hello titus: VA trip: Mt. Vernon

Friday, July 18

VA trip: Mt. Vernon

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty low key. We did lunch at an awesome all-you-can-eat pizza and pasta buffet. We went to the mall and did some shopping and spent time at home relaxing from our day at the beach.

Friday we planned a trip up to DC to visit Mt. Vernon (George Washington's home). It's about a two hour drive. Elliott did great on the way to the beach, but on the way up to DC she spent too much time looking down at the ipad or iphone and just 5 minutes before pulling into Mt. Vernon barfed everywhere in the car. It was disgusting! It's the first time she's thrown up since she was tiny and it was just as bad as I anticipated it to be. THANK GOODNESS my mom was in the back with her and did most of the cleaning, because I was just trying to control my own stomach and not be sick. Yuck. She threw up all over herself, her carseat, and into the diaper bag which was placed perfectly at her feet. Ugh. So gross. Sorry Elliott, but barf is not cute.

We did our best to clean her up and wipe the carseat and my bag up. At this point, we weren't sure if she was just carsick or if she had some kind of bug, so we took it easy and walked around the gift shops and ate some lunch while we waited to make sure she was okay. I was stupid and didn't pack a spare outfit (seriously, who does that?) and so my sister and her husband were gracious enough to buy her this adorable Mt. Vernon shirt that she wore the rest of the day. Ha. She looked so cute running around in it. I have mild throw-up phobia, so of course I felt super sick for the next hour or so, thinking that we probably all had the flu and what a terrible day it was going to be, but it started to pass once I realized that Elliott was completely fine and wasn't going to be sick anymore. Phew. I can get so paranoid. So we paid for our tickets and headed in!

Mt. Vernon was amazing. I learned so much about George Washington. I didn't realize how little I knew about him...or maybe forgot? Who knows. But it was awesome. There were a couple museums to walk through which we did first while we waited for our allotted time for our house tour. There was a great movie about the wars he fought in that had rumbling seats and real snow that fell from the ceiling. Elliott loved it. She kept saying, "again, again!" After a short line in the heat, we got to the house. His house was awesome. 40% of the things in the house were original. Pretty amazing. They even had his and Martha's bed that he died in. After the tour, we walked around a bit outside looking at the grounds and the Potomac River. It was beautiful! Then we walked down to the tomb where him and Martha and a whole bunch of other family members are buried.

Then we hit up the cafeteria again and the gift shops before heading out.

Unfortunately, we hit traffic heading out of DC so it took quite a while to get home. But we stopped for dinner and Elliott did great, so that was a relief. Apparently, I'm gonna have to make sure she looks up a lot when we drive long distance. It was a great day though!