The Smiths and The Conners Take on DC!

We headed out about 10:00 Friday morning for our first stop: The National Zoo!  The guys drove Katie and Nick's van with the three big kids.  Katie and I drove in our car with Caleb--the sweet boy was so excited to have a quiet car to nap in ;)  We found good parking and off we went in search of animals!

 Josh and Jackson checking out the elephants

Caleb and Katie :)

 Jackson riding the frog...

Paige riding the frog...

And, Lexi riding the frog!

 My sweet boys :)

From the Zoo we drove to park by the Jefferson Memorial and got ready for some walking!  We started by walking through the FDR Memorial.  The kids LOVED all of the waterfalls!

Nick was a trooper and gave shoulder rides to give all of his kids a break from the stroller/walking.  Caleb made quite a game out of squirming around!

 It was our first visit to the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial!

Katie, Paige, Lexi, Nick, and Caleb in front of Indiana's sign at the WWII Memorial

 Next time we see each other, there will be one more little guy added to this picture!!!

 Nick and Paige were sitting by the fountain, and that was adorable!  Then, Katie sat down with Lexi and Caleb to join them, and it was a gorgeous, adorable picture...until we realized in the car that the shutter hadn't opened on their camera :(  I feel so guilty that our picture turned out like this!

 Just like when I was pregnant with Jackson, I made it up ALL of the stairs at the Lincoln Memorial!  It really wasn't so bad ;)  Jackson loves jumping over/down from ANYTHING!  He was SUPER excited to jump down all the stairs at the various memorials we visited :)

We had made the conscious decision to skip naps so we could spend as much time in the city as possible.  The kids did AWESOME!  Sure, we probably went through two whole bags of Goldfish and lots of other snacks, but they were really troopers.  Katie and Nick brought their double stroller and we had ours, so we had a spot for everyone to ride.  They were really pretty happy to ride wherever there was a seat.  There were a few times we made everyone ride, but we really tried to let them get out and run around whenever we could.  It had not occurred to me that we would be sitting in rush hour traffic on 95 on our way back home, so the guys put on a movie in the van for the bigger kids.  Apparently this wasn't necessary to keep the peace since Lexi and Jackson were quickly in the above poses :)  Traffic wasn't too bad, and we all got home around 7 to enjoy pizza for dinner...

 ...and some movie time for the kids :)  

We calculated that we walked about 10 miles during the day!!!  GO US :)