Central Coast Visit

Thanksgiving vacation was spent on the Central Coast with Dave's family.  In June we won a nights stay and dinner in Cambria so we stayed the first night there.  Our hotel was right on the ocean front and the boys loved exploring a new place.  Well, Garrett did anyway.  Gannon was not a fan of walking right by the ocean and on the rocks.  Garrett and I LOVED it, there were tons of sea creatures to check out.  We saw 7 star fish, sea otters, and lots of anemone. 

 

After our night there we headed to Shell Beach to hang out with Aunt Shannon.  She is always tons of fun for the boys and a break for us!  Feeding animals with Karley is always a favorite of the trip too.  Dave and I were able to do some Black Friday shopping (on Thanksgiving) in a nice area with respectful people, unlike Merced!!! We don't get to shop very often together without the boys so it was a fun time!

 

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum is another museum that I remembered being awesome from my trip in junior high.  It still is!  We could have stayed here for hours, but Dave had us do a one hour or less run through so that we could see another museum.  The boys love all the space stuff and exhibits on airplanes.  Garrett loves all the exhibits on planets and Gannon could stay in the airplane section for hours.  There was an exhibit for the Space Station Hubble which was awesome to see since we had just watched the documentary on it in Kentucky.  Fun to know the story behind it then actually see it.  Okay, I guess I like history a little bit. 

 

Eating, Sleeping, and Homework

Here are a few pictures of the boys during the trip.  Gannon loved sleeping with his brother because he loves to snuggle right next to someone when he sleeps.  Not so sure Garrett loved being pushed to the edge of the bed every night, he was happy to be home in his own bed ALONE!

 

We ate LOTS of Subway sandwiches along the way because it was easy, familiar, and inexpensive!  We also ate lots of yummy breakfast at the hotels and dinners with the big kids.

 

We applied for Independent Studies for Garrett to miss school so he had a packet of work to complete during the trip and had to do a journal each day.  In order to keep myself and him from going crazy I tried to get him to do a few pages here and there.  In the airports during layover he did homework, at the hotel before dinner he did homework, and even on the plane he did homework!  Lots and lots of work and thank goodness he loves school work so it wasn't too bad. Gannon even wanted to join him most of the time.

 

 

 

Newseum

The Newseum is another really cool museum all about news.  It is also another museum that you could spends hours reading about all the history on the news, but with two little boys you do a quick fly by read of everything!  They had a section of the Berlin wall, the Unibomber's shed, articles recovered from the Twin Towers, and lots of newspaper articles.  Toward the end they had a big area for the kids to play around and test their knowledge of various things.  You could also record yourself as a broadcaster, which they boys both LOVED.

 

Capital Tour

Dave had contacted our local congressmen for a Capital Tour through his office.  We got to go from the office through an underground tunnel to the visitors center.  We were then guided through the Capital and told little bits of history.  I'm not a big history buff, but it was a cool tour.

 

Alexandria and Ghost Tour

Our hotel was in Alexandria, Virginia and honestly I think I could have stayed in Alexandria for the entire trip!  It is so cute and has tons of great shopping all on one street.  There is a trolley that runs the entire main street, King Street, which is where are hotel was.  So from the hotel to down by the water you can hop on and off whenever you need to.  The shopping ranges from inexpensive stores like Ross all the way to cute boutique shops for the entire family.  We checked out a cute toy store much like the one in San Luis Obispo and I wish I had had more time to shop. 

 

After having lunch with Bud and Jo we were walking them back toward their car and found a local park.  You can tell the theft level and poverty level is not high by the look of the park.  The neighborhood drop off old outdoor toys and others simply leaves their children's toys to play with on their next visit.  This would NEVER happen at a park in Merced.  Everything would be stolen!  Makes me sad that we live in a place that is like this. 

 

We went with all the high school kids on a night Ghost Tour of Old Alexandria.  Our story teller was very good and made me even more sad that we couldn't visit some of the places he talked about during the day.  It was a fun night of ghost stories and a quick walk back to our hotel.  Alexandria is a great little place and I would LOVE to go back and just hangout there.