d.c., camping, and go cougs!

well, we have severely been slacking in the department of blogging. we have had a very packed couple of weeks. it started off with a trip out to maryland to visit my sister, rachel, and her family. we were so excited to get to see her new addition to the family, baby ty. he is such a cutie, i can't even stand it! our visit out there was packed with fun. the first few days, we just relaxed and hung out. then on thursday we began our sightseeing adventures.


thursday, we headed up to philadelphia for some good eats and a history lesson. we started off by stopping at a famous philadelphia cheese steak place. yum. they were delicious. the first one we ate was with provolone cheese, the second we had was philly style, with cheez whiz. they were both so good, we couldn't decide which one we liked better. our next stop was the liberty bell and independence hall. it was great to learn all of the history behind the cracking of the bell and also the important events that took place in independence hall.


our final destination in philadelphia was the rocky steps. we walked up the steps, put our arms in the air, sang the theme song, then walked back down. it was a lot of fun. friday, we set out for d.c. we started at the world war ii memorial and really enjoyed it. we walked up to the lincoln memorial next, however, we were not able to go inside. some idiot chained himself to abraham lincoln and so it was blocked off by the police! we headed back to the museums afterwards and visited the bureau of printing and engraving. we saw how they make money and even measured our worth in dollars!


saturday, we checked out a famous crab cake place in annapolis on the water. it was delicious. bryan and danny had all you can eat crab cakes (they had to take a lesson from the waiter on how to crack them!) and i had crab cakes, while rachel ate salmon. grace and aurora had tons of fun playing on the dock below the restaurant. it was pretty hard to get to the restaurant, and they say it is easier to find by boat! crazy! grace ate the meat from one crab claw and on sunday broke out in a major rash. i guess she has a shellfish allergy. yikes!


we headed back home on monday night and relaxed for about 2.5 seconds, then started packing up for our camping trip with the thompsons. we camped from 2 nights at san mateo campground in san clemente. we had tons of fun. the kids were filthy dirty, but they had a lot of fun too! on thursday, we headed down to the beach for a day of fun in the sun. the dutch oven cooking was so yummy, and the weather was perfect.


for labor day weekend, we dropped the kids off at grandma's and headed up to provo to see aaron and catch the byu opening game. aaron is doing well... completely adjusted to life on his own, and the game was great.... but super hot! byu won, and all was well. by the way, aren't we great at taking pictures of ourselves!


this past saturday, we headed up to the rose bowl with mike and amber to see byu play ucla. that was a fun game. byu probably had about 15,000 fans there! we had awesome seats. 3rd row! the picture of cosmo shows our view of the field! we were level with the field. i have never seen a game so close and it was awesome. byu played well, but a couple of turnovers cost them the game. still, we had tons of fun! i have included a video of our view of the first touchdown byu made!





hopefully, our next post will be much sooner. gracie starts preschool tomorrow, so i will have to post some pictures of her first day and maybe she will have some funny stories to tell!