North Carolina

 Ever since I did my 5th grade report on the state of NC, I have wanted to go see the Cape Hatteras light house. Then when I lived with Camber, it renewed my wish to go, and now many years later I finally made it. Shortly after we entered the state we drove past GRAVEDIGGER. The boys made us turn around and go back an up close and personal experience.

We continued on our way to Kitty Hawk to see the Wright Brothers National Monument. It was really interesting and I am glad we were just in time for the telling of their story.

 This is a replica of the plane they made their first flight in.

 Here I am flying out to the 4 different distances their first flights went. 

You can see the last marker way out there. Way to go guys!

 Snapped this one on the drive. We didn't have time to go see all of the cool lighthouses.

This is the Bodie Island lighthouse.

 It was really smokey from some fire on the mainland, but the view was still great!

We decided to take a ferry back to the mainland rather than trekking all the way back up the Outer Banks. I turned out to take a lot longer, but we enjoyed the experience and the break from the car.

 We had about an hour wait between the two different ferry rides. 

Luckily their gift shop was going out of business so we scored some 

cheap souvenirs including the Frisbee that kept the boys entertained.

Here we are on the ferry with a front row view. 

Sorry the only view you get to see is of some man.

Back to the trip-DC part II

We're finally getting back to blogging.  We've had several different kinds of computer issues so we'll be doing catch-up for awhile.  Now that it is fall, you can enjoy seeing our summer activities.

 Museum of Natural History

This tree is all metal, not just painted.

The line was ridiculously long to see the declaration of independence and the constitution

but we took a picture in front of the building at least.

We were mostly excited to go to the aerospace Smithsonian.  Lots of cool stuff.

Luckily we had Brandon to tell us why it was cool.

Arlington National Cemetery was cool.  We were there just in time for the changing

of the guard.  Sorry, no pictures.  It was pretty cool how reverent everyone was there.

The Iwo Jima monument was our last stop in the DC area and then we were off to North Carolina

It was way too much to see in a day, but we hit most of the big stuff.  I had been before but I think everyone who hadn't was satisfied with what we saw.  Stay tuned for more of our road trip fun.

Hanging out in St.George

Ezra and I spent a wonderful and crazy 3 weeks in St. George. Ezra got to spend a lot of time with his cousins, and he loved it. I somehow managed to not get any pictures of Ezra with Talya and Keian even though he spent a lot of time with them. He had two sleepovers with them, which were such a nice break. Thanks Jamie and Tony, I owe you one. It was just nice to be around for the comings and goings of the family. I hope we were more of a blessing than a burden in our time there.

Hanging out with Jett! They play together so well.

They found a ladybug!

This is the most common place to find Grandpa when he is home, 

and Ezra will take what he can get.

They really like reading Grandma's pop up books.

How could they not like it when she gets this into it!

Fast Forward...

I have so much to post and catch up on, but the jump drive that I had put all the pictures on got left at my parents, the computer which they are on, that has no internet access, I cannot access because the USB hook-up for our wireless mouse and keyboard got broken so I am just going to fast forward to the pictures that are on my camera!

While Bob was back in Boston, Ezra and I headed to Utah. We pick up on the 4th of July. We had a great time hanging out with family waiting for the fireworks. Ezra was scared of how loud they were and made me cover his ears the whole time, but other than that we had a blast.

The sprinklers came on in this section of the lawn. 

How unfortunate for the people sitting there, but how fortunate for Tate and Ezra!

I thought it was so funny the way Ezra and Lilly both started their running

 with their hands behind their backs.

The poor kid couldn't keep his pants on once they were soaking wet.

Our Spread!

Killing time.

Washington D.C.

After we left Philadelphia we headed to D.C. to catch a session at the temple that evening. The drive to the temple, with it coming out of nowhere, did not disappoint. It was such a great experience, I'm sure I will never get over that way again, and I'm glad we gotta go. 

The next morning we headed into the capitol. We were expecting horrible traffic, but we did not hit any and the drive was actually quite lovely.

We stopped at the Washington Monument first, but this is about as close as we got.

I saw this blue bird on the way to the White House and just had to snap a picture.

The view of the monument from the White House.

The man in the back is telling everyone to leave 

because someone important is coming down the street.

The White House

I thought these ducklings on the WWII monument were cute.

Bye bye Massachusetts!

The new WWII monument.

Each one of those stars behind Bob represents (I think) 5,000 people killed.

California here we come!

What the? The reflection pool was completely ripped up. Talk about a rip off!

Pretty awesome view huh? Not!

Lincoln Memorial

Another view that could have been awesome.

We also did some Smithsonian stuff that day which will come in another post. I'm sorry I'm taking forever to catch up, but our now SUPER slow internet makes it take forever to upload pictures, so I completely lack motivation. I still have so much to post though, just to get us to Gridley. I will try to be better.