An All American Visit

So....I kind of quit blogging there for a while, but I'm back and committed to attempting to get things updated at least once a week.  Starting where I left off...which was our really fun visit to the US over the summer! First stop: Alexandria, VA and the DC area to visit Kate, Andy and Cora! It was hot, so they had the blow up swimming pool ready for lots of summer time action.

We were so happy to finally see where the Hoefers live and to be able to snuggle up all together with Cora on their couch!  Just before we arrived, there had been really big storms, which knocked out a lot of the electricity in and around DC, so we were feeling grateful for the fact that there was not only electricity at Kate and Andy's, but also at the hotel where we were staying.  After we got through the inevitable obscenely early waking of phase of life (jet lag with kids), staying in a hotel was really fun and the girls enjoyed going down for breakfast and picking out what they wanted every morning.

On the Fourth of July, Andy made sure we had a truly American experience and we all headed to see the Washington Nationals play.  It was the girls' first baseball game and they were excited (or as excited as young children who don't know what baseball is actually can be). 

The Metro was super air conditioned. London, take note!

Baseball hats were all the rage:

And luckily we had great seats in the SHADE! 

Evie and Mille are American hot dog fans!

Cora was happy to show them the ropes and how to be an All American Girl!

After the baseball, we headed back for a fun evening of eating too much delicious food and fireworks from the steps of the Mason's temple in Alexandria.  We could see all the fireworks going off all around the city. And since we didn't go to bed until about 11, we actually slept past 5am!  Bonus!

After growing up in the heat of the deep south, I never thought I could be such a wimp about heat, but when we decided it would be a good idea to walk through Arlington Cemetery and around all the monuments in 100+ degree weather, I think I was definitely the whiniest of all.  IT WAS SO HOT.  It's definitely hotter these days than it was when I was a kid and I'm not used to it anymore and with jet lag...it was hell.  And poor Millie nearly melted in her stroller.  Still, we persevered! But not without a lot of bellyaching (mine, mostly).  Here we are, sweating to death on the bridge that goes over the Potomac.

And here we are dying of heat stroke in front of some monument.

And next to the tidal basin near the Martin Luther King Monument (which I didn't take a picture of for some reason!!!! AARGH!), which might look cool and shady in this picture, but really, really wasn't.

 

We pretty much had blisters on our bottoms after posing for this nice picture on the banks of the tidal basin:

Finally, some relief outside of the Lincoln Memorial!! 

After spending a good forty five minutes basking in the air conditioned ranger's hut and refilling our water bottles several times, we decided to throw in the towel (I think our original plan had been to end up at a museum, but since we were slowly wilting we decided to skip that). But before we went home, the girls had a play in the shade of a big tree near the Washington Monument.  It was very hard to leave the shade off that tree...

But we rewarded ourselves with some delicious and refreshing popsicles on the way home and sensibly stayed indoors and in the hotel pool for the rest of the visit!