Alexandria Virginia 2009 Part Three

On Wednesday, the kids and I made our way to Tysons Corner Mall . The place is HUGE and we spent around 5 hours there, not even going into 1/8 of the stores. Payton got her fill of goodies at LUSH - enough bath and body products to last her a year. I enjoyed hitting up Urban Outfitters and Bloomingdale's while there too. We had lunch at FIVE GUYS - a favorite of ours for burgers, if you are ever near one, be sure to stop in. The kids and I were absolutely wiped after all that walking, so we headed back to the hotel.

Thursday, Gregg got to spend with us, what a lucky guy. We all headed up to the DC area again and visited the American History Museum and also the Holocaust Museum. Had it not taken us 2 hours to find a parking spot, the whole day would have been a bit more enjoyable.

But here are a few photos for you to enjoy...

Here's Gregg and the kids in front of the Capitol building.

This is the best photo I could get while at the Holocaust Museum. Austin was tired of walking/standing as you can see. The place wasn't near as interesting as it could have been. We were less than interested in this new type of museum format. It seems that they are renovating all of the museums in the area to have more video and pictures rather than actual artifacts. It's more of an educate yourself style of museum and isn't near as interesting as the old format where they had stuff on display.

I took this photo of the kids on Wednesday, behind our hotel. I thought it came out pretty neat, even with my stupid point and shoot. I swear I'm never taking that camera anywhere ever again, the quality just pales in comparison.

Here I am with the kids, Gregg taking photos while we walk. Get a load of how tall Payton is getting! I think she's going to take after my dad and be tall. She's only 10 and already almost 5 feet tall! We were on the way back to the car in this photo; I was SO ready to be out of the DC area, just too much traffic for me.

While we were checking out at the hotel, this dog came in with it's owner. I was actually taking photos of the leopard fireplace for Mandy Garvie, for her amusement, but the dog kind of stole the show.

Here I think you can kind of get an idea of how huge this animal was. I think it was the largest dog I've ever seen. We went to Whole Food's, IKEA (which was beyond huge), and then headed out of town. The traffic was what one would expect in the area, so we stopped at the Cracker Barrel (a favorite of mine when on road trips) for dinner. We were all quite happy to be home and have the weekend to decompress.

I think that's all of the pics from this trip. Hopefully they have entertained you just a little.