We all hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. While ours wasn't very traditional, it was very "us." By 1pm, we'd fed the children breakfast, a snack, and lunch, we'd cleaned a good bit of the house, Leanne had cooked, we'd unloaded our bags from Wednesday nights Household Good Restocking at Target, done a good bit of playing on the deck in the beautiful 60something degree weather, and of course, eaten our version of Thanksgiving (Turkey breast sandwiches, sweet potato fries, and cranberry chutney. YUM. And the kids' had their version. A turkey hot dog. :)

Thinking we had a novel idea, we packed up and headed to DC. And while we found parking much easier than we have any other time we've been to DC (and that's a lot in 15+ years), a lot of people had the same idea. My vision of the boys having the run of the Natural History Museum (we went there again - even though we were there last weekend - because the displays are toddler friendly (meaning they can see them and they are interesting)) was dashed immediately when I saw the crowds. There was no way they were going to be let loose in there. But we watched the evolution movie again (and the monkey still made Carter giggle.) We walked through the museum quickly (cause really the insect display does nothing for me!), thinking we'd walk over to the Air and Space Museum to see the planes. But as soon as we exited, it looked like the Wizard of Oz before the tornado touched down. The wind was whipping around, the sky was black and ominous, and it even smelled like rain. So rather than 1) getting caught with the kids outside in the midst of a rain storm or 2) getting stranded in the museum during a rain storm, we just came home - which was fine since Carter ended up taking a nap (Grayson said no afternoon nap for him, thankyouverymuch.

I unexpectedly got Friday off (thanks to working last Sunday) and because we are gluttons for punishment (ahem, I mean we want to offer our kids all the opportunities life has to offer) we ventured downtown again - but this time to the aquarium. Baltimore has THE aquarium. It is huge and beautiful, and MUCH nicer than the DC one. It is also 5x the price. And when you don't know if you are going to last 10 minutes or two hours somewhere, you go for economy. Plus, we read online that it is a good aquarium for toddlers since it was smaller and less overwhelming. And because I am evidently delusional due to chronic sleep deprivation (we were up to a 50%-75% success rate in sleeping through the night, but are now back to 0%-25% with Grayson joining us in bed once again....*sigh*) I thought we'd easily find parking. Yeah, right. After driving around, we opted to drive to Union Station (train station), park there, eat in the food court, and then Metro over to the aquarium. Which is just what we did.

The aquarium was fine. All of the tanks were so high that we had to carry the boys so they could see - and after about 2 tanks, they could have cared less. Thankfully, it wasn't too crowded so we were able to let them run up and down the corridors while we pushed their strollers behind them. After 45 minutes of running around in a dark, hot, somewhat crowded basement, we loaded up with the intention to head to the Air and Space Museum (again.) But we came to our senses before we walked the mile there and instead headed back to Union Station for cookies and smoothies. It was really a great day! The boys were in really good moods (which translates to very little whining/moaning/crying), they loved the veritable smorgasbord of junk food they ate (waffles, graham crackers, a hot dog, cookies, and a smoothie), and they even both fell asleep on the way home! SCORE!

I’ll blog about Saturdays adventure in another post….