Jelly making

The grapes are boiling and we will be making jelly on Sunday if everything goes right. We might be overloaded with grape jelly especially since my children will not eat peanut butter sandwiches anymore.

While we were on vacation we would often stop for sandwiches at the road side parks since it was so expensive to feed 7 hungry people. It also allowed the children time to run around and exhaust themselves before we set out again in the car for another few hours. For the most part we served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then just plain peanut butter sandwiches after we forgot to put the jelly back in the cooler. My children are so tired of peanut butter they won't eat it anymore. I wonder if we scarred them for life.

It's been between 97-100 the last couple of days. I am dying here!

The car ride up was long, tiring and loud. We made it though and everyone is still alive. The drive was beautiful and thank goodness for DVD players. Junior was great and probably complained the least out of everyone, including DH.

We saw Arlington yesterday and it was amazing. I'll have to wait till I can come up with the words to describe it. The children sat through the changing of the guards absolutely silently which after the previous few days surprised me. Maybe there is hope? Em was busy imitating the clicking of the heels after it was all over. My Great Uncle, his wife and son are buried there so we found their site as well. We saw most of the memorials but did not have time to see everything as they closed while we were walking back from Iwo Jima--I did not realize how big it was.

Today we went to the Smithsonian. First on the list was to visit the dinosaurs since Abs loves them. She was so excited to see all of the fossils and looked at all of them and then rounded the corner and saw all the dinosaur bones and got excited. The she looked up and saw the pterodactyl and was terrified. She didn't want to look at them anymore and kept trying to leave the room. I managed to take a few pictures but she did not want to be near any of the meat eating dinosaurs. She told me the pterodactyl was an omnivore, but insisted it would think her fingers were rodents. She cracks me up. I'll post pictures when I get a chance. (We have to use the wireless internet in the lobby of the hotel since we don't have an ethernet port or adaptor) We also went and saw the Land and Sea Museum (?) and saw a lot of the exhibits that were there. My nephew wanted to see the WWI & WWII planes so we made a point to see those as well.

Tomorrow we are headed to have coffee with our Senator from Texas, yes, we are taking all 4 children. I wonder if they will chase us out of there. We also have a tour of the Kennedy Center setup and we will attend a show that night if everything goes according to plan. Not sure what else is in store.

I am tired and hot and headed to eat ice cream and drink beer.

Packing

Or at least I should be. We leave for DC tomorrow morning with the whole menagerie--the five of us, my mom and my nephew. If nothing else we should have quite an adventure getting there!

We still have to go to the inlaws house to say goodbye to everyone and I worked this morning so I better get started on that packing. I might need a nap first. Junior is down....aren't you supposed to sleep when they are?