Photo shoot at Meridian Hill Park

We had so much fun discovering Meridian Hill Park in D.C. on Saturday. We had a picnic and then explored. It's this beautiful park built on a hill with great architectural elements, interesting history, and nice fountains. (Nerdy fact: it was the first place to use rough aggregate concrete way back in the 1910s.) It's a lovely place to sit in the shade and do some people-watching. It just doesn't feel like you're in D.C. when you're walking through this park. I might have taken a few photos. Or hundreds. Our trip turned into a spontaneous photo shoot and I got carried away experimenting with my new lens. I'm excited to go back for more.

Amelia loved striking a pose for the camera.

wearing down.

Peter and the Wolf

I loved listening to Peter and the Wolf when I was a kid so I immediately fell in love with this build-your-own paper puppet theater from Sarah Jane Studios. This was the perfect project for our musical instrument theme week. I made most of the puppet theater since it involved a lot of intricate cutting and Amelia and Elsa had fun performing the show. Oliver was an attentive spectator. They loved listening for the different instruments in the music (with the french horns representing the wolf AND Scott Farkus).

We finished off our week with a living room marching band tribute to John Philip Sousa and the discovery of this crazy YouTube video. We also watched Fantasia, The Music Man, and Mary Poppins.

Spanish Steps and other discoveries.

I feel like we have spent a decent amount of time walking the streets of D.C. And yet, we keep discovering new areas and I'm starting to think we've barely covered any ground. For our date Thursday night we went to Dupont Circle and enjoyed some al fresco dining at the Kramerbooks cafe. We decided to walk around the area a bit and were happy to stumble upon Larry's Ice Cream. None of that frozen yogurt stuff...just real, fatty, creamy ice cream. We spent over an hour walking from Dupont Circle to the Kalorama neighborhood. Did you know D.C. has Spanish Steps? Not quite like the Rome variety (not enough men hitting on ladies for one thing) but a nice quiet spot. I love wandering around and finding obscure embassies, random busts of historic figures, and huge statues of Gandhi. And a neighborhood project to restore old fire call boxes.

Instrumental field trip.

We ventured downtown Tuesday evening to go to the American History Museum, which is open until 7:30 in the summer! In keeping with our theme for the week, we wanted to see the musical instruments exhibit. I love having access to so many amazing free museums that we can pop into even for a short time. We had enough time to wander through the transportation exhibit and check out a great new temporary exhibit, For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.

Our next stop was the Capitol to see the Air Force Band perform an outdoor concert. The girls loved dancing to the music and checking out all the different instruments. You can catch one of the military bands doing a concert somewhere in D.C. almost every night in the summer. You can find the summer concert schedule HERE.

Cute even when he's bored.

 

 

Theme Week #2: Musical Instruments

Our theme week started with a trip to the library to find books and dvds about musical instruments. (Carnival of the Animals by Saint Saens has been a favorite so far.) Amelia was thrilled to discover that there were several instrument fairy books in the Rainbow Magic book series. We have already maxed out the 50 item limit at the library. We stopped at Krispy Kreme to pick up the free donuts from the summer reading program.

Stay TUNED for more instrument-related posts. (We've also been working on our musical instrument humor.)

Great Waves

Last Friday was hot hot hot. We headed to Great Waves which is only about 5 minutes from our house. I think we need to head here more often. Everyone had a great time. Elsa cried when the waterpark closed. I didn't really want to leave the water either.

the boys.