Richmond Day

Last month we had a free Saturday and decided to head to Richmond and do some exploring. We had heard good things about the White House of the Confederacy and Museum of the Confederacy (ie - that they weren't Confederate shrines) and we decided to check them out. It's kind of funny - they're squished right in the middle of Richmond between highways, hospitals and other random buildings. After a few minutes driving around, however, we managed to track them down. :)

Although the house tour guide was a little funny about Evie going on the tour, he was good and the house was very interesting. The Jefferson Davis apparently didn't believe in stifling their children's' natural, "creative" tendencies and so didn't believe in discipline. It sounds like they were quite the bad kids! Their house was beautiful, even if it sounds like it was a bit dysfunctional in real life.
No pictures were allowed inside, but here we are outside.
Out back...

In the front... not quite as grand (or white) as the real White House.
The museum of the confederacy was mostly interesting because of all the actual items they had. Here I am in front of Robert E Lee's tent - everything in it was really his...
And here is the sword and uniform he wore to the surrender at Appomattox!
Evelyn and Nathan liked the cannon best. :)

The Virginia Capitol is not far from the Museums so we walked over there next.

Cool buildings on our way over...
The capitol is a very large and beautiful building, originally designed by Thomas Jefferson. It was hard to get it all in one picture, but here are my attempts (there is a main, Greek temple looking building with large wing additions on either side).
This statue of George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon is said to be the most realistic statue that we have. Houdon came over from France and took extremely detailed notes, sketches and castes - he even covered GW's face with oil, stuck feathers in his nose so he could breathe, and made a complete plaster of his face!

Here is the exact place R.E. Lee stood to accept command of the Army of Northern Virginia.
We also enjoyed touring the different rooms and chambers.

Aunt Emily and Aunt Caroline came to visit!

After our trip to Ohio, Emily and Caroline came back with me to spend a week with us. We had so. much. fun!! The week included shopping, CW, reading, relaxing, the beach, playing with Evie, eating good food, Sweet Frog, celebrating Caroline's birthday and much more! It was so good to spend so much sister time together. Here are just some of the pictures from our adventures. :)

The day after we got here we headed to Virginia Beach!! Nathan's parents were able to come with us which was fun. :) Nathan, Car, Grandma and Grandpa Mortier and I spent quite a bit of time in the waves. With the exception of one wave which knocked us all over, smashed into the ground and filled our mouths with salt, the waves weren't too big and great to play in.

Emily and Evelyn preferred the shore most of the time. :)
Chillin' after getting ice cream at Dairy Queen...
And of course it's not a trip to VA Beach without a picture with Neptune!!
Emily and Caroline were able to get a great deal on annual CW passes (guess you'll just have to come back lots!!! :)) so we spent a lot of time down there.

Evie preferred the horses to the hats...

We all toured the palace again - we always enjoy going through it. The entry will all the weapons and the ballroom are our favs.

Another day we headed to Maymont for to have a picnic and enjoy the beautiful house, grounds and animals.

A lot of my fav pictures from Maymont are on Car and Em's cameras, so you'll have to visit Em's FB page for more. :)
Oh and Nana, here is a picture of Evie looking beautiful in her white dress you gave her!
Thank you for coming to visit, Aunt Em and Aunt Car Car! Evelyn was quite despondent the day after you left. :) You're welcome back any time! :)

She's off and running!

While Evelyn isn't quite running on her own yet, she is with her walking push toy! She was getting frustrated running into things in the kitchen with company preparations going on, so we took her out to the sidewalk. She was thrilled and ran back and forth several times! While she is standing on her own now, she hasn't taken a step yet without her walking toy. We took this video today as we were out enjoying the beautiful day and the fact that it's a long weekend! :)

Can you believe she went to above, from this...

...in just 9 months??

Oh and yes, the push toy is missing some pieces :), it was $1.50 second hand and we didn't want to invest a lot of money in a toy that she wouldn't necessarily like. :)

O-H-I-O

At the end of August Evie and I flew up to Ohio for a few days and then Emily and Caroline flew back with us to spend a week in Williamsburg. It was such a wonderful trip. I was a little nervous to fly alone with Evie, but she was a dreamboat and I discovered that people are extremely nice to you if you're flying alone with a baby. :) Evelyn loved the 24/7 attention she got in Ohio. So much so that she had a hard time sleeping! She was up bright and early every day. The first morning I let her crawl around the room while I laid in bed. I looked over a few seconds later to this...
and then a few seconds later I heard grunts calling for help. She had crawled under the chair and couldn't figure out how to get back out! :)

It was a full three days of spending time with family, friends, basement cleaning and shopping. I'm envious of their LOFT outlet!! :) You can tell by these pictures that Evelyn loved the bigger place to explore and non-stop attention. :)

One night we had a bonfire which Evie loved. She helped Grandpa build it. :)
While I was there Katie moved out for her teaching job in PA. We were all sad when she left so we threw ourselves into basement cleaning and moving Emily and Caroline into their own rooms. Evelyn enjoyed all the excitement, and all the random things that our cleaning found. I think these are the remaining Mardi Gras beads from Katie's and my *extensive* collection.

After all the fun we headed back to VA for the week! Flying with aunts is much easier than alone. Evie thought it was great too - three people to crawl all over instead of just one! :p