Washington DC!

Amy had the grand idea this year for a pre-Thanksgiving trip to Washington DC - the family has never been there, and the kids seemed like a good age to take them, so we and our friends the Bergherm family decided on a joint trip - we left the Thursday evening before American Thanksgiving so that the kids would only miss a 1/2 day of school and then came back the following Wednesday, so that we could spend Thanksgiving day with our traditional golfing and meal at Grodacks -- it seemed like a win/win and in retrospect it was a GREAT idea!

The weather was crisp up in DC, so we bundled up well and took in many sites. We rode the metro everywhere, so that made it cheaper and it was nice as you didn't have to worry about traffic jams etc.  Thankfully everything is fairly close to the metro, so it never was an extremely long walk.

Not only convenient, but fun to always be totally together, and it wasn't ever crowded!  A++!

The first day we did a hop on, hop off bus (always a favorite of the Z family to be sure), and saw many of the monuments.

Lincoln Memorial

Thomas Jefferson Memorial

MLK - Amy really enjoyed the wall with all of his famous quotes on it - amazing how one person can have such insight, wisdom and memorable quotes!

That Friday as part of the HOHO bus, we went to the Arlington Cemetery which was very impactful - so many lives lost in defending our freedom - may we always remain grateful and continue to defend it!  We also saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was one of the kids' top memories.

On Sabbath, we went to the Zoo and the Bible museum.  We got to see some very active red pandas and the giant pandas - really cool!

Sabbath was extremely cold - we all froze as we waited for the bus.

Speaking of cold, it was better to just pull her tuque completely over her face!

The giant panda inside where it was warm!

She is as strong as Samson, pushing down the pillars ---- or maybe not. It was a great children's play area in the museum with lots of hands-on activities.

On Sunday, we went to the Natural History museum and then in the afternoon to the Spy museum.  That was super fun for the Spy museum, learned a lot.   It was also fun to see the Hope diamond in the natural history museum.

Hope Diamond

Amy drug Zachary and Blake up to see it as well!

On Monday, we went to the Ford's Theater where Lincoln was assasinated, American History museum (Pop Culture) and the Holocaust museum (except Addison and London went to the Children's Museum as it was just too much for their young age).  We also popped over to "see" (from a long distance away) the White House and then that night we went and did an Escape Game room, which we managed to get out of successfully and even the older teens were engaged and enjoyed it!

The balcony where he was shot in the theater is behind Addison's head in this picture.

Outside the house where Lincoln was taken after being shot (Petersen House)

White House in the background

The first Escape Game

Hard at work on the clues!

While we were there, the FIFA world cup games (not the finals) were going on, so Zach and Blake didn't "see" as much of DC as the rest of us as they were looking down at their phones for the games going on!  Hopefully they did get some by osmosis though!

At the spy museum....

Even at the airport, looking down at their phones side by side!

On Tuesday, we had a tour of the Capitol and of the Library of Congress, which were both very interesting.  We also went to Union Station to knock that off our list, and we stopped in at the American Mint Coin Store (not as fun as the tour of the actual mint, but it was closed so we had to make do).  We also stopped by the Supreme Court, but it was closed so were not able to go inside.  We had so much fun at the Escape Game room that we went to a second one in Georgetown, which allowed us to see Georgetown as well which was very quaint and neat to see. 

In front of the Capitol

Listening to our audio guides inside the Capitol

Supreme court

Beautiful inside the Library of Congress!

The Titanic was the second room that we escaped from - success!

We had a great time with the Bergherms - we decided that we'll have to do a combined trip again (how is it that in 16 years this is our first combined trip!)  We decided that we'd call ourselves the "Zergherms!" 😂  Here are a few of our whole group pictures: 

Washington Memorial

Final picture as we headed to our separate planes in the airport!

Favorite Memories by Z family: 

Karis:  Escape game, Arlington cemetery, Spy museum

Amy: Spy Museum, Holocaust Museum, Ford's theater and escape game

Zachary: Spy Museum, Ford's theater, Escape room, Natural History (it must have been that diamond Amy made him go look at! 😂

Kaleb:  Escape room, Holocaust Museum, Mall, Spy Museum

Addison:  Spy Museum, Fords theater, Escape game, zoo.

Random pictures:

Kaleb and London have a very close relationship, so it made it easy to keep track of London (the youngest of the group at 7 years old), as she was always nearby to Kaleb.  So sweet!

A decorated area nearby our hotel made for a good photo opp

For the first time, Addison and Kaleb shared a hotel bed (she usually sleeps with Amy) and he was aghast at how much she likes to snuggle as she sleeps - Amy caught them for a picture before they fully woke up for the day - this is why Amy always puts a pillow in between herself and Addison -- it is sweet to snuggle but not when you are trying to sleep yourself 😂

Way over the lake was the Jefferson Memorial

Hamilton!

We mentioned that Zach's belated birthday gift was to go to a Tampa Bay Buccs game to see Tom Brady play, well the very next weekend Kaleb's belated birthday gift came to fruition when the four of us went to see Hamilton live - it has some mature themes to it, so we did not take Addison.  Kaleb practically has the play memorized and loves to play/sing the songs so this was a real treat for him.  We went to the play at the Dr. Phillips center in Orlando, which is a lovely venue. 

Speaking of historical polictical figures, it would appear that we have our very own George Washington in our household - although she has dark hair rather than white!😀

Recently we went to a park that we used to take the boys to all of the time when they were young over in Maitland, we called it the roller slide park, because they have a slide that is made up solely of rolling bars - quite the experience on one's behind as you go down the slide!  Addison hadn't been to it very often, so we decided to let her experience it - and we love the facial expression on her face in this picture series!

The park has shade now, that is a major upgrade to when our boys were little and it was super hot!

Even the older boys decided to go down it for memory lane sake - although they didn't give us quite the same facial expression show!

There is also an open grassy area to throw a frisbee, so Addison worked on her skills with Daddy.

Golden State Warriors & the Buccs

Early November, we had the opportunity to go and watch the Golden State Warriors in special seats on Thursday night, and then to the Buccs that Sunday - how much sports could one family do in one weekend!?  We had great seats for both, so we were very fortunate.

Zachary is a fan of Curry (as is many people, so that isn't so unusual) and it was fun to watch him play even for Amy who doesn't know much about sports players!  The game was quite exciting as it was a very close scoring game, and in the last few seconds the Magic won - made for a fun experience.  The seats that we had included free food, so the kids thought they were in 7th heaven with the food and ice cream that we had available to us.  We had an extra ticket, so our extended "brother" Blake came with us. 

During the intermission there was an extraordinary balancing act that was put on - by an elderly man no less, which made it even more exciting!

As mentioned, that Sunday we trekked over to Tampa to attend the Buccs game - wanting to be able to say that we have at least seen Tom Brady play in person once!  This was a belated birthday present for Zach that finally came to fruition.  This time, we had Cristian and Blake come with us, and the game was quite boring for the first part but we were able to experience quite a comeback for a Tampa Bay Buccs win in the last 2 minutes - 2 minutes that frankly we had gotten up so that we could walk back to the car as we didn't expect anything to happen - but we tarried up in the food area where there were the huge screen TVs and watched it all unfold - two exciting nail-biting finishes within a matter of days!

Zach and Cristian standing out in their blue shirts in a sea of red!

Addison was engaged for about the first quarter and then after that, it was onto Dad's phone!

Not bad seats, fairly close to the action.

And watching the final 2 minutes....

In other fun updates, we had the opportunity that weekend (what a busy weekend!) to go to pumpkin fest at the church.  Karis and Kent paired up to play tank at the end, and managed to score the win!  It was just for fun, and we love the picture below with our new friends from Iowa learning to play - it has been fun getting to know the Hollands over the last year.

Earlier that day for lunch, we had the pleasure of having my aunt Evelyn, cousin Jeff and sweet Sadie over for lunch along with Grandma and Grandpa - it is nice to be able to see Aunt Ev when she comes down from Canada to visit her son Jeff!  

Love you Aunt Ev!

SUPER SADIE! 

And in one last update, the academy had a student athlete dedication event that we attended, we managed to score a picture of a good friend Matt and Zach together.