In New York and Pennsylvania, we enjoyed visiting with family, playing with newborn baby goats, digging for fossils, clay and slimy critters in the creek!, touring the Corning Glass Museum, laughing by the campfire, doing lots of laundry at the local laundromat!, eating entirely too many 40th birthday desserts, meeting my newest cousin, visiting my grandmother (and being flooded with memories of childhood visits to Berwick and fun times with cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles), making our own chocolate bars at Hershey's World, and watching them make fudge and other tasty fare (which we sampled as well!) in the Amish country.
In Virginia we visited with more family and friends and spent a few days touring the sites in Washington DC. The highlight for Levi was finally getting to visit the International Spy Museum! By default, we enjoyed our first ever "parking garage picnic" in Union Station (which, after spending far too much time searching, was the only place we managed to find a parking spot!) Our days in DC were hot and involved lots and lots of walking, but memorable no less. We had envisioned strolling by the Reflecting Pool in the cool of the evening ~ unfortunately they had drained the Reflecting Pool for repairs and the cool part of the evening didn't ever really come! Another highlight was visiting with some friends in DC and meeting their new baby. We were even able to avert a near tragedy by visiting the library in my mom's town and replenishing our supply of books!
After DC, we took my mom with us and headed to the beach in Ocean City, MD for several days. The kids got to indulge themselves in the (much warmer!) Atlantic Ocean less than a month after having been in the Pacific! We strolled the boardwalk, saw wild ponies at nearby Assateague Island, played in the waves, did karaoke at the campground, played "candy bar bingo", tye-died t-shirts, ate Dippin Dots, played in the pool, watched movies with Grandma and enjoyed the local air show.
On our way back to Colorado we were able to visit the newlyweds and see their new apartment, enjoy dinner with them and play on our favorite big slides in downtown Omaha.
