And last but not least, we stopped at the National Archives

Since we recently read about it in history, we took a peek at the Magna Carta.

Ice Skating at the Sculpture Garden

The National Gallery Sculpture Garden is filled with oversized sculptures and includes an ice skating rink in the winter months. Today we tried out the rink-it was both girls first time in ice skates.



Mark likes the "giant art eraser" the most.

I'm partial to this fabulous 3-D optical illusion house, myself.

Riding on the Metro

We took the Metro up to DC today- its the girls preferred mode of transportation. Gryphon knows all the stops now!

Here are the girls at the Pentagon station, getting ready to switch to the yellow line.

Gryphon's Christmas present-Heelys!!

Gryphon unfortunately shares her momma's sense of balance and grace, so she'll probably break her arm.

I need to get a pair for myself!

New member of the family

This is Nemo. We needed a fish for a science experiment this week (not a lethal one, promise!) and now are the proud owners of a fan tail goldfish. Lets hope poor Nemo lives at least a week (I have bad luck with fish) so we can do the experiment.

The Original GW's House

We went to Mt. Vernon to see the Christmas Decorations- not remembering that in the pre-Victorian era, there weren't any. Whoops! We did get to visit the 3rd floor of the house, which is only open in December due to the heat and crowds, and it is the floor with Martha's room.


Here are the girls overlooking the Potomac.









And the girls again, petting sheep.







And this is Gryphon being George Washington in the brand-spanking new visitor's center. It is really, really neat- the movies have snow that falls on you, and the seats move, and the smoke fills the theater during canon shots! They have a good children's area, too.

I was very, very good this year, and got a new camera!

...and so now I need a blog to post pictures on, so you can see what we are doing out here in Virginia!

(Warning: If you are bored to tears by looking at poor quality pictures of the same 2 kids, a thousand times, this isn't the blog for you!)

So without further ado, our latest adventures!