In the home stretch...

Tuesday was the beginning of the end of our trip. We made it to Washington D.C. as our last stop and Libi, Jammy and Granpa were settling into their routine.

Part 1: Heather and RonOur first stop was Mount Vernon and we got a perfect day for it!We all got through the house before the crowds got too big. After that we split into two groups: one that went down to the waterfront and the other that stayed up in the visitor's center. We had a few kids who had trouble getting around so we tried to keep the hills to a minimum for them.Jenny and I stayed with the kids on top-- at this point my feet were aching from all the walking we'd done.The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial was our first stop in D.C. The kids were really interested in the wall and one of our father's on the trip found one of his relatives on it.Here are the 12 girls that were in my chaperone group. While I loved all of them, it seemed that all the trouble makers were in my group. I had one girl who cried the first two days, one who was in another world all the time, one who twisted her ankle running down the Lincoln Memorial, and another who threw up every time we were on a plane and sucked a giant jawbreaker the whole trip. Don't you wish you could've been there???We marched on to the White House for another group picture, and a couples picture, and a girl chaperone picture. Jenny, Amy and I had a great time on the trip. We had lots of silly inside jokes and laugh out loud moments-- love those girls!We took a short bus ride to the National Cathedral. I was so surprised that the kids enjoyed this so much. They asked me lots of questions-- I became the Episcopalian expert which was kinda silly!This window blew them away because the Jesus in the center is over 6 feet tall. They just couldn't fathom that a stained glass window could be so huge!Our first Smithsonian stop was the American History Museum. It had been closed the last few times Ron has gone on the trip so we were anxious to see the improvements. Sadly the only read change was this atrium which is now much brighter.The first exhibit we ran to was the Lincoln 200th where we got to see, Lincoln's hat, his pocket watch, his pick axe from his rail-splitting days, and other artifacts. Ron took pictures of every item in the display so if you want to take a virtual tour I can send you a link to that!Doing the monuments at night is a big part of the trip-- they are so much better looking at night. Here Ron and I pose in front of the WWII Memorial.From the memorial you can get amazing pictures of the Capitol and Washington Monument as well as....the Lincoln Memorial. In this rather artistic picture that I took it looks like Lincoln went from sitting to standing-- kind of freaky!!! This was the first trip that we had a young lady believe that she saw ghosts. She saw the first ghost in Gettysburg and it followed her to D.C.-- it's a good thing I didn't show her this picture!Next it was on to Ron's favorite, the Lincoln Memorial. We tooke some shots outside....and a few inside before we had to snap into nurse mode to take care of the girl who hurt her ankle. After this the bus went to the Iwo Jima Memorial, but Ron and I were on the bus tending to my hurt girl. We spent the rest of the night nursing her and dealing with the girls in the ghost room who were too freaked out to sleep! The joys of chaperoning thirteen year olds!

Part 2: LibiLibs, Jammy and Granpa had a quiet day today at the house. Libi has been making her toys kiss for quite awhile now-- Bert looks like he is enjoying the company of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. I didn't think that Bert enjoyed the company of ladies, but what do I know?Grammy and Grampy came over in the evening. They brought Libi one of her favorite things... balloons!!!They were fun to hit Granpa with!If anyone needed further proof that Libi is Ron's daughter, here it is! Not only does she love every fruit and vegetable she sees but she enjoys the orange-cicle ice cream.Yup, that really yucky orange and vanilla ice cream-- she loves it! Where did I go wrong??