Washington, D.C.

 

Jacob and I headed to Washington, D.C. the weekend of Valentine's Day. We were desperate to hit up the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, because it has dinosaur fossils...duh! Parking was impossible to find, but we did eventually find some about a mile away...(too cold for that! yuck!) While walking to the Natural History Museum though we stumbled across the Sculpture Garden Ice Rink. I loved it. So many beautiful sculptures (my favorites are the first 3 pictures). There was even a cute ice skating rink....but I was extremely cold and couldn't bare to do it (the cold really gets to me yall!) And there was the cutest little restaurant right near the rink with huge glass walls so you could see everything outside. I had a chocolate-chip muffin and Jacob had blueberry. They were huge and delicious. I want to go back there when we visit D.C. again!

After breakfast we finally made it to the Natural History Museum. It was awesome that it was free admission...but that also ment that it was extremely crowded! Even though we were a little claustrophobic at times, we still loved every bit of the museum. My favorites were the dinosaur fossils (childhood dream come true!), the mummies, and the gem stone rooms. I have never seem such real life mummies up close and personal....and I have never seen so many beautiful gems. My favorites included the Sapphires and the Hope Diamond (which reminds me of the Heart of the Sea..Titanic!) I also loved the ocean section, it was amazing to see all the creatures and animals and read all the information about them. They pretty much had every single animal on display that you can imagine....it was neat!

Oh and how crazy is the creature in the 9th picture down? Did you know that is a Giant Sloth? How fun! They were so huge but just like our sloths we have now! We also saw fossils of horses from back in that era, and they used to be the size of small puppies. I died! I want a small horse pet so bad now!

After the Museum we decided to trek on over to the White House. I've also dreamed of seeing it since I was a little girl....and really wasn't that impressed. Meh. I was hoping to be able to get closer but I should have known better!

Then we went on to the American History Museum. My favorite thing there was getting to see all of the First Lady's Inaugural Ball dresses. They were so beautiful! My favorite was worn by Pat Nixon (pictured above) I just love the yellow and the jewels! So classic and chic!

We are definitely going back to DC because there is still so much to see! I can't wait to explore it even more!

Jamestown, Virginia.

 

Jacob and I both love US History, so you can bet that we had a blast exploring Jamestown and Yorktown last weekend.

We went to Jamestown first, which is where the first permanent English establishment took place. So you could say, it is the birthplace of the USA. And it is also the hometown of Pocahontas (one of my favorite Disney princesses!).

I loved seeing the statues of Pocahontas and John Smith, although the real story is very different than the Disney movie I still felt like a little kid in fairy-tale land. We got to go to 2 different museums with all kinds of ancient artifacts, such as pipes, armor, swords, baking ovens, arrowheads, jewelry, and much more! One of the museums contained skeletons of the early settlers, one still had a bullet in his leg bone from the gun shot that killed him! It was one of the neatest things I've ever seen (not meaning to be heartless here!). Then we got to see a skull of a young girl which showed that some of the settlers had resorted to cannibalism during the starvation period, very gruesome and sad. 

 We got to see graves of settlers that the archeologists had recently found, replicas of the barracks the settlers lived in, rebuilding of the Church Tower, and some old burned up houses that the settlers used to live in. We also got to see glass being made, because the settlers used to make it, so they continue the tradition! It was such a great trip!

Then we had an hour of sunlight left so we drove over to Yorktown to see the Yorktown Victory Monument. It is so beautiful and I love everything that it stands for, our freedom!!