Life as of Lately

Just some random pictures.

A few weeks ago we drove up to D.C. and got a car for Dallas. It's been 2 1/2 years since we've each had a car and it is heavenly. On the way back, we stopped for lunch. Oaklie's lunch mostly consisted of ketchup packets. We're terrible parents.

A couple days later we took the BMW for a spin. (Lest you think we are snobbish it's a 2003, but we really like it). There are a bunch of plantations about half and hour from us so we went and drove the grounds. 

It's hard to read but it says the plantation ground were the site of the first Thanksgiving and the house is the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, the 9th US President and Benjamin Harrison V, signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

The carriage road.

A couple shots of our drive to D.C.

Oaklie ate the glitter glue at preschool on Tuesday. She is quite the kid!

This picture is proof that my hair is growing...be it ever so slowly...

This is kind of a side-note but if you are like me and so white that the whitest foundation at Walmart is too dark, you should try Mary-Kay foundation. I got some the other day and it is awesome. No more orange!

The girls were playing dress-up today. Maya brought me this dress and said, "Will you help me get this married dress on?" I got a little weepy thinking about helping her get ready on her wedding day. She's not going to be my little girl forever...sob...

Then little sis burst in looking like this...

"Ta-Da!" It's good to be TWO!

Amaya also promised me that when she gets married one day she is going to wear that exact dress. I think I will hold her to it!

President's Day

 We started the day off with a driving tour of the city. The Peterson's were great tour guides!

Washington Monument

Capitol Building

The Supreme Court is under construction so they had this big picture in front of it!

Oaklie really enjoyed the tour.

So did Amaya. She played on my iPad.

Smithsonian Art Museum

Ford's Theatre where President Lincoln was assassinated. I didn't realize it was right in the heart of DC!

Right after we took this picture my camera died. Lovely.

The rest of these were taken with my foggy iPad. It usually takes really good pictures but it was so humid and cold that day it fogged up the lens. 

IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER.

I love Abraham Lincoln!

It looks like I took a bunch of faux-1970s hipster pictures, huh? I'm thinking about opening my own business.

I'm so sad because this is such a cute picture!

Lincoln Memorial

Vietnam War Memorial. 

Every name represents a soldier killed in the Vietnam War.

We visited some of the Smithsonian Museum. Oaklie wanted to see a lion and Amaya wanted to see a hippo.

haha I love this picture because it reminds me of SISTERS.

Also, we got to see the Hope Diamond which was really cool! Turns out that old lady didn't throw it into the ocean in Titanic after all.

 

Oaklie's favorite part of the day was walking along the bushes that has dozens of little birds in them. "Budies! Teet-teet!" They always flew away right as she got close to them.

This is the lap desk that Thomas Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence on.

We all tried our hand at looking like the American president.

Thank you President and Sister Peterson for a great trip! I want to be just like Sister Peterson when I grow up :) They are turning in their mission papers soon and we are excited to find out where they are going!

Mount Vernon and Gettysburg

Friday after we visited Arlington, we skipped over to Alexandria and toured the house and grounds of George Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon. It's located on the banks of the Potomac River and is so beautiful! We were lucky that we went on Friday and only had a short wait. We weren't able to take pictures inside, but the house is beautiful. 

This is the view from the back patio. Beautiful!

We did A LOT of walking on Friday. Oaklie was dragging along but wouldn't let me carry her. I asked her if she was tired and she kicked one foot up and said, "My toesies are tired." She is such a ham!

A statue from inside the museum.

This quote is for my dad!

Here are some of the gorgeous views of the river we saw on our drive back to Leesburg.

Saturday was rainy and cold, so we decided to do some sightseeing from our car and headed a couple hours up north to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The battleground there is huge! Over three days of fighting, roughly 53,000 soldiers were killed. It was hard to picture such beautiful ground literally bathed in blood. 

There were many, many different memorials there. One for each state and one for each battalion that fought in Gettysburg. Here is Virginia's monument. Our current "adopted" state :)

We climbed up a large tower to see a 360 degree view of the battlefield. I'm more than a little scared of heights, but Amaya held my hand the whole way :)

Views from the top.

Love my hair in this picture!

Of course Oaklie, our little daredevil, wanted to lean over the edge

We also got a quick peek at the Gettysburg Cemetery where many of the soldiers who died at Gettysburg were buried. This was the location of President Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address.

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln