National Air and Space Museum

The National Air and Space Museum located on the National Mall is our favorite museum to visit with our son.  Like most young children he loves all airplanes and space ships and rockets and helicopters and, well, anything that can fly.  There are actually two Smithsonian Air and Space Museums, one in Chantilly (the Udvar-Hazy Center) and one on the National Mall.  The National Mall location is easy to get to and has a lot of great exhibits.  The Udvar-Hazy Center is AMAZING.  If you can make it out there, I highly suggest it.  The place is just massive, I mean it has to be when you have the Space Shuttle there (and literally 100’s of other planes).  Both museums are free, however the Udvar-Hazy does charge $15 for parking.

Eilam liked the museums last year but they are much more fun with a 3 & 1/2 year old then a 2 year old.  He is interested in learning about some of the exhibits and talks about what we are looking at.  The museum in DC has both a Planetarium and an IMAX theater.  The 10:30 showings at the Planetarium are free.  On Fridays the show is One World, One Sky: Big Bird’s Adventure.  This was a great show featuring Big Bird, Elmo and another one of Elmo’s friends.  Eilam loved learning about the sky and stars and landing on the moon.  This last visit we were there a little over an hour.  If you have never been before, be ready to spend a couple hours.

Having way too much fun at the Air and Space Museum

The Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly (about 30-40 minutes from DC depending on traffic) is an absolute massive complex housing the Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde, the Enola Gay, an SR-71 Blackbird, a replica of an air traffic control tower and much, much more.  We have barely touched the surface of this museum and we have been twice.  If visiting the area and you can swing a visit, I highly suggest it.

National Air and Space Museum

Where:  Independence Avenue at 6th Ave SW, Washington, D.C.

How to Get There:  L’Enfant Plaza metro (orange, blue, silver, yellow, green) exit the 7th and Maryland, walk one block towards the National Mall, cross Independence Ave and the building will be to your right.  There is an entrance along Independence and along Jefferson facing the National Mall.

Hours:  10am-5:30pm (7:30pm during summer months)

Cost:  FREE

Steven Udar-Hazy Center

Where:  14390 Air and Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly VA 20151

How to Get There:  Since it’s not in DC please check out their website for directions.

Hours:  10-5:30pm (extended to 6:30 during summer months)

Cost:  FREE admission ($15 for parking)

National Portrait Gallery

The other day I read in the Washington Post that there was a new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery with pictures and memorabilia about Babe Ruth.  I hadn’t been to that museum since we had moved to the area so yesterday I spent an hour walking around the museum and checking out the exhibitions.  I had forgotten how beautiful the inside of the building in.  There is a large indoor courtyard on the first floor that is just breathtaking.  On the third floor is the Great Hall where President Lincoln celebrated his second inauguration.

While this is an art and portrait gallery it probably isn’t the most exciting place for young children.  So this was an afternoon for me to enjoy a quiet museum.  On the second floor is the American Presidents exhibit with Presidential Portraits.  There is also an interesting modern art exhibit on the third floor.

The Babe Ruth exhibit was small yet interesting.  It mainly concentrated on his baseball life and his influence on the game.  It runs through May of 2017.

I also had to check out the Presidential portrait of Frank Underwood.  It is on the first floor not in the Presidential Portrait gallery, thank goodness.

Where:  8th and F Street NW

How to Get There:  Chinatown/Gallery Place Metro (Red, Green, Yellow) exit toward Galleries or 7th/F Street

Hours:  11:30am-7pm

Cost:  FREE

Blackberry Pie Bars

Ah blackberries…..   I have a love hate relationship with the fruit.  Sounds weird, right?  I love, love, love eating blackberries and blackberry desserts.  However, I absolutely HATE picking them.  My childhood was spent visiting grandparents who lived on the Oregon coast.  My family eventually relocated from rural Idaho to the Oregon coast and I went to junior high and high school there.  When we moved to Oregon my parents bought my grandparents house which is in the country with about 10 acres of land.  Blackberries grow like weeds in this area.  They just take over other plants and grasses.  It is a never ending job keeping them back from the road, orchard, horse pasture, etc.  My mom would try and get my sister and I to pick blackberries down along our fields, however, we were terrible at it.  She would get quite frustrated with us, rightly so.  There were usually spiders and bees and the bushes are very pokey.  We had no trouble eating the delicious pies that she would make around the holidays though.

Last week, our local grocery store had blackberries on sale.  I jumped at the chance to buy these and quickly scourged Pinterest for ideas.  While I love baking, I did not get my mother’s pie making ability.  I found the perfect recipe, Blackberry Pie Bars from The Novice Chef.  Oh my, these were delicious and super easy to make.  Sorry for the not so great pictures.  I just got a new lens that I was playing with and my food photography skills are lacking.  Check out the link for great pictures.  Also, really load the bar up with fruit.  I didn’t have quite enough to evenly spread out the blackberries.  This also would be good with all kinds of fruit.  The original recipe called for it to be mixed in a food processor but I found the volume was too much for mine so I mixed by hand with a pastry mixer.  This was a big, big hit in our house.

Seriously, load up with berries.  I didn’t actually measure mine out but I used all that I bought.

 

Monticello and Charlottesville

My current company offers a pretty healthy vacation plan and for the first part of the year I was working a lot, which has left me quite a few days to take off before the fiscal year starts over at the end of September.  So currently I am in the midst of an eight day staycation.  We didn’t really want to go on an overnight trip so we checked our list out for a day trip and decided to trek down to Charlottesville and visit Monticello.

Monticello is located in Charlottesville, Virginia about 2 and 1/2 hours south of D.C.  We had a slightly longer pit stop on the way down then expected (some one had his first car sickness experience).  We arrived around 11am and got our tickets.  $25 per adult, kids under 5 are free.  They have a museum, cafe, and gift shop at the bottom of the hill where you buy tickets and the parking lots are.  It is about 0.6 mile walk up to the top of the hill where the house and gardens sit.  There are shuttle buses that take you up as well.  It is a timed tour of the house, our time was at 12:45.  So we had an hour and a half to explore.

The basement had various cellars and an interactive exhibit where kids could pick up old cast irons, ring a bell, use a dumb waiter and open a door with a skeleton key.  Eilam loved this part and kept calling the house a castle.  We walked around the gardens and property.  It was a beautiful setting on top of a hill.

The details of a blooming artichoke.

After a snack of kettle corn and root beer it was time for our guided house tour.  The entire tour took about 40 minutes.  The tour guide was very informative and knowledgeable.  It was a little long for Eilam, especially at that time of day.  The house was beautiful and we commented that Thomas Jefferson was just a tad wealthy.  No photography allowed inside unfortunately.  We walked down the hill after the tour past his grave and the cemetery.

Back at the car everyone was ready for some lunch, so we headed into Charlottesville and ate at South Street Brewery.  It was a really neat setting in a remodeled warehouse.  The food and beer was really good.  They had a great kids menu and Eilam devoured his lunch.  After lunch, we headed to the University of Virginia campus to walk around.  Thomas Jefferson founded the University in 1819.  It is a beautiful, historic campus with brick buildings and while columns.

After exploring the campus we started to head home.  We took a slight detour to visit Prince Michel winery.  It was on top of a hill overlooking the whole Charlottesville area.  There was also a little gift shop and fruit and vegetable stand.  The setting was beautiful, the wine was ok.  It took us almost 3 hours to get home that evening but it was a great day of getting out of the city and exploring a place we have never been.

 

 

A Rainy Fourth of July

Here in the D.C. area we had quite a cool, cloudy Fourth of July.  Our apartment complex was having an evening catered bbq and then we could watch the fireworks from the roof.  They day before we bought tickets to the Nationals vs. Brewers baseball game.  It was an early game, starting at 11am.  We “splurged” on Stubhub and got lower level tickets right at the first base line.

It was really perfect weather to watch the game.  Around 70 degrees, cloudy, not humid.  The Nationals lost but it was a fun day.  There is a great play structure for kids there.  Kids are allowed in to play for 15 minutes and then next group goes in.  There were slides, tunnels, rope ladders, and bridges.  It was a great stop before the game.

It started raining around the 8th inning, so we headed back to the metro stop.  The stadium is right at the Navy Yard Metro stop on the Green line.  The trains get very packed around game time.  There are parking garages and random parking lots around that area as well.

Heading to the game with baby leopard.

Walking from the metro after the game.

The b-b-q was moved indoors that evening because of the rain.  Crystal City Sports Bar catered and it was delicious (pulled pork, ribs, chicken, coleslaw, cornbread).  If you are staying in the Crystal City area of Arlington, I would suggest the Crystal City Sports Bar located on 23rd Street for food.  The fireworks that night were a bust.  We couldn’t see anything from our roof because of the clouds.  We came back downstairs to watch them on TV and realized that PBS was not playing current footage.  Co-workers were down at the Capital and they couldn’t see the Washington Monument.  Overall, it was a fun day though it ended with a little disappointment, especially since Eilam was very excited to watch them.

 

Williamsburg Part 2

Saturday our plan was to visit Colonial Williamsburg.  We parked at the Visitor Center and bought our tickets via one of the machines.  The regular purchasing lines were quite long.  No line for the online/pre-purchased or the automated machines.  Eilam was free again which was nice.  We walked from the Visitor Center to the Colonial area stopping at the Great Hopes Plantation.

We arrived at the Revolutionary City at the perfect time for the Governor’s Palace tour.  Eilam did pretty good throughout.  We had a guided tour of the Palace that ended in the gardens where we wandered through the maze.  The Palace was an interesting place to visit.  The tour guide could have been better.  It could have just been an off day but she wasn’t remembering names and got lost in her words a lot.

After the tour we wandered around the city for a while and visited the various shops and city sites.  The Capitol was a guided tour but we didn’t last long.  A certain 3 year old was getting hungry and tired.  We did visit the jail which held Blackbeard at one point.  Can you see a theme for our weekend?  Around midday we left for lunch which we had at a sports bar next to our hotel which was really good and again really well priced.  After nap time, I wanted to go back to the Colonial area to finish checking out the various shops (which included the Apothecary).  Brian and Eilam obliged even though I think they were both done for the day.  I got to see the Apothecary with the GIANT mortar and pestle.

We spent the rest of the evening back at the hotel but had Chinese food across the street for dinner.  Eilam was tired, so it was a low key evening.  He loved his lo mein though and sucked those long noodles down.

The next morning we had a relaxing hour or so.  On our way out of town we went back to the park for him to run around at.  Then we stopped at the outlet mall for a short while before hitting the road.  We drove through Richmond on our way back and stopped at a brewery for lunch.  Richmond looked like a nice city to visit, right on the water and it looked like there was a lot to do for a weekend.  Overall, it was a really nice weekend.  We had a lot of fun family activities and there is so much to do in that area.  We absolutely loved the setting and we had perfect weather.

A super brave mountain climber

Showing off his pirate gear on our pirate themed weekend.

 

 

Weekend in Williamsburg Part 1

This past weekend we took a trip down to Williamsburg to see the Colonial settlements.  Williamsburg about 2 & 1/2 hours southeast of D.C.  On a Friday morning there was minimal traffic.  Our first stop was Jamestown Settlement.  There are two Jamestown sites, Historic Jamestowne which is the archaeological site at the original settlement and then the Jamestown Settlement which is a museum and has a recreated fort, Indian village and replicas of the three ships that sailed from England to the Americas in 1607.

Courtyard at Jamestown Settlement

We decided on just visiting the Jamestown Settlement because of the ships and replica villages.  It seemed more age appropriate for a 3 year old.  Eilam loved it here because of the ships.  As most kids his age, he is a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse fanatic.  One of his favorite episodes is Mickey’s Pirate Adventure which features a pirate ship named the Jolly Golly that looks remarkably like one of the replica ships.  We toured them all multiple times.  Eventually we drugged him away from that and walked through the museums.  They had a great kids activity to explore one of the sections.  Each kid got a card and when they completed an activity they would get a stamp.  He got to load up packages into a canoe and then climb in and row.  There was also a puzzle to learn various Powhatan words.  Overall, it was a really nice place to visit.  We were there almost 2 hours.  Tickets were $17/adult, $8/youth, under 6 free.

Playing games in a Powhatan village

The Jolly Golly

Showing off his super strong muscles

We left Jamestown and checked into our hotel.  We stayed at the Doubletree in Williamsburg.  It would be a really great location for going to Busch Gardens or the water park.  They were both right down the road.  It was a 10 minute drive to the Colonial area.  Other then just one elevator working, it was a nice place to stay.

The morning drive was rainy but by the time we got to Jamestown it was just overcast.  The temperature was quite nice though.  We took a nap after checking in and when we got up it was sunny and beautiful out.  We thought it could be fun to go miniature golfing and found Pirate Cove Adventure Golf.  Eilam had an absolute blast, well we all did.  It was so funny to watch him play.  Some holes he did quite well, others not so much.  Alas, I guess that is the way golf goes.  They gave out little pirate goody bags to the children.  Eilam got an eye patch, noise maker, pirate flag, ring, tattoo and spinning top.

Hopefully it curves!

After golfing, we found a Mexican restaurant and sat outside to eat.  La Terraza was a great find.  The food was flavorful and the beer was cheap.

After dinner, we went to Mid County Park which has a giant play structure.  It was a great place to let Eilam run around and play.  There were multiple slides, ramps, walls to climb and another Jolly Golly.  It was a great pirate adventure day for Eilam.

Dupont Kalorama Museum Walk

Two weeks ago the Dupont Kalorama Museum Consortium held their 33rd annual Walk Weekend.  There is free admission to six museums in the Dupont Circle area of D.C.  The six museums are Anderson House, Wilson House, Dumbartan House, Heurich House, The Phillips Collection and The National Museum of American Jewish Military History.  Each museum had special family programming for the weekend.

We went on the Saturday and took the metro getting off at Dupont Circle (red line).  The first stop for us was the Anderson House.

It was a beautiful house and museum.  Brian and I felt like we were in a mini-Versailles in parts of it.  Eilam walked around and liked making loud slapping noises with his feet on the marble floors.  He had learned about tapestries watching the show Little Einsteins.  I was able to point out real tapestries and we talked about the pictures and scenes.  Overall, it was a really majestic place but I wouldn’t say it is very family friendly.

Our next stop was The Phillips Collection.  This museum had some great special kids activities for the weekend.  There was painting and making your own maraca but the real treat was the instrument petting zoo.  They had a trombone, french horn, flute, clarinet, trumpet and much more for the kids to play.  Eilam was so excited for this.  Once he went around the room a few times and relaxed, it was hard to get him away from there.  He actually was able to produce sound out of a few of the instruments.  His Little Einstein obsession made this a great, great stop.  After a long time we finally pulled him away for lunch.  There were many tears leaving the museum because he wanted to keep playing.  We didn’t get a chance to visit any of the other exhibits because the instruments had such appeal.  I plan on revisiting it in the future.

Pure amazement

After having an excellent brunch nearby at Scion we walked to our last museum Heurich House, or the Brewmaster’s Castle.  Very old and very ornate.  There were yard games in the backyard.  Again, not a kid friendly place to visit.  Once done there we headed back to the metro to head home.

Overall, this was a great event weekend and all three of us enjoyed ourselves.  I highly recommend anyone in the area attending future walks.

Animal Kingdom Lodge

When we decided to go to Disneyworld, we knew we were going to stay on property to utilize the shuttle services and we wouldn’t have to worry about renting a car or parking.  The resort that quickly went to the top of our list was the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  This is considered one of their deluxe properties and the rooms were more expensive then we have ever spent on a hotel.  We wanted the Disney experience and to look out from our room and balcony over one of their four savannas and watch the giraffes, zebras, antelope, etc.  We ended up reserving a savanna view room with a bunk bed.

Check in was 3pm and they made us wait until exactly 3pm for our room to be available.  With our flights and taking the Magical Express we actually got to the hotel around 1pm.  So we had awhile of wondering around, getting lunch at the quick service restaurant by the pool and walking over to the Kidani Village lodge.  With Disney’s Magic Bands, we got a text message when our room was ready with the room number.  No keys are necessary as the Band serves as the key.

The rooms are all decorated with African décor.  Ours was on the dark side, dark walls, bedding, etc.  There was a refrigerator and coffee maker in the room, which was great.  We ordered groceries ahead of time from Garden Grocer.  You select a time frame for delivery and they deliver the groceries to the concierge.  We were able to get milk, string cheese, chips, salsa, and beer.  There was a minimum purchase of $40 and a delivery fee of $14.  We thought it was definitely worth it.  We didn’t have to taxi or Uber to the grocery store.

Eilam absolutely loved the bunk bed and by the end of the trip he was sleeping on the top bunk.  We had a queen bed.  The rooms were on the small size, but bigger then Atlantis.  Eilam didn’t refer to it as a closet, so that was good.

We looked out over the Arusha Savannah.  Each savanna has giraffes and then various other animals.  We would return to the room midday for a nap which ended up corresponding to the animals feeding time right outside of our room.  So as Eilam napped, Brian and I would snack and relax on the balcony watching them all.  It was really nice and a very cool experience.

One night we ate at the buffet, Boma, at the Lodge.  All the restaurants are African themed.  The food was absolutely fantastic.  I don’t believe I have ever tasted so many different and exotic flavors.  There were multiple soups, salads, meats, side dishes.  They also had some plain American dishes as well.  So while Eilam filled up on pasta and grapes, we stuffed ourselves with lamb stew, chicken curry soup, beef sirloin and salmon.   We highly recommend the buffet.  It was pricey though.

The biggest negative about the Lodge would probably be the location.  While next to Animal Kingdom, it is the furthest away from the Magic Kingdom and Disney Springs.  So waiting on the shuttle buses and then riding the buses, could take a long time.  The morning we visited Hollywood Studios, we ended up taking a taxi because the shuttle bus time kept getting pushed back and there were so many people waiting, there was no way everybody was going to get on.  I believe the taxi cost $13.

Overall, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge is a beautiful property.  Watching the animals was an amazing experience.  The food and atmosphere was fantastic.  However, with all that we decided that we wouldn’t stay there again.  The location is just too far away.  Maybe if the Disney shuttles ran more efficiently it would be different but it was very time consuming to go back and forth.  Also, the cost is too high.  I know you pay a premium to be on property and at a Deluxe resort.  The rooms are just not that high of quality to charge what they do.  For the quality of the room, the rate should be half what it was.  We are very glad we stayed there but in the future we would choose a moderate resort closer to more of the parks.

Eilam’s Epigrams

I haven’t posted anything for a while on here.  Life has been busy.  My parents came for a wonderful visit for a week in April.  Then I was working A LOT before a family vacation to Walt Disney World!  We had a great trip and I will get around to posting how it went with a 3 year old later.

Right now I wanted to share some of Eilam’s musings from our trip.  I really do not know where he gets some of these things.  This post is mainly for me to document what our three year old is talking about.

“I’ve had a long day.” 

 -This was a common one on travel days (which were long) and if he was not getting his way.

“You tricked me!”

-No idea where this came from but he doesn’t even say it when we actually trick him.

“Can I pick something out?”

-This was a favorite of his towards the end of the day.  He would be carried on daddy’s shoulders and would be tired.  Eilam would sheepishly ask if he could pick something out.

“Uggg, I don’t know what is going on.”

-Again, do not know where he got this.  Usually this saying comes out after he has dropped something or we are switching from one activity to another.  I think this one is my favorite.  The way he says it cracks me up.

Making silly faces with Panda while in Germany (Epcot World Showcase)