It's kind of torture writing this as we are in the middle of a new wave of COVID, but it's good to remember in the last two years we've still had plenty of good times. So in the summer when we were all vaccinated and the cases were slowing DC started opening up! We decided we had to take advantage and had some very eventful weekends!
One of our main goals was to go to the beach! We didn't want to drive too far or end up somewhere too crowded so we just went to a small beach about an hour away that allowed you to reserve a parking spot so we knew there couldn't be too many people. Over all it turned out to be a really good beach for us. It wasn't exactly that white sandy beach you picture, but it was good enough to play with our sand toys and make some fun sandcastles. Riley wasn't sure about the water at first, the waves were really throwing her off at first, but eventually she had a fun time playing with the seaweed. The one thing that was incredibly unexpected was the wall of dead cicadas between the beach and the water. There was literally a foot thick barrier around all the water of the dead bugs. We figured they are so dumb they fly out over the water, run out of energy, fall into the water, die, and get washed back on shore. It was pretty gross...cicadas were really the worst surprise of the summer.
Trying to be instagram models. They've got a rough life man, they can't care how absolutely ridiculous they look.
Another sign of things opening up was nursery starting up again! Riley finally got to experience nursery! The teachers hosted a little playdate with the nursery kids, and I captured this adorable moment of Owen and Riley playing house.
Museums!! Britt and I hit up the museum of African American History on a Saturday that Ben was working. That was quite the trip...overall it was enjoyable, but it wasn't exactly a museum that Riley was interested in. We walked through the floors that looked the most interesting, it was an enlightening and thought-provoking exhibit for sure. By the time we were leaving Riley was really ready to be leaving.
The next museum weekend we planned when Ben could come and we went to the museum of Natural History. It was so fun! We went while they were still requiring you to reserve a spot so we got the rare experience of walking through the museum without hoards of children and strollers all around you. When Ben and I tried to go to this museum the month we visited DC in 2019 and we couldn't even move through the museum it was so crowded. So this trip was a literal breath of fresh air.
Pretty sure that's a giant sloth behind them....I don't really remember. It was a long time ago.
It's crazy to see us without masks in these pictures. That was a great few weeks....
When Riley found these statues she wanted to stay here the rest of our visit.
Seeing the dinosaurs from her book in real life!
At each display they have representation of which fossils are real fossils and which are just casts. This T-rex eating a triceratops was almost all real.
The next section we looked at was a bunch of stuffed animals. It was unclear to me if the animals were all actually taxidermy or fake, but a real quick google search says they are all real!
This little guy is a close relative of the first mammal on Earth! Riley just thought he was a cute mouse.
Britt demonstrating the totally normal human pose the wall chose to use to represent a human.
This was Britt's favorite fish. This is a female fish. The male fish are a lot smaller and attach to the female as a parasite, getting all their nutrients from them.
This fish was thought to have been extinct back with the dinosaurs, but then in 1938 they found a living one!
Britt being a very useful paparazzi. :)
After the museum it was time for a famous DC brunch! This was by far our favorite place we've gone to. All except for these pancakes pictured below. They were advertised as strawberry and creme, but the creme was lemon creme! It said nothing about lemon on the menu and the taste was so overpowering! Other than that the dishes were delicious!!
The last museum we visited in our push to get out and experience DC was actually one in Virginia. This Air and Space Museum is a giant plane hanger with a TON of planes with lots of history. There were a lot of planes from WWII, from the US, Japan, and Germany. That was probably my favorite section, some interesting information.
I had no idea this was the real Discovery space shuttle while we were at the museum! I assumed it was a giant paper mache replica because it did not look like it could've withstood 30 trips to space!! For real, the outside material looked so weird, I should've asked the nice old man on the TV answering questions what it was made out of.
Also, check out this fantastic picture of how they delivered the Discovery to the museum.
This plane actually comes up in my crossword puzzles a lot! This is one of the planes that dropped one of the atomic bombs.
Playing at libraries!!! That has changed my life! Seriously, I can't believe Riley and I were surviving without the library for so long.
Well here I leave you, reflecting on all the wonderful things that came back into our lives as COVID became less of a threat, and wondering if they will be taken from us again.....
