door for some good conversations about the process of gaining our independence from England.

Afterwards we had a little bit of time to meander around and explore the various town shops.  We stopped in at the Milliner and Tailor, the Printing Office and Bindery, the Colonial Garden, and the Market Square, where Songbird used her money (plus an advance on future birthday money) to buy her lovely Colonial outfit.  She was so happy after she changed into her outift - her entire countenance changed.  She felt totally at home wearing her Colonial clothes and did not seem to mind one bit that she looked different from most people around her. :) Bro bought a toy rifle and a whistle, and Raindrop bought a Mop Cap and a little bedshirt.

In the afternoon we headed back to the art museum for a guided tour of needlework and samplers.  At the end of the tour the kids were given a square piece of fabric and some thread and encouraged to make their own samplers.  They spent the next hour diligently working on their samplers (with an icecream break in the middle), and would have spent longer if we didn't have another even to get to :)

Our final planned event of the day was to hear the drum and fife band and the canons being fired.  Bro was pretty excited about this and wanted to be in the front line, but Raindrop was absolutely terrified and begged me to take her away- even farther away.  Songbird came back with us, not liking the loud, explosive noises.  When the canons had all been fired twice, it was over, and we had just enough time left to explore the gunsmith and foundry.

By then, it was 5:00 and the houses were closed for the day.  We finished off our time with an amazing dinner at the Blue Talon Bistro right outside the Colonial city.  Hubry and I split a delicious salmon dinner, and Raindrop had the most amazing mac-n-cheese I have ever tasted in my entire life!

Then we were totally spent, and yet we had 2.5 hours to travel to make it to our next hotel in College Park, MD.  We ended the night full, happy, and tired.

Colonial Williamsburg: The Books

I always love gathering new books before our living education adventures. Aside from our Felicity Doll, books, and CD's, the Colonial Williamsburg website has an extensive list of resources by grade level, which is where I got the titles for most of the books I ordered.  We read a few of the books before we left, listened to Felicity on our way up, and have read most of the other books since being here.

Spring Garden

Family Haircut Day