Family Memories

At the beginning of the summer I had the idea of taking Aliza and Josiah to a big zoo where they could see elephants, pandas, chimpanzees and other more exotic animals. We set off this week for 2 days in Alexandria, VA and the National Zoo. Without any planning on our part, it worked out that Jeremy's parents were also vacationing in Alexandria that week and so they got in on the zoo fun.

The first evening we arrived we decided to take the free trolley to the Potomac River, walk around and find a place to eat. I think we were glad for some extra hands getting two children and a double stroller on the trolley!

It is fun to be in big cities. I like visiting, but I'm happy to go home to the country! After striking out on locating a restaurant that appeared to be child appropriate we asked a local for an idea. Thankfully the lady pointed us in the direction of a cute French restaurant that was perfect for us. Aliza enjoyed picking out a special dessert. After dinner we took the trolley back to the hotel. We had to wait 20 minutes for the trolley and Josiah was too tired. He threw an all out screaming fit for most of that time. Always fun to have every person walking by look at you--A LOT of people walked by!
Jeremy and I have good system for exploring now. He navigates on his iphone and I take directions and drive. It works out well. We only missed one turn going in to D.C. and that led to us having to drive around the mall. Thankfully traffic was very light! The first thing Aliza wanted to see was the tigers and it happened to be the first exhibit we came to. Unfortunately she had a hard time locating the tiger and the lion because it was pretty far and away and camouflaged with the landscaping. She sortof went downhill from there. The highlight for her was looking at the map and deciding which animal she wanted to see next (of course she didn't care if that animal was at the opposite end of the zoo!). That map kept her busy! When we got home she did tell Grandma about the big fish, the orangatans, and the panda.


Honestly the hotel room brought about as much pleasure as the zoo did. We had a whirlpool tub and an outragously huge shower. We filled the tub and turned the shower on and the children had a blast. There was a whole lot of squealing and splashing going on. When our pizza was delivered Jeremy thought it might be a neighbor wondering what was going on!

And, my oh my, bedtime that night! First of all we heard a chair scrape across the floor. (Surely it had to be upstairs so we ignored it.) Then I went and checked. Aliza had helped herself to a cookie off the counter and was enjoying it in bed. A little later she came in our room to inform us that she was talking to Josiah. She had pulled up a chair to the end of his pack n play and was entertaining him (he had been sleeping). Even later we heard all kinds of giggling and chattering. Aliza had decided to get in the pack n play with Josiah. This was positively amazing to me because there were absolutely no tears. That means that these two were in that small of space and there was no biting, scratching or hair pulling! Apparently miracles do happen at least on vacation.
I know Jeremy and I were pretty tired when Aliza woke us up at 6:30 Saturday morning. Judging by the sleeping that occurred on the way home I think the children were pretty tired too.