Rights of Passage

Another daughter is on her way to fun and learning. We took dear daughter #2 to college on Saturday. She is gonna have the experience of her life! She has a great attitude and she has some fun classes. She has been emailing her new roommate and I know she will really enjoy the girls in her apartment. I am envious of her new opportunities and fun times she will experience. Needless to say, I got a little choked up as we drove off leaving her there. It's all apart of these kinds of transitions and I will never be good at it. We love her tons!

Hard at Work

Well, remodeling is going slow. DH has been working a lot in the evenings. Not much here being done while he is gone. We ordered the cabinets, appliances and countertop. The next step is to get the "box" out and have him build up the east wall a few inches, bring in the tape-man and then paint. Here DD#2 is hard at work pulling up the tack boards and base boards.

DH has been doing a beautiful job up on the ceiling. He is here putting on a second coat of paint.

The paint color is called "cement". I really love it! He hung the lights in ready to take the scaffolding down. 

Last Day 14

Time to head back home! This vacation totally rocked! We checked out of our hotel and headed for a nice brunch at a Diner on the Triple D television show. It didn't disappoint. 

The Red Arrow Diner

Lots of famous people had their names engraved on the counter where they sat. We headed over to drop off our van and a shuttle took us over to the Manchester airport. 
  Our flight took us down to Atlanta where we had a two hour layover. There again, good old McDonald's for dinner and a dark journey back to the Salt Lake Airport. 

Day 13

Happy Birthday DD#3!
Unfortunately we had the biggest driving day of the whole vacation on her birthday. We left the Hotel and went down to tour the Philadelphia Mint. Enjoyed it! Drove towards New Hampshire stopping a little above Providence at an Ice Cream Parlor. We sang "Happy Birthday" over a cone. Had troubles finding ice cream parlors on the good ole' GPS. One of the places she led us to was directly on someones driveway in the middle of no where.  Heck if the owner of the home knew where the ice cream parlor was. We had a laughing time finding a place. We checked into the Manchester Sheraton and the girls went swimming. 

Day 12

It's Sunday. We slept and slept. We slowed down the day because #2dd had a horrible cough. She has been sick the last couple days. We are in Philadelphia. It's a pretty city, at least where we are staying. It's the 5th largest city in America. I can attest to that! Sure has some beautiful old buildings too.
   We drove uptown to see the Liberty Bell. It was very hot today,(and humid).

We didn't get tickets for the Independence Hall because they were so limited and the crowds are many. We took a few pictures. 

    From there we went back to Lancaster for a Sunday drive. We saw Amish buggies and lots of families on their porches. TOO COOL.  The countryside is just beautiful like a post card! The beautiful large white homes, red barns and grain silos are a sight. 

   We drove back to the hotel area and found a place where we ordered pizza, Philly sandwiches and chicken wings. Good food and nice people there. We went back to the hotel and watched a movie. Good relaxing day.

Headed toward Providence, RI

Day 11

We checked out of our very nice hotel rooms and found a grocery store for some breakfast. We set a course for Gettysburg.  When getting out of the van, the heat and humidity just smacked us in the face. We watched how the armies loaded the cannons. So interesting. They also mentioned that the loaders probably suffered hearing loss.

We had DIL's cd of the audio tour of the area so we jumped back into the van and took the driving tour. The Gettysburg area is very green with rolling hills. It is easy to imagine the battle fought there in that area. 

After the tour, we drove through Harrisburg to the Hershey factory. Come to find out there was a One Direction boys band concert. There were girls and their moms everywhere. After the concert started it wasn't so packed. We took a little boat tour to see how Hershey makes their chocolates. Thought about buying some but didn't because of the extreme heat.

   We had our GPS take us through the back country of Lancaster. We saw beautiful farms and barns. So much corn and green rolling hills. We saw Amish farms and a few cute bunnies in fields. Again, I wished we would have had more time at Gettysburg and the Amish area. We got on to the Pennsylvania turnpike and pulled off again at a rest stop for a Philly sandwich. We headed to our next hotel. We were very tired!
   

Day 10

I am writing this at 1:30 a.m. Wow, are we ever bushed! We walked miles today. We drove the van to the Greenbelt Metro Station and bought everyone an all day Metro pass so that we could go everywhere on one pass.
   Our first stop was up by the Capitol building where we went to the Library of Congress in the Jefferson building. We had a tour guide take us all over the library.

Library of Congress

Library heart....

Main entrance in the Library of Congress

Metro trains....tunnels under the ground....cool!

Some of the metro exits were very steep!

She was so knowledgeable. We need to take the virtual tour online again to see what we've missed. Loved seeing the Gutenberg Bible and Thomas Jefferson's library. From there, we walked across the street to the Capitol visitors center and then took their walking tour with audio earphones. That was super great.

Wished we could have had more time there to walk around and explore. 

It seemed smaller than on television, but beautiful. There were activists across the street as we passed. Something about Egypt. We hadn't seen news in so long we weren't sure what that was all about.

    We walked  to Chinatown and ate. We got back on the metro and went all the way down to the Pentagon Memorial and walked around to see the 184 plus names on the memorials.

Each of the wings came from the ground with names on each representing each person that died. Under the wing is water and lights. It's supposed to be very beautiful at night.

That took a long time to walk. #1dd was pooped on by a bird on her back and hair. We went down to the metro again and then on to Arlington. On the way, the girls saw their first glimpses of fireflies!  The cemetery was closed for the night so we again walked and walked across the Potomac Bridge over to the Lincoln Memorial  That is where we felt like we needed to pinch ourselves that we were there! We took pictures and sat on the stairs overlooking the mall and the Capitol. We walked over to the Vietnam memorial and walked the pathway of names. We then walked and walked some more back down to our Metro Station. We transferred twice and then on to the greenline and back to our van. Our feet felt like bloody stubs! 
   We drove ten miles or so to the Washington DC temple. Only one side of the temple was lit. It was HUGE and very beautiful. On to the hotel and to bed! Wonderful, exhausting day! 

Day 9

What a great day! We took our van into the train station because it was free parking for the holiday. We took the train in to L'Enfant metro station and then walked to the Air & Space Museum. Very cool airplanes, rockets, missiles ,etc.

Amelia Earhart's airplane

Grandpa would really have enjoyed that museum the most. We saw three missionaries on their P-day. We walked across the mall to the Natural History museum. Before that, we had our pb&j sandwiches at the McDonald's there in the food court. Dh bought everyone shakes to go with it. dd#2 and I really enjoyed the DNA exhibit there.

We zoomed over to the Museum of Art. There we took in a few famous artists like Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh. Very cool.

The Boating Party

Wished we could have had more time at all of these museums. They closed early for the holiday.

We found a spot on the mall grass and sweat until dark. We were right in front of the Washington monument. Only the umbrellas we brought protected us. What was strange to me was the lack of security. We saw no officers anywhere. Weird! The fireworks began around 9:15. There seemed to be thousands around us. It was packed! The fireworks were very pretty and was very over-the-top towards the end.

The crowds moved us toward the metro station. It was packed, hot, steamy, and stinky. We got on the train back to Greenbelt and then on to our van. We went to Wendy's and Taco Bell for a very late dinner, crashed at the hotel! Great day!!!

Day 8

Holocaust  Museum entrance

We purchased two rooms at this hotel. It has been nice that everyone has a bed. Everyone got up early, had cereal, packed us a lunch and headed for the shuttle. It took us to Greenbelt Station where we bought tickets and took the train to the Smithsonian stop. We zoomed over to the Holocaust Museum for tickets, roamed the exhibits and then went in at 12:00 to walk the main exhibit. We stayed there for about three hours. It was very interesting. A few of us skipped the graphic stuff. We then walked over to the mall where they were setting up tents for the 4th of July festivities.  We then walked over to the American History Museum and enjoyed seeing all of the cool things there like Julia Child's kitchen, Kermit the Frog, the Nauvoo temple's original Sun Stone, too much to mention!

Mary Lincoln's dress

Sun stone

Julia, wow she was tall or is #4 short?

Harry Potter's robes 

Metro station

The mall, preparing for tomorrow.

Washington Monument (scaffolds for repairs)

We decided to head back to the hotel and while we were headed back, the train system stopped because a conductor drove down the wrong track delaying everyone. Finally to the shuttle van and back just in time to get to our van and head to Shane's BBQ Restaurant. 

   Getting back, we planned our trip for the next day. While on the computers down in the lobby, #3 went to sleep in the hotel room. She didn't answer the door or the phones. Dead to the world! Very funny.  More to come tomorrow.

Bush-whacked!!

Day 7

Just to let you know, we didn't get out early on these big city days because you would get stuck in rush hour morning traffic. We had a lazy morning and got ready to leave New Jersey. We stopped to get a red box movie for the road.Have to tell you about the freeways here... All of the freeways have huge amounts of trees on each side of the road. The only way you can tell you are passing a city is by the signs. We loved the rest stops. Utah can really take a lesson about resting. You pull off the road and there is a gas station and one or more eateries. When going off the freeway, be prepared to stop fast. The one lane road seems to go off into the trees with a stop sign at the bottom. We drove to our hotel in Maryland. Dh and #3 went to the store for laundry soap and quarters. We got some pretty bad take-out Chinese, did our laundry and planned for the next day's adventure.

Day 6

We allowed the girls to sleep in a little. We all needed it after yesterday. DH went to Walmart for breakfast foods. It was really raining hard. Flash flood warnings were all over the news. We got outta the hotel and took the shuttle van again back to the train station and then went on the Penn Station. We purchased Metro passes so that we could go anywhere without having to pay each time we got on the metro.  We took the subway down to midtown and got in line for tickets to walk through the 9/11 memorial. After security screening and umbrellas up, we walked around the square fountains that were once the towers. The names of the victims were engraved in the stone around the outsides of the fountains.  It was a very somber sight. 

We walked and walked and walked.........

Entering subway

   Next, we had a time walking down to the Statton Island Ferry. It's sure hard to find your way around. People that we talked to in asking directions were so dang nice! I was so impressed with the kindness we were shown.  In the ferry station, we waited for the next boarding and there was a violinist that was performing with a minus track. It was so beautiful. The ferry pulled up and there was a mass exodus to get on the boat. On the trip we got to see the Statue of Liberty, but got a closer view of her on the return trip. She had been closed because of the hurricane Sandy destruction. She was an awesome sight! 

Dh wanted a hotdog at a vendor .

   It rained and rained until about 4:00. Glad dh bought everyone umbrellas. Dd#3 got splashed by a bus. Funny! We found another subway entrance and zoomed up to Little Italy. We walked around and found an in-and-out pizza dive. Pretty good pizza. From there, we walked up to Time Square to purchase some souvenirs  On to Penn Station, to train, to hotel van and back to the 12th floor. The girls wanted to swim. Dh and I had a complementary appetizer vouchers at the hotel restaurant. Every one sacked out! Very tired. Observations:  The subways were so much cleaner than I had thought they would be. The subway systems are noisy, stuffy and hard to get your metro card to scan right so as to get through the turnstile  Dh's observation was that he loved seeing all the cultural diversity. We saw Traditional Indian, Asian, Jew, French, Italian, Rich and Poor. So interesting to watch.