I am thankful for sweet friends that we could take with us to see “Beauty and The Beast” at Casa Manana!

I am thankful for our friends who drove in to spend the day with us at the zoo. The girls are all finally big enough that we made it through the entire zoo!!

We spent another day with Eddie, Kim and the girls laughing and having a great time sightseeing. We went to lunch, then the postal museum and the Natural History Museum.

We took a bus ride to the future.

This dude creeped Dani out so much.

The girls got a kick out of this because it just kept taking photos and we got a lot of funny ones.. After this the Baker’s needed to head for home, but we were so happy with the great 2 days we had together.

After this we headed back to the condo because it was time to pack up and prepare for our two day drive home. We are so grateful to my friend Caitlin for sharing her place with us while she was gone. We had the most wonderful trip to DC because we had a “home” to return to each night instead of a hotel for weeks.

Here is the link to the whole album because we had so many photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dwimble/albums/72157663565207827

We were SO EXCITED to start Day 10 by meeting up with Eddie, Kim and the girls who had driven in from West Virginia.  It had been since 2013 that we saw them. We started out by eating tasty food and then over to the National Cathedral. We went on a wonderful tour and it wasn’t too crowded which was nice.

I don’t remember seeing this part of the Cathedral the last time we visited. This room of mosaics was amazing.

Mike captured this great photo of Dani.

Cousins having fun! We had a wonderful day.

Our big adventure of the day was to see the “National Museum of the American Indian.” The architecture and decor of this place is absolutely amazing. We had also heard that the cafeteria was one of the best places to eat on the Mall and we were not disappointed.

We returned to the condo to rest, have dinner and of course night swimming!!

Day 8 – We hopped on the bus and headed for a game store Mike read about online called Labyrinth. It was a super cool place and we got the girls some fun stuff.

Working on tiny legos.

And of course there was more swimming on the rooftop and a photo of the Washington Monument.

On day 6 we hopped in the car and headed for Maryland to meet up with an online friend and her family. Kathy and I have “known” each other online for about a decade, so it was a treat to get our families together.

First we went to a cute little aquarium.

Then the girls rode the carousel and played in the park.

We finished our day together with a tasty meal at a place called Passion Fin.

It is sobering to look at this and consider the part it played in history and WWII.

After the annex we headed to eat at a tasty place called Ted’s Bulletin.  It was such a nice visit. I can’t believe how long it had been since we had seen each other.

Sweet sisters.

View from the rooftop pool area. So cool!

We had hundreds of photos from the annex that you can check out here:

https://flic.kr/s/aHskAMge4B

This sparked such a great discussion with us and the girls.

Once again after a long day of sightseeing, we grabbed food and headed to the rooftop pool area. I told them to all pretend we were having a terrible time!

We spent the whole day at the DC Zoo, but #1 for Miss Dani was seeing the Pandas!

So the orangutans can climb across these ropes over the heads of the visitors! It was really fun to watch. I am kind of obsessed with them and this was so entertaining.

For dinner we headed down to grab some food at the grocery store near the navy yard. Then back to Caitlin’s to swim at night.