Our Washington D.C. trip

Also known as our trip for Cousin's Camp (what Jon's family calls their get-together every other year) or the Virginia Beach trip.

We started out here in Sacramento at 1:30a. We had to get to SFO for a 6am plane departure. Here's the thing about using miles for trips - you have to pick your departure airport carefully or you end up doing 2 or more plane changes. That's the reason we went from SFO instead of Oakland or SMF (Sac) - only one plane change. It turns out Delta doesn't fly direct from here to the East coast - you have to change in Atlanta.

The plane rides went pretty well. The kids did okay (except Abby on the Atlanta to Dulles flight). But when a kid is crying, tossing me dirty looks won't make her stop. I promise - if it would work - I would do it too.

Abby insisted, at every stop, on getting into the measuring boxes for carry-ons. Yes, she fits. No, we didn't put her in the overhead compartment - not that we weren't tempted.

The kids found it a great joy to eat on the ground - having a picnic in the airport - since we didn't want to spend the money to eat at one of the nicer restaurants where they have tables.

When we got to DC we got lost because DC doesn't have good street markers. But we got lost - and then stuck - behind the motorcade for the President. I thought it was cool - the kids just wanted to get to the hotel and out of the car (the next day we got to see Marine One - all 3 of them - taking off from the White House and flying).

Then on Friday we spent the day in DC. We did the Smithsonian museums (Natural History and Air and Space - Jon said he wouldn't go into the art ones). I wanted to do American History, but the kids wouldn't have behaved for the whole thing so we didn't. The we did the monuments. We walked the whole way. I googled it on google maps back at the hotel and it was 9.7 miles of walking that we did. Nice. It was a blast.

Jon and Nicholas loved the Air and Space museum. We even were there for story time. It was pretty cool.

Then we went to Virginia Beach for Cousin's Camp. Don't let google maps fool you - a 3.5 hour drive from DC to Virginia Beach took over 7 hours. It took us 2.5 hours to go the first 50 miles out of DC.

So what did we do in Virginia Beach? The beach. Anything else? Nope. We spent the days, afternoons, and evenings at the beach. Well, we did do some shopping. And one afternoon we took a pirate cruise - which was really cool. But we spent most of the time at the beach. Playing in the ocean (me and Jon) and building things for Abby to knock over (me and Jon) and building things for the waves to knock over (Nicholas) and playing with cousins.

The plane ride back was fun. We were supposed to have a 45 minute lay-over in Atlanta (which if the plane out of Atlanta had been on time we might have made just barely). This 45 minute lay over turned into hours. SFO was on a ground hold because of weather (fog) and so we couldn't leave Atlanta. I laughed when I thought of fog and SFO - they go together like chocolate and chocolate. It's the same thing. We finally got out of there and back home. Too bad the kids wouldn't go to sleep when we got home. Jon and I needed some sleep - but we tried making up for it with naps the next day (nope).

It was a great vacation and I really enjoyed it.