Scott & Amy

The main reason for us going to DC this year was Paul's brother Scott got married. It was a perfect day for the couple. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we got to stand around in the heat waiting for pictures with two kids who were already tired and cranky. (Small sacrifice though)




Lana giving big hugs to Uncle Dave. We didn't take a lot of pictures being occupied with keeping the kids in line and hydrated.


Tanner keeping himself hydrated.

Kevin and Emma.

Grandpa.

Scott & Amy.

So sweet! Congratulations Scott & Amy!

Downtown DC

Friday morning we went downtown with Dave to go see the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum. We tried to get tickets to tour the White House but it turns out you have to do it like 30 days before you go. We did get tickets to tour the Capitol Building but they scheduled us to go right during Scott and Amy's wedding ceremony, so that wasn't very helpful at all.


In this picture we're on our way back to the Metro and the kids (and I) are pretty much pooped from walking around all morning.

Paul is always making new friends everywhere we go.

Both kids really enjoyed seeing the "big choo-choo's" up close.

Tanner getting eaten by a gigatic Tyranosauraus Rex head.

I am so glad these things are dead. I would never want to come face to face with one. Ever. And if I do, I hope it eats me quickly.

Tanner on the metro. He really enjoyed it. Except he thought that every stop was our stop so I had to watch him closely to make sure he stayed in his seat.

Harper's Ferry, WV

Washington DC has a ton of great stuff to see and do (a lot of it being free!) and we are usually in the area once a year but we don't always put forth an effort to go and do stuff. This year we decided we were going to do at least one thing we've never done and it turned out to be Harper's Ferry, WV. It's only about an hour outside of the DC area (that is always dependent on traffic). The drive up was pretty neat, we drove through a couple of small towns and when I could get internet access on my phone, I looked up the history of the towns and read it aloud to Paul (the kids were more interested in pestering each other in the back seat).




It really was the perfect day to get out and go. The weather was in the 80's, not humid at all. Just fabulous. We walked up and down the streets and poked our head in a few of the shops. Paul spotted a wooden toy car he thought Tanner might like but it turned out to be "a piece of art" priced at $35. Uh, sorry Tanner.

We had great views of the two rivers, the Potomac and the Shenendoah.

We even walked across the bridge to the Appalachian Trail. On the left side of the fence is a rail road track. I made the remark of how intense it would be if a train came by while we were walking the bridge. Not 2 minutes later you hear the sound of a train horn coming towards us. Thankfully it was on another set of tracks a few hundred feet away from the bridge, I think the kids would've freaked out for sure if it'd been right next to us.

I can now say I've been on the Appalachain Trail. Not sure if I'd call it hiking since we only walked about 300 feet of it or so.

The kids were surprisingly well behaved while we were there. We stopped by a little place to eat lunch. A man we sat next to at lunch told us he served in the Army with a man from Magnolia, MS which just so happens to be where Paul is building a house right now.

Before we left we decided to get some ice cream. While Tanner and I enjoyed our cones they were so big we couldn't finish them. Lana on the other hand wouldn't let us leave until she polished off her entire cup. She literally licked it clean. The girl can eat some icecream!

Dirt Cheap

Here in Mississippi, there is a store called Dirt Cheap. It is part of a chain of stores (Hudsons, and Treasure Hunt make up the sister stores) that buys salvage items from national retailers, sifts through the trash, and sells whats left in their stores. The prices get reduced progressively on the items until they sell. Now granted, just the nature of the business model leads to shelves full of items nobody will buy because they are either damaged, missing parts, ugly, or just undesirable (like all the high school musical 3 dolls, or the grocery cart full of greeting cards for $10). I do enjoy stopping in every once in a while to look for a great deal. These are some items we have bought:
Leapster hand held game systems-$6-$12 ea.
Leapster Games- all under $12, some as few as $4.
WII remotes-$6
WII Games-less than $20
35 lb Electric Jack hammer-$12
Professional Tile saw with table-$15
Sony-noise canceling earphones-$10
a bunch of toys
Bicycle-$12
Scooters-$12
Misc clothes
Samsung blue ray dvd player with netflix, pandora, blockbuster streaming installed-$38
Sony HD Handicam with 8 gig internal flash memory-$150.00
Gas bar-b-Q grill-$7.00
Dresser for tanner-$65.00
and the list goes on.
I am always very cautious when buying stuff from Dirt Cheap, because you never know why the retailer counted it as salvage, is it broken, missing parts, a return they couldn't send back to mfg, opened packaging, damaged packaging, damaged clothing, overstock? So far we have been pretty lucky, we have only bought a few things that were unusable. The store works out for me because sometimes I am a compulsive buyer, and this store lets me scratch my compulsive itch for, well, Dirt Cheap.
-Paul