Days 30 to 33 - Creation Museum part 1

The last stop on our trip was to the Creation Museum.  We started out the morning by heading to the petting zoo before it got too hot. 

 

Feeding the alpacas....

 

Josie's expressions crack me up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The z-donk and zorse.

 

 

 

 

 

The camel was nibbling on Brielle's shoulder.

 

 

Josie was not too fond of the camel.

 

 

 

Brielle is the animal lover in our family.

 

 

Apparently there were a bunch of smudges on the camera lens, sorry!  Lots of alpaca slimmed fingers that morning. 

 

 

 



Days 28 and 29 - Pittsburgh and Ben's birthday

Sunday we headed towards Pittsburgh to visit with Brett's sister.  We decided to try to avoid the toll road and save some money while getting there.  Bad idea.  We ended up on a beautiful scenic drive that was very, very, very hilly.  Not a good idea when pulling a 32' travel trailer with a 12 passenger van.  Brett had the gas floored on some of the hills and we started getting a bit anxious as we watched the speedometer drop lower and lower as we went up.  One hill we were down to 35 mph when we finally hit the top.  It took us twice as long to get to our destination and cost us an extra gas fill up which defeated the purpose of skipping the toll road.  Then, we punched in directions to a restaurant to meet Brett's sister at for dinner and somehow ended up down in West Virginia.  It was definitely one of those days that you just want it to end as soon as possible.  We finally pulled over to get dinner for our starving kids at 7:00, drove a bit further back towards Pittsburgh and found a WalMart to spend the night at. 

 

Brett's sister met us for breakfast in the morning instead.  We were going to be headed towards Cincinnati to go to the Creation Museum the next day and she decided that she would run home and pack and come down with us.  Fun!  The kids were thrilled about this, they love their auntie. 

 

The short drive went much better today.  We made it to the campground, Brett's sister arrived shortly after us, and we were all able to have dinner together and celebrate Ben's 4th birthday. 
 

 
 

Ben's second favorite thing in the world (the first being cars) is Kipper. 

 

 

I forgot to pack some candles, so he got matches to blow out this year.

Days 25 to 27 - Picnic

On Thursday we headed out of D.C. to Lancaster, PA.  We checked into our campground and spent some time swimming in the pool.  We headed out to the town of Intercourse on Friday to look at all of the shops.  Brett recently sold his IT business in order to start up a furniture building business.  He wanted to get a closer look at some Amish tables.  :)

 

We stopped into a pretzel factory while there and the kids all got to try their hand at hand twisting some pretzels. 
 

 

Then, it was back to the campground for some more swimming.

 

Saturday was the Big Families and Friends Picnic.  It was wonderful to get to finally meet some women that I have talked to online with for years, many of whom are also adoptive parents to special needs children.  The kids had a ton of fun playing with all of the other children that were there. 

 

 



 

It was a chilly day, but the sun did come out and warm things up every now and again. 

 

 

 

 

We have been home for a week now and I am still trying to finish up these posts.  :)  Life has been busy and this trip showed us many things we need to work on within our family.  It was a huge blessing to us.  If you ever get the chance to step away from your normal everyday life for a larger chunk of time, do it!

Riah

While we were on the trip, Riah started to nod her head every time we asked her a question.  (She will shake her head no every once in a while too.)  It was pretty cute.  Here she is sitting in a pizza box in a Laundromat parking lot.  (I still have no idea how to rotate videos....)

 

Days 19 to 24 - Washington D.C.

After leaving FL, we headed up the east coast.  We spent Thursday night sleeping at a rest stop and then started driving right away again the next morning. 





We made it to our campground in D.C. by Friday evening.  Campgrounds around D.C. are EXPENSIVE, so we stayed at Greenbelt National Park.  Graham has an America the Beautiful Access Pass that allowed us to camp for just $8 a night.  :) 
 

 

We spent 5 days in D.C.  We had a chance to see the Washington Monument, Capital Building, Lincoln Memorial, and some museums.  We did a bit of walking on the mall and a lot of walking in the national forest that we camped in.  


















We visited Arlington National Cemetery and watched the changing of the guards. 

 

 

We spent a day visiting the National Zoo where we got to see some baby spectacle bears and the pandas.

 

We finally got to do some campfire cooking and make some smores (none of the campgrounds in Florida seemed to have fire rings).  We also found about a dozen ticks, yuck!

Overall, we loved camping in D.C., no hookups, but it felt like real camping finally.  We liked the things we did end up seeing in D.C., but the traffic and parking got very frustrating very quickly.  We definitely appreciate our quiet country life!

 

 

 

 A certain little two year old got a hold of some nail polish......  How these little brains work and what would ever possess her to pour nail polish on her own head, plus her brother's and sister's heads, I will never know.

I forgot to take a photo of the other two.

 

By the way, baby oil and a fine tooth comb works pretty good to remove nail polish from hair.

 

Day 18 Part 2 - Jacksonville

After spending the morning at Fort Matanzas we headed up to Jacksonville to go to the Museum of Science and History.  There were tons of hands on exhibits here and the kids loved it. 

 

The body exhibit was interesting.  There was even a video playing of a knee replacement surgery which was neat to see since the kids' grandpa went through that recently.  They were able to see exactly what the doctors were doing to grandpa's knees. 

 

We also enjoyed all of the animals and the life-sized model of a whale.