Our summer in pictures

As you know, we spent the summer away from home- the entire summer.  My sister, Shaylee, got married at the end of June, so we started off our summer of traveling then.  We spent the week before the wedding and the week after the wedding in Idaho with family.  We then spent the next week in Utah with some dear friends who moved from Oregon last year.  Then, we spent the remaining 6 weeks in Herndon, Virginia for Mike's work.  It was a difficult, exhausting summer and I'm so glad to be home. 

Of course, I have way more pictures than one post should hold, but I don't really want to write multiple posts- I don't really have time.  With two 8-month-olds and a nearly 3-year-old, I rarely have time to even take a shower. 

Pre- DC:

4th of July in Pocatello.

 We started out our adventures in DC at the Temple.  We had heard about this temple, and it certainly didn't disappoint.  It is amazing.

 

Liam kept making this face and saying, "Should we go inside, Mom and Daddy?  Should we?"

 

 

 

The first week we saw some of the Historic sites, like the Washington Monument.

 and the WWII Memorial

We mostly spent time hanging out at the hotel, though.  Luke and I were the only ones awake this morning, so we had a mini photo shoot with the early morning light coming through the window.  

We went to the Air and Space Museum at the Washington Dulles  Airport.  We ended up going back here when my mom came out.  Liam loved this place!

We drove up to the Pentagon.

 And Mike got some pictures of the Jefferson Memorial while I stayed with sleeping babies in the car.

 We went to a couple of the Smithsonian Museums.  This was the Museum of Natural History.  DINOSAURS!!

 The US Capitol Building

 The Castle

A couple weeks in we went to Philadelphia and saw a lot of those sites as well.
 Benjamin Franklin's house.

 

The Liberty Bell

 We spent a lot of time at various parks around.  This was one of our favorites- Clemyjontri in McLean, VA.

Back to the Air and Space Museum with my mom.  Oh yeah!  So, Mike flew my mom out to help me with the kids for a week.  It was a total surprise and absolutely crazy!  It was awesome and couldn't have come at a better time in our trip.  We did a few things as repeats, Like the museum and the Natural History Museum.  We also had a true DC experience by getting a $100 parking ticket and nearly getting the car towed.  (We had that experience later)
 

More pictures of playing in the hotel.

The zoo.  Liam loved this also.  We saved this for our very last Saturday in town.  It was a very fun day.

 Check out that happy grin!

More at the hotel- we had just a few toys for Liam.  This gun was one of them.  He carried that thing all over the place with him.  He took it to the grocery store, down to the lobby for breakfast and dinner, and wanted to take it to the pool.

Clemyjontri again.  

 Mike's very last day of work in Virginia was on Thursday, the 23rd in Maryland.  He took his family to work that day and we got to spend time at a beautiful garden, see the butterfly house, eat lunch at Bob's Burger Palace (Bobby Flay's burger joint.  It was good), and go to another Air and Space Museum.  This one was tiny, but so fun!  We got there in time for a preschool craft thing, where the kids made these cute thermometers.

They also had a whole closet full of bomber jackets, hats, goggles, gloves- all real pilot gear.  Of course, Liam wouldn't put anything on, but the babies would. :)

On the way home I snapped this picture of the temple.  It is amazing at night because it looks like it's floating above the traffic.

Our flight was at 5:30 on Friday, the 24th, so we had a good portion of the day to get ready and relax.  We finished our trip the way we started... at the temple.  It was amazing to see how much the kids had grown in just six weeks.  The first trip to the temple Jude could barely sit up by himself and Luke had to be propped up.  It was difficult to get a picture of them because they couldn't sit up well.  This time it was difficult to get a picture of them because they wouldn't sit still.  They were crawling away and wrestling with each other.

I took a lot of pictures with my phone because it was easier to get them online that way.  Next post I will try to dump all those phone pics.