A DC Thanksigiving

Another Koplan-rific Thanksgiving!  The destination was again Virginia, which meant the dreaded cross-country trip with a toddler.  I will say, as far as 2 year olds go, Paige has been by far the easiest to travel with.  A combination of her happy demeanor, our 5 multimedia devices and my declaration that I was not getting on the plane unless Adam agreed to be on diaper duty during the flight, made the flight almost tolerable.  Almost.  But not quite.  There's a reason our summer vacation was within driving distance.

Flight aside, we loved exploring the great city of DC.  I remember vacationing there as a pre-teen kid with my family and my aunt and cousins and thinking it was super boring.  But, as an adult with little ones, it's a great vacation destination.  With tons of monuments and free museums within walking distance from each other, exploring the city was easy and leisurely.

We hit the Jefferson and Washington Memorial, stopped at the Holocaust Museum in between, chased some birds and then met up with cousin Craig and Madeline at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  Gwen's favorite exhibit was the mummies (no surprise here) and I loved the National Geographic nature photography exhibit - my favorite was the orange kangaroo picture below.

On Thanksgiving eve, we woke up to a light blanket of SNOW(!) on the ground.  The kids rushed to put on their snow gear over their PJs and used every last bit of snow in the yard to build a snowman.  Complete with a cucumber for a nose, tomato eyes and baby carrots for a mouth.  

And then the rest of the day was a giant playdate with the cousins.  Paige was smitten with her oldest cousin Jake.  Gwen, a sucker for the little ones, was always looking for Dorothy.  But Whitney had the biggest cousin obsession, and attached herself to Zoe's hip for the weekend.  But they all loved playing with all their cousins - Paige and Dorothy were running around together, Whitney and her twin cousin Leila colored together and Gwen and Lily were the budding big girls.  

Celebrating Sophie's 13th birthday.

  

We spent Thanksgiving Day in Maryland at Mike and Julie's once again.  More eating, drinking and playing.   I was inspired by the comfy, cozy but still nice feel of their home to repaint all our walls taupe.  And thus launched a home project to do list the length of my arm.  It's been 8 months since we completed our backyard project and apparently we don't like having extra money.

Cousins - Top:  Noah (15), Jake (18), Paige (2), Zoe (16), Sophie (13)
Bottom: Dorothy (3), Leila (5), Matthew (12), Henry (7), Lily (9), Gwen (7)
Whitney (5) and Madeline (13)

And after one more day of lounging, talking, eating and playing, it was time for our return journey home.  The kids were sad to leave - Whitney said to Steve sadly "After we go home, I'm not going to see you for a long time" and as Lily gave Paige a hug goodbye, Paige said "Bye… I miss you".