Our 1st Adventure in DC

At the end of October, we made our first trip up to the Washington DC temple. It's a new experience being 3 1/2 hours away from the temple so we made a weekend out of our first trip. We thought that it would be necessary since we were taking both boys along for the ride. Right after Chris got home from work on Friday, we hopped in the car and were off. The boys both did great and the funniest part about it was that Ethan was determined to stay awake for the whole drive. Ethan is the kind of kid who falls asleep on the way home from the grocery store or when we're driving just across the street, but on our 4 hour drive up to DC where we didn't arrive until after 10, he wants to stay awake. It was pretty cute watching him be so determined, but he finally gave in the last 1/2 hour of the trip. We stayed the night in a hotel then woke up the next morning and headed to the temple. We weren't prepared for the crowd and ended up having to make a change in our itinerary. After a few family pictures in front of the temple before the rain began and a couple shots of the beautiful Fall colors, we made an impulse decision and decided to head to the Baltimore Aquarium for the day and come back to the temple in the evening.

Thanks to our GPS we made it there with no problems and got to see where the Baltimore Ravens play football and the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. After parking in a very overpriced parking garage (gotta love big cities!)

The Baltimore Aquarium was way cooler than our greatest expectations! Ethan has talked about it nonstop for months. He'll just walk up and say "Mom, let's talk about the Aquarium." We started out our adventure going to the Dolphin Show (Mommy's favorite.) They jumped, flipped, splashed, and put on a great show. Ethan was absolutely amazed and it made me really excited for our 2010 family trip to Sea World (shhh!)

We toured the rest of the aquarium. We saw just about every variety of fish there is (check out Ethan's cute interpretation of a fish with wiskers below), stingrays (Ethan's favorite), a big turtle with only 2 legs (Daddy's favorite), and an amazing Shark exhibit like nothing I've ever seen before. We had a great time and spent more time there then we planned. We didn't even realize that we completely missed lunch until we were heading out the door with our stomach's growling. We were so excited when we walked out and right across the street was a Chipotle. There wasn't a question, we headed straight there! It was more delicious than I remembered and a perfect end to our Baltimore experience.

Sorry for the poor picture quality. After looking at the pictures from this trip, we decided it was time for a new camera. So hopefully after Christmas you'll be seeing some better pics.

So by the time we got back to the Temple it was already getting dark. We got some beautiful pictures of the temple at night! I love it! Chris got to go in while I toured the visitor's center with the boys. Ethan loved watching all the little videos, especially the ones of scripture stories or with kids. It was really cute to watch as he looked at Jesus and we talked about him. I love visiting the temple.

After Chris got done, I knew we needed to get started home or else we were all going to be asleep. Luckily, I was able to stay awake until the last 30 mins or so which is an accomplishment for me at night! Don't ask me, but riding in the car at night = sleep! We had a great trip and can't wait for our next trip up to the Temple.