Happy Birthday Miss Little Bit!!!! (and how we spent the rest of our day in DC)

One more post covering yesterday and then I'll stop babbling! Yesterday was Little Bit's 3rd birthday! We celebrated all 3 girls' birthdays on the 17th with Daddy and our neighbors. And we'll celebrate all 3 birthdays with Mama and Papa tomorrow, on the big girls' actual birthday. Yesterday Little Bit got dragged all over creation for her birthday LOL.

But I think she had an ok day overall. She had great fun running around and climbing on rocks at Great Falls (more pictures here).

After we left Great Falls, she napped while we drove to Georgetown for a quick stop at "The Old Stone House" so the big girls could turn in their Rock Creek Junior Ranger books and get their badges. They had done most of the work on Sabbath, but weren't quite done when the Nature Center closed, so they finished up at home and we took it down yesterday. Interesting bit of trivia from The Old Stone House. They had marks on the wall indicating the average height of men and women in colonial times and today, and then the heights of a few famous people. It was interesting to see, visually, how short Martha Washington was and how tall George Washington was. But the one that surprised me was Ben Franklin. I'm not sure why, but I've always pictured him as being on the short side. Not abnormally short, but average or slightly below average for his era. However, based on the marks on the wall, while not nearly as tall as George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, he was still taller than average. I'm horrible at remembering numbers, but I think he was shown as being 5'10" which was slightly higher than today's average height for men.

Little Bit continued to sleep while we drove around DC and finally found a parking spot. Our main reason we NEEDED to go down into DC yesterday was to turn in the girls' Junior Ranger books for the Cherry Blossom Festival. This year marks the 100 year anniversary of Japan giving us the cherry trees, so there  is a special Junior Ranger book just for this year's festival. Dad grabbed the books for us while we were at the zoo last week, and the girls did the work at home and while we were driving around on Sabbath. So all we needed to do was turn them in. But that, alone meant a good bit of walking.

Once we did that, we decided to walk another mile or so (thankfully Little Bit is much happier in the stroller than her sisters were. She rode almost the whole way, and MiniMe pushed the stroller almost all of it except when we were crossing streets, I insisted that a grown-up be in charge of the stroller while crossing streets, and in some stretches we were crossing so many streets, that it was easier to just keep pushing than to keep trading back and forth with her) and go to Frozen Yo.
My parents discovered Frozen Yo awhile ago and have taken the big girls a few times, but this was the first time Little Bit or I had been there. It's a frozen yogurt shop with 16 different flavors of yogurt and then a "topping bar" with several different fresh fruits as well as a variety of candy and such. You serve yourself, then pay by weight. We stick with frozen yogurt and fresh fruit. So we declared this Little Bit's birthday dessert. She was pretty ok with that LOL. I had to laugh, as we were standing in line, with me holding my own and Little Bit's and each of the big girls was holding their own, the man behind us in line (a business man getting coffee), noticed and commented on how "healthy" our bowls looked (we all had fruit piled on top, completely covering the frozen yogurt) and that his children would never go for all that fruit LOL.

So after leaving Frozen Yo we began our hike back to the car, with a stop by the Jefferson memorial on our way.

My dad wears a step-counter and based on the number of steps he "logged" yesterday, and the fact that all his walking was essentially with the rest of us, he estimated that we all (except Little Bit) walked about 9 miiles total yesterday (that includes walking out to Great Falls on both sides of the river and all our walking in DC). Not too bad for a couple of almost-9-year-olds!! (or for this out-of-shape Mommy).

So that was how we celebrated Little Bit's actual birthday!!! I still can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that she is THREE already!

Gratituesday: Where We Live

I don't remember to write posts for Gratituesday very often. But yesterday, as we walked around Washington, DC, I was reminded of how blessed we are to live close enough to enjoy our Nation's capital on a regular basis. Washington DC truly is a beautiful city, rich with history.  Yesterday was just about a perfect spring day. Abit breezy, but not unbearably so. Not too hot, not too cold. Bright and sunny! GORGEOUS!! Of course, as I thought about it, and remembered driving around for quite awhile to find a parking spot, and remembered the horrific, though not unexpected, traffic we experienced a few days ago when we took the girls on our "driving tour" of DC. I was also reminded of how blessed we are to not HAVE to go into DC, or any other big city, every day, or even every week. I feel so thankful today to have the opportunity to live in a country setting, but close enough to appreciate many of the great historic landmarks of our country. We live within easy day-trip distance of Philadelphia, New York City, Gettysburg, etc. My parents live within easy day-trip distance of Antietam, Baltimore and Washington DC. We are truly blessed!

More Pictures from Great Falls

So my experiment with blogging from my phone taught me that it works, but not if you have a BUNCH of pictures. I originally included 3 or 4 additional pictures, and it wouldn't publish. Once I deleted all but 2, it published fine. . . so now I know . . . Here are some more pictures from our fun at Great Falls yesterday.

Running on the bridges going out to the falls.

Little Bit chose a spot on the rocks and asked Sissies to sit with her for a picture.

MiniMe was having fun climbing on the rocks.

The big girls found this "hole" in the rocks and wanted a picture of all 3 of them in it, but Little Bit crawled back out every time we tried to take a picture, so we gave up and took a picture of just the big girls. 

Later, when it was HER idea, we got a picture of all 3 of them in the same "hole".

All of the pictures are from the Maryland side of Great Falls. It also includes a small C&O Canal museum. The hike to the falls is pretty long (for people not used to hiking anyway . . . ) but other than a short distance on the canal toe path (which is flat packed earth), it's all paved paths or wood bridges. The rocks the girls are climbing on are surrounded by the wood decking.

After we left the Maryland side, we went to the VA side. The visitor center there deals more with the falls themselves. MiniMe was fascinated with a short video of people kayaking down the falls, she couldn't decide if they were "crazy" or if it "looked really fun" LOL. The falls are much closer on the VA side, but to actually get a good view of them you have to actively climb around on some rocks. No biggie for the big girls, they had great fun, but abit nerve-wracking with an "I do it myself! 3 year old".

So that's my analysis of the 2 sides of the falls LOL.

Fun at Great Falls

I thought I'd test the blogging app on my phone and share some pictures from our visit to Great Falls today.

It was a gorgeous spring day. Clear and breezy. Breezy enough that we appreciated our jackets (except Mimime she insisted she was warm enough) and when the big girls tried to stand on the rocks the wind almost blew them over.

posted from Bloggeroid

Weekly Wrap Up - March 25

We've had a busy week!

Tuesday we celebrated our friend, E's birthday. His party was at an awesomely fun place called Ballocity. It was a multi-level thing with tons of slides and "obstacle courses" and balls that you could shoot at each other or shoot up into the air or have dump on you. We all had a blast. Since Little Bit is still 2, I was required to stay with her all the time which would have been fine except that pretty much the entire thing is too short to stand up in (well, SHE could stand just fine, me, not-so-much). This has been one of the only places I've been in the past 5 or 6 years (since I started wearing skirts and dresses all the time), that I REALLY wished I was wearing pants. Crawling in a skirt gets old fast! And there was tons of crawling up and down ramps and such too. My legs HURT the next day! Which means it was great exercise!! LOL.

Wednesday the girls and I headed to Mama and Papa's house. The girls were anxious to see how their playhouse was progressing, and were thrilled to see so much progress! The outside of the playhouse is pretty much done. As a point of reference, the building on the left is my parents' house, the building behind the playhouse is the garage. There's a deck that comes off the house and the playhouse is attached to the deck, and at deck-level with storage underneath.
The playhouse itself has the main floor that's the full size of the playhouse, then a ladder up to a half-size second floor, with a door out onto the playhouse deck. The other half is a "loft" that they can climb into from the 2nd floor.  The arm coming off the deck is a new addition and Papa isn't telling them what it's going to be until their birthday (on the 28th).  It's going to be a climbing thing and swings, shhhhh . . . don't tell!

We've even been doing school in the playhouse some days. Of course when I agreed to that I assumed we could do school on the main floor, but once we got out there the girls insisted that it was more fun if they could sit in the loft to do their school, which, of course, meant I got to climb up that ladder, with the school books, but they had fun. They've also taken their independent school work out to the playhouse, apparently it's much more fun to learn about the continents and oceans when sitting on a hard wood floor with a ceiling right above your head. Call me crazy, but I think the nice comfortable sofa or recliner in the living room, or even the kitchen chairs, would be a better choice. But I've been accused before of not having a sense of adventure.

The days we've stayed at Mama & Papa's house the girls have also kept busy helping and playing. Some things they've found to do include raking leaves:

 Hauling the wheelbarrows-full of leaves to the leaf pile.

 Mixing concrete for that mystery addition to the playhouse.

Little Bit had been having fun riding bikes. We had a couple different "bikes" stored in the garage at Mama and Papa's, so Little Bit now has 2 "new to her" bikes to play with. I'm hoping before we go home, she'll decide which one she likes better and we can take ONE bike home.I'm pretty sure we won't have room to take both of them home with us, plus we need one bike to stay at Mama and Papa's house for when we visit here again.

 And finally, a picture that I just thought was too cute to not include. She was just running across the yard but I somehow managed to catch her "mid-stride".

Friday we went to the National Zoo. One reason I for sure wanted to go to the National Zoo THIS trip is because I much prefer the National Zoo (with it's steep hills and not a ton of shade) when it's not too hot. But I think we failed . . . it was HOT even though it was only March. Oh well, we had a good time anyway. The lions were the most active I've ever seen them. The male lion even roared for us, which was pretty cool!

Little Bit's favorites seemed to be some turtles that lived in the  water in the Lemur cage. She insisted that baby turtles are called "cubs" and nothing I said would change her mind. She would happily have stayed there watching them most of the day LOL.

On a not so great note, last summer when we were going to Erie, PA and wanted to go to the zoo there, I checked reciprocal lists and confirmed, based on what's listed on the website, that Erie Zoo's membership was reciprocal with the National Zoo (I also checked several other zoos that we like to visit whenever we can). The National Zoo is listed on Erie's reciprocal list. Since the only "charge" at the National Zoo is for parking ($22/car!!!!!), I think it was a logical assumption on my part that this was what the reciprocal membership was referring to. That said, I *do* typically confirm, upon arrival to a place, that the reciprocal arrangement is still in effect. But the zoo parking is set up such that there wasn't anyone TO check with. When we left, we were informed that "the reciprocal arrangement is only for admission" so we were stuck paying the parking fee. Note that the National Zoo does not HAVE an admission  fee, only the exorbitant (IMO) parking fee. So, as far as I'm concerned, it is blatant false advertising on the part of both zoos, to have the National Zoo listed on Erie's reciprocal zoo list (yes, I will be e-mailing both zoos about this as well).

Sabbath was rainy, and cooler. We wanted to at least SEE the cherry blossoms since they're in bloom, but weren't sure we wanted to brave the crowds OR the rain, by actually getting out and walking around down there. So, since another thing we wanted to do this trip was drive around Washington to see some of the places mentioned in a recent read-aloud Washington Adventure, set in the "Federal City" as it was being built in 1800. While we were in the area we also stopped by Pierce Mill, and the Rock Creek Nature Center. Once we got to the Nature Center, we were busy for the rest of our day. Little Bit happily spent her afternoon playing in the sand (that is designed to "hunt for" plaster footprints, she just had fun playing in the sand), doing puzzles,
and looking at the exhibits. The big girls worked on their Junior Ranger for Rock Creek, and then we went to the Planetarium show. It was pretty cool, was talking about the current night sky, and then took us on a "trip" to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

So that's been our week. The girls and I are at Mama and Papa's for a few more days, so I'm sure we'll get lots more adventures in before we head home.

Weekly Wrap-Up - March 20

After all our fun travelling last week, you'd think we'd have a nice quiet week, we did have a nice week, but I don't know about quiet.

One highlight this week was the absolutely GORGEOUS weather pretty much ALL WEEK LONG!!! It meant even boring, run-of-the-mill days were made wonderful with plenty of outdoor playtime. THIS is one of many reasons I love homeschooling!!! While we did some school this week, they still had tons of outside time. We can always sit inside reading books together on rainy days and 102 degree days this summer, one reason we school year round is to be able to take full advantage of beautiful weather when it comes.

Some of our enjoyment of the weather included spending several hours at the park with friends. We brought a picnic lunch and had a lovely time! Little Bit got over her hesitation of swinging on the tire swing, and kept her sisters quite busy pushing her and friends on the tire swing.


Sabbath we celebrated all 3 girls' birthdays. Their actual birthdays are the 26th (Little Bit turns 3) and 28th (twins turn 9), but we've got some travels and such coming up that made it more convenient to celebrate this weekend. Our neighbors/adopted grandparents, Judy & Brian joined us. The girls and I made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and, at Little Bit's request, put some of her Schleich animals on top. I actually found one of the "3" candles we used on the big girls' cakes when they turned 3, so we used that for Little Bit's cupcake and got "9" candles for each of the big girls. Judy was my "photographer" during the cake-eating and such so I'll have to get those pictures from her. But I did get a couple pictures of Little Bit enjoying her presents. She's been having so much fun with the Wedgits she got for Christmas that we got her a bigger set, see the huge tower she managed to build with them?

Another big hit was SCISSORS!!! Yes, I may regret this, but I figured better to give her scissors now and teach her to use them safely, and only on paper, instead of waiting and have her get ahold of her sisters' scissors and hurt herself or cut who knows what . . . I'd seen these recommended somewhere, I don't remember where, because they have a little "switch" that can be set so they spring back open after you squeeze them together. That makes it easier for younger children who don't have the motor skills for regular scissors. As she gets older and develops those motor skills, we can flip the switch and she can use them as regular scissors. For now, it's been great. She was immediately able to cut paper and is so proud of herself. I gave her a plastic bowl to cut scraps of paper into and she's been having a ball!

I didn't get pictures, but she's also been thoroughly enjoying the fishing rod Miss Judy gave her, and of course, the candy LOL. Judy also made her an adorable spring jacket that I did get her to try on, but she insisted on taking her dress OFF before she tried her jacket on, so it wasn't exactly a Kodak moment LOL. It's been so warm, she hasn't needed to "really" wear it yet.

Judy made all 3 girls gorgeous reversible aprons. When I get the pictures from her, there's a picture of all 3 girls "modeling" them.

Our main gift to the big girls was a whole stack of "Childhood of Famous American" books for each of them. They sat right down and read all through Little Bit's nap that afternoon LOL. Sassy was excited to get Paul Revere "because I've heard about his adult life over and over, but never about his CHILDHOOD!" And MiniMe is being fascinated by the book about Helen Keller. She'd never heard of her before, but all it took was me telling her that Helen Keller was blind AND deaf and "I guess you'll have to read the book" in answer to her immediate and numerous questions about how she communicated, etc. :)

So that was our week last week, sorry I'm a few days late getting this posted, we've continued to enjoy gorgeous weather and keep busy!

Review and GIVEAWAY: The Woodcarver DVD

Giveaway is now closed! Congratluations to #6, HillaryM!

We were thrilled to get to review The Woodcarver from Faith & Family Films.

This is a movie about a teenage boy who's family is falling apart and he acts out by vandalizing the church, including the gorgeous hand-carved woodwork. He is required to help the woodcarver, who is questioning his own faith, after losing his wife to cancer, re-make the woodwork. In the process, both the woodcarver and the boy learn to trust in God.

I really enjoyed this movie. It is uplifting and entertaining. It keeps moving and kept my attention, which is saying something, I tend to get bored with movies pretty easily LOL. I like reading, I can read as fast as I want, skimming over details I don't care about.  It's also clean, teaches about loving and following God without being "preachy", and something that I can watch with my children, which is getting harder and harder to find as they get older and aren't interested in "little kid" videos as much anymore.

If you're looking for a good family movie night video, I recommend this one!

And the best part, I get to giveaway a copy of this DVD to one of my readers, woo-hoo!!!

To enter just leave a comment on this post before 11pm on March 20. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. Open to those with US addresses.

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