saturday outing part 2: yards park + navy museum

After visiting the National Gallery of Art, we headed to Yards Park and met Ben's parents there for a picnic. No swimming suits like our last visit, but it was a pretty warm winter afternoon and the kids still loved running around the fountains.

Poor Amelia wasn't feeling too well but she toughed it out.

We also made a visit to the nearby U.S. Navy Museum. Our last visit involved baby zombies and bloodied faces so it was a much different experience this time around. The museum is really interesting and has some amazing model ships and old naval artifacts. The kids liked climbing on the gun seats.

saturday outing part 1: Lichtenstein

The National Gallery of Art had a huge Roy Lichtenstein exhibit that was about to close so we made our way there a few weekends ago. The exhibit was much larger than I had anticipated and it was interesting to see such a variety of his work. There were, of course, his classic early pop paintings but I really enjoyed seeing some of his later series, including the Brushstroke series and the landscapes in the Chinese style (no photos were allowed inside the exhibit).

The I.M. Pei glass pyramids are always a fun place to play.

Elsa got mad about something. (And when are those bangs going to grow out?)

new year's day

Our new year started with warm chocolate croissants and hot chocolate. We spent the afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa Black in Maryland. We had lunch at their place and then went to a fun playground nearby (Adventure Playground). It was chilly but the kids didn't mind and it also kept the crowds away. Oliver has serious playground radar when we're driving around. He can spot every playground and gets so excited. As we pulled into this one, he couldn't contain his excitement and started screaming "playground!" "playground!" and made a run for it as soon as he was out of the car. After wearing out the kids, we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's place for snacks, games, and a movie.

new year's hike

We have a tradition of doing a hike every New Year's Day. The weather was looking iffy so we decided to hike on New Year's Eve. Winter hiking is great because we usually have the trail to ourselves. We went to Turkey Run off the George Washington Parkway where we've hiked a few times before. There is a perfect size hike for kids. Although Elsa was having so much fun that she declared it to be too short when we neared the end. You have to navigate rocks to cross a stream a few times which the girls loved. Amelia is our little adventurer and loved climbing on the rocks and running ahead to check things out.

 The rest of our evening was pretty low key. We played some games, ate lots of food, and watched a movie. Amelia stayed up until midnight for the first time and was pretty proud of herself.