New Layouts, a Project, and More Trip Photos

First off let me start by sharing a few projects I finished up over the past few days. I've been blessed with a little bit more time than usual this past week with Marc at home enjoying his last few days of summer before heading back to school yesterday. He has taken the boys just about everywhere and let me have some time to myself or with just a napping Spencer. It has been really nice for me as well as the boys. They have loved having all this time with their dad! They have been swimming, roller skating, to Chuck E Cheese, shopping, running errands, repairing things around the house, going out for Icees, bike ridding, etc. I've gotten in on some of that action, but mostly the boys have been getting some great "guy time" with dad. It's been fun to watch them together and I know they are going to really miss him now that the school year is starting back up again. They don't start school for about a month, so I guess they will just have to enjoy some "mom time" now.

Anyhow, here are some of the projects I got accomplished over this past week:

This layout features papers and stickers by Bella Blvd and is about one of the stops on our big road trip. We went up to Maine with some family and just had a wonderful time on York Beach with them. It was one of my favorite days of out trip!

This next layout is made with some older papers made by Pebbles Inc. It features a favorite quote/saying of mine. When my first son Ty was little my mother gave me an adorable little pillow with this saying on it--and it is so very true as all mother of little boys know:

and I did a matching card too:

Lastly here is a little wall hanging I did for Blake. He is getting ready for Kindergarten to start and we are drilling him constantly on his ABC's, uppercase vs. lower case letters, letter sounds, and some basic reading; and all of that drilling inspired this (again with Pebbles Inc papers/stickers):

Okay, let me also add the next part of our trip re-cap here. After visiting in South Carolina we headed north to Washington DC. Marc and I had never been before so we decided to start our stay there with the "Monuments by Moonlight" tour on the trolley. This ended up being a great way to see the main sites around DC. We saw everything from the Capital to the White House, Arlington Cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial, and all the other major (and some not so major) monuments along the way.

The Trolley was fun for the boys and kept us moving along at a good fast pace that let us see all the sites we (Marc and I) wanted, and helped us avoid boring the boys--at least they weren’t too bored :) I would highly recommend it!

The next day we headed out to the Smithsonian in search of things that would fascinate the boys.

First stop was the Space and Aerospace Museum. They boys loved it--they have a children's section there that they found highly entertaining.

My favorite thing here was seeing the original planes used by the Wright brothers.

I have to admit after visiting Nasa a few times, the space side of the museum didn't seem all that impressive, however, I'm sure it would have, if not for the fact that we are used to seeing rockets (bigger rockets) down in Texas :)

Next stop was the Natural History Museum, which was also fun, but very crowded. We were getting tired and didn't stay as long here, much of what we saw was very much like our excellent Natural History Museum here in Houston with a few fun exceptions. This elephant in the rotunda for one:

My favorite stop of this day was to the National Archives to see the "Charters of Freedom" the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Very powerful and interesting to see. Sadly photography was not allowed. They also had an interesting copy of the Magna Carta there.

Last stop that day was to the Museum of American History where we saw some fun pop culture items and "The Star Spangled Banner" (sadly, no photographs allowed again).

Here is Ty and Blake with Judy Garland's Rudy Slippers.

And, I had to have this photo of Ty with Kermit the Frog as he was such a big Muppet fan when he was pre-school aged.

 This was an interesting stop. We all learned a lot and saw many things we had always wanted to see. We asked Ty and Blake what their favorite part of this stop was and they said it was riding the subway...go figure--boys and trains, I shouldn't have been surprised!

Have a great day everyone!