Just Freeze: Frozen Water Beads

Mom brought a pack of water beads with us on vacaye and, lucky for us, spotted this idea while we were at the shore.  After soaking the beads for about 1/2 a day, mom split the lot into two big bowls and stuck them right in the freezer.  When we checked the next morning, we had quite the surprise.  Big ice crystals had formed around the water beads (although the beads themselves hadn't frozen).  We set up shop on the deck and went to work -- Cami set out bowls for her "doggie" and I mixed up concoctions.  And we stayed nice and cool in the process.  If mom can ever sufficiently clean out our freezer, we'll be doing this at home as well.

Hungry Like the Wolf: Salisbury Zoo

Our one adventure away from the water this past week at the Eastern Shore was to check out the relatively close by Salisbury Zoo.  Grandpa B had heard that there was a super cool playground there, "Ben's Red Swings," so we decided to check that out first.  Just our luck -- it was designed as a giant "knight and princess castle" -- something for each of us!  We spent time scrambling across alligator balance beams and learning how to swing it on the monkey bars like pros.  Once we had had our playground fix, we walked right in to the adjacent Salisbury Zoo, which is free.

Have you ever seen "We Bought a Zoo?"  It's kind of like that, except just not at a person's house.  Apparently the zoo was founded in the 1950s when someone decided to put animals on "permanent display in the city park."  But it actually feels kind of like someone just put animals in their backyard because all of the exhibits allow you to get pretty close up to the animals.  We saw bison, flamingoes, iguanas, Titi monkeys, sloths, deer, an Andean bear, and many oversized rodents (that were actually on exhibit at the zoo, not like the one's in our alley at home).  AND we heard (and then saw) red wolves howling for their lunch -- it was pretty much one of the coolest things ever.

We eventually started howling for our lunch, too -- and got "Old MacDonalds" as a treat.  And ice cream cones bigger than our heads as an extra treat there as well.  If you are ever vacationing at the Eastern Shore, the Salisbury Zoo is about 30 miles from Ocean City and we'd say worth the trip if you are in need of a day off of the beach.  Downtown Salisbury has some yummy looking restaurants, too (besides "Old MacDonalds" that is) -- we didn't get a chance to check it out, but the Evolution Craft Brewing Co. & Public House looks like a good spot to dine.

"i hear monsters coming" (aka red wolves)

pretending to be a sloth.

"it looks real!"

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay: Princess Anne, MD

It appears that for the month of August, Cam, mom and I are basically like a wild pack of family dogs roving about the east coast.  We have been spending an unexpectedly large amount of time schlepping about while daddy holds down the fort at home.  But we'd had last week's trip to Princess Anne with our Grammie and Grandpa B planned for a while and we couldn't wait -- it didn't disappoint.  Grammie and Grandpa rented a house right on the Wicomico River and we spent the whole week crabbing, fishing, kayaking, binocularing, learning how to swim, glamping, painting oyster shells, fighting a losing battle against the local mosquitoes, staying up late, and waking mom up early.  I think everyone had a blast even though Cam and I were in particularly disobedient moods all week -- hey, it's vacaye.  We'll share some of our adventures in more detail this week, but for now, here's pics of the highlights.

checking out the river upon arrival with Gammie B.

toasting marshmallows and dodging mozzies.

in the pot off our dock.

dinner!  we collected our catch in our super official crab bin.

little hands could not wait.

early a.m. fishing with Grandpa.

we caught one! 

Cam caught one, too! 

the deck was a perfect spot to paint oyster shells from our beach.

lots and lots of shells.

drawing the river on the only rainy day we had.

the sunsets were ridiculous every night.

every night.

Rock Around the Clock: American City Diner

A few weeks ago, I had a stellar visit to the dentist -- yes, it was nice to be sans cavities.  But even better, mom says, I did not try and bite the dentist.  To celebrate we obviously went to eat some sugar at the American City Diner in Chevy Chase, DC.  This place is right up our alley -- it's open 24 hrs, they serve breakfast all day long, and you can get a killer milkshake with your pancakes.  The diner also has an outdoor "movie deck" where they play classic movies for free -- check out the schedule for August.  Fab.

ready for my chocolate toothpaste! 

phew.

The County Fair Comes Our Way: Arlington County Fair

Step right up, step right up, it's fair season!  Last weekend we headed out to the Arlington County Fair and had a blast (even though it was about 8,000 degrees out).  Cam and I both rode ponies this year and went on lots of rides BY OURSELVES -- a big deal, people, a big deal.  It's your typical county fair -- rides, games, fried food, lemonade (and a margarita truck for your mom and pops), pig races, pony rides .... If you didn't get a chance to go, check out KidFriendly DC's fair post for the full scoop -- there are still more yet to come this year, including this weekend!

Spice Girls: Mayur Kabob House Food Truck

We recently made a trip back to the National Museum of the American Indian to check out their Thursday morning storytime.  I'd been there before with mommy, but Kane had never been to the imagiNATIONS exhibit and he loved it.  They've added cool "passport stamping stations" throughout -- you pick up a passport when you enter and then stamp your book as you go through the exhibit learning about different things.  It was a big hit with both of us.  We spent a while doing the drawing activity of the day and then made our way over to the library for storytime.  It turned out that there were a TON of little kids there, which made storytime hard for everyone (including the poor reader), so we spent a lot of time reading books in the library by ourselves instead.  And that worked out just fine.  We also pretended to cook up dinner in the stilt house -- when mom asked me to go "fish" in the river outside for dinner, I took a plastic bin and pulled "hot dogs" and "pizza" out.  Clearly we've been eating out too much this summer.

To that end, after storytime was over, we circled back to the L'Enfant plaza to pick up lunch from a food truck.  Kane insisted that he wanted "chicken on a stick," so we chose the Mayur Kabob House food truck.  We are both big into ordering and paying for our own food these days (another sign we've been eating out too much), and walked right up to the window and asked for "chicken on a stick, please."   We ordered a mild chicken kabob, which came with rice and two sides (we got chickpea masala and spinach curry) and naan.  It was $9.00, but it fed all of us.  And we split a side order of vegetable samosas, too.  It was way too hot to eat outside, so we metroed our lunch home and ate there.  Kane liked the chicken (although he did complain it was too spicy) and I loved the rice and chickpea masala.  The naan was AWESOME, too.  Overall, it was probably a little hot for our taste buds, but mom loved it and we'd definitely go back.  Plus, we spent a long time discussing the difference between American Indians and the Indian food from the food truck.  You just never know, you know?

The Point of No Return: Jones Point Park

We heard about Jones Point Park last week from KidFriendly DC and their link up to the (new to us) local blog Preparing for Peanut, which has a great review of the park.  Heeding PFP's warning about the lack of shade, we headed out nice and early.  The park's website (which clearly needs to be updated) said it was located under the Woodrow Wilson bridge and to turn left after the bridge onto an unnamed street and park behind an apartment building.  The Commonwealth of Virginia and mommy have a mutual dislike of each other and half way there, mom realized she had no idea which bridge was the Woodrow Wilson.  We eventually figured it out and actually had no problem locating the unnamed street or unnamed apartment building.  We parked and hopped on to the Mount Vernon trail to follow it along to the park -- this was just fine on the way because we were exploring.  It was not so fine on the way back when we were hot, sweaty and hungry.  There appeared to be a local street that leads to a parking lot right off of the playground and we'll have to check that out the next time.

The park is right along the river and is truly amazing -- tons of space to run around, paved area under the bridge for fledgling bike riders, bathrooms, a sweet playground with a "pirate ship," and all kinds of historically important things, including the Jones Point Lighthouse which stands above the old D.C. boundary cornerstone set by George Washington to originally establish the southernmost corner of the District.  Now you know I love me some GW, so I was psyched.  We spent most of our morning playing on the pirate ship, making dinner there and serving it up on deck.  And for the first time ever, I wanted to go on the swings.  And I LOVED it.  I particularly loved Cami pushing me and mom seemed pretty interested in that arrangement as well.  We took a walk through some "butterfly fields," then a "shaded wood," to the lighthouse (can you tell we watch a lot of Dora?).  We were sweaty and mom was tired of being on high alert (despite our constant adventuring, it makes mom nervous to let us run unfettered in new, vast open spaces next to open bodies of water because, well, we don't listen).

It's a little bit of a schlep for us and technically in Virginia (although, ahemm, it contains the original cornerstone of DC), but we'll be back!

mom wouldn't pipe down about how this little climbing structure reminded her of 

some computer game she used to play in the 1990s.  oh, mom.

lovie monsters! 

D.C.'s cornerstone

viva la D.C.!