Checking In.

I write this completely exhausted and spent but so full of life after some really great, full, fun days with our family.

*Yesterday we spent the day in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We visited the infamous Chocolate World which was just as fun and neat as I thought it would be.

*We came back to the hotel and had the outdoor pool to ourselves which was fun because we swam and jumped in and had a fun afternoon together.

*We celebrated J's birthday with donuts and coffee in the morning and dinner in the hotel restaurant at night. It wasn't his most glamorous birthday yet but we had fun.

*This morning we got up and drove to DC.

*We didn't have a ton of time downtown today but made the most of what we could. We took the Metro down to the National Mall and went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. {IE the dinosaurs!}

*Two out of four kids reported that museum was their favorite part of the day.

*One of the four claimed that eating pizza on our hotel room floor at 9pm was their favorite.

*I'm pretty sure the other one would say eating ice cream outside on the way back to the train was her favorite.

*We came back from downtown exhausted, sweaty and just wanting/needing a quick dip in the pool. We were shocked (and pretty disappointed!) to find out the pool closes at 8:30pm. We decided to take a walk to the pool anyhow just to see it and decide if it was worth a morning swim.

*I asked the lifeguard who was locking up the gate and about to leave if we could each just jump in one time and he said YES!

*I'm not sure I've ever wanted to swim and cool off as much as I did in that moment. Those jumps in were well deserved!

*We are having a great vacation so far and looking forward to a full day in DC tomorrow before heading to Virginia Beach. For those who've been to DC before, is there anything we must see or do tomorrow? We're heading back to the National Mall to scope out the monuments and probably another Smithsonian or two but if you have ideas, pass them along please!

A friend of mine has asked to write a few guest blogs while I'm on vacation so I'll be posting them soon. I'm excited to share his ideas and hopefully encourage him to start his very own blog too!

Finally, it's not too late to do a good deed for J's 37th birthday, so if you remember please do something kind for someone this week and tell me about it.