Aviation Museum

While my mom and step-dad were here over Thanksgiving we finally got things together enough to make it out to our little local Aviation Museum.

The College Park airport is the longest continuously operating airport in the country (I think) so there's a lot of history there, including some association with the Wright Brothers. Cool!

Ellie had a good time running around and looking at the different airplanes.

But her favorite thing was the little exhibit they had on air pressure involving two different sized beach balls.

She figured out how to make it work pretty quickly.

{push button}


{pick up ball}


{toss ball gently into air stream}

I don't like to brag but she's obviously brilliant. And beautiful.

Aquatots

Pete started swimming lessons with Ellie last weekend. I went this weekend to get a couple of pictures. It's meant for 1-2 year olds so most of the kids are quite a bit older than she is, but since she turns 1 during the class they let her in. She seems to be having a good time, and I think Daddy's really enjoying sharing this with her. They sure are cute together anyway.

They kick their legs, sing some songs, "jump" into the pool from the side, ride around on these giant mats, and play with beach balls and noodles. I'm a little jealous.

We also went to the National Arboretum in the afternoon because the weather was just too good to waste inside doing chores.

Go Nationals!

We made it to our first baseball game of the season finally Tuesday night.

His aunt and her kids are big Mets fans (it was Nationals v. Mets) and wanted to check out the new stadium, so we tagged along (thanks Sue!!)...as did Pete's mother, other aunt and uncle, and sister. We were quite the crew, especially when we passed Ellie down the line. She got a little tired of this I think.

And eventually she just got a little tired.

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The Nationals ended up losing after a brief meltdown by a relief pitcher. Oh well. It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to get that big "first baseball game" milestone behind us.

The most exciting point of the evening was when Aunt S. discovered Ellie's two bottom teeth had finally broken through! Boy did we feel a little, uh, out of the loop. Who knows how long they'd been there. You check and you check, and she drools and drools and chews on everything, and eventually you kind of stop thinking about it. Sure enough, there they were!

I was semi-successful at getting a picture of them. They're *right* along her lower lip line, very tiny grey lines. You kind of have to see them in person and then look at the picture. But they are there! Good thing she likes yelling right now or I wouldn't have had a prayer of getting a picture of them.

We're Ba-Ack

I think it's a little funny in an ironic kind of way that the title of my previous post was "The End." It wasn't intended to actually be The End, though for you the reader (hi loyal readers!) it may have seemed like it. Sorry for the long, long wait. Now is time for to catch up.

The next weekend after being back from our big trip, we decided to go for a hike with Aunt S. at Great Falls National Park. It couldn't have been a more perfect day.

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We walked around for a bit, sat and had some lunch, walked some more.

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Got to use our nifty backpack for what it was intended, actual hiking.

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True to fashion, Ellie proved yet again she can sleep pretty much anywhere.

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We had a great time so I'm hoping we do more of this type of thing soon. It seems that we always put off doing these things until the end of the summer when there are only a few weekends left to fit everything in, then enjoy them so much we swear we're going to do more next year...then put it off until the end of the summer. We still want to go camping, anyone want to start taking bets as to whether that will actually happen?

Day 13 - Garden of the Gods

We spent the morning out at the Garden of the Gods, an amazing rock park in Colorado Springs. The sky was a deep blue and the moon was out, that along with the red of the rock formations made for some neat photo opportunities.

{Pike's Peak}

This also gave us a chance to use the nifty backpack. There are paved paths throughout the park so we didn't really need the pack, but it was nice to have. We thought we'd be more ambitious than we were and get in some real hikes, but at least it came in handy on the train and in the terminals.

Then back to the house. The rain the day before really cooled things down, but it was still hot in the sun. But, eventually the afternoon clouds had rolled back in. Pete and Ellie hung out on the lawn for as long as they could before another cooling rain.

After a week of hot hot hot, unusual for the Colorado I remember, we got to pull out the pants and long-sleeved shirts that I brought just in case.

A Day of Firsts

We took a trip down to the Mall today to see the NASA exhibit in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It was a hot, sunny day so we didn't spend a lot of time at the booths, and we didn't get a chance to see the other two exhibits, Bhutan and Texas. We had fun looking at some of the cool stuff they had set up.

I won't say Ellie had a great time, but she didn't complain too much, and had several firsts. First trip into D.C., first time in an umbrella stroller, first ride on the Metro

and first time on the Moon!

Unfortunately, she slept through this major milestone.

It threatened to rain all day but, similar to Friday, held off until later in the evening. So much for "afternoon thunderstorms." Why bother with a 5 day forecast when you can't even do an accurate 5 hour forecast? I'm glad we didn't decide to stay home.