I think that covers all of the states/territories we explored!

Much to my surprise, the Saturday after Alaire’s surgery we boarded our plane to the East Coast for a family and sight-seeing vacation. Resort LaRoi gave us a MUCH NEEDED few days to catch our breath and float in the pool. Mike & Sheryl’s place is beautiful and their loving hospitable spirits made us all feel right at home.

Along the way, we enjoyed a Maryland crab feed, a trip to the National Air and Space museum in Dulles; Discovery a major highlight of the trip (if Mike could only have found a way to sneak me a tile)! Grandma and Grandpa babysat while Mike, Sheryl, Graham and I traveled on the hot and sticky metro to enjoy a National’s game and see Michelle who works for the team.

The guys and I played golf and then we took the Mike LaRoi Gettysburg tour, another highlight! As you’ll see from photos below, we had THE BEST tour guide who showed us how to load cannons and even played the history CD in the car as we drove through the battlefields. Even more fun, was Art & Mike on walkies discussing points of history along the way.  All got me quite excited for when our kid(s) starts learning about American History in school. We will most certainly plan another big trip and just as certainly, I will assign Alaire and VB2 a history project prior to the trip; I think that sounds like fun!

After our tour of Gettysburg, Mike brought up some Civil War artifacts including a wool blanket, pup tent and pistol carried by his Great Grandfather who fought in the battle of Antietam. Amazing. The only thing I would have enjoyed more would have been seeing Mike in full reenactment costume (he was even in the movie Glory).

After our wonderful stay with the LaRois, we visited an old and dear WaMu friend Ellen who made us a scrumptious crab cake dinner. Can’t believe we didn’t get a photo! We enjoyed a whirl-wind tour of DC, the WWII memorial the most impressive. On our last night we enjoyed an evening with Ken, Alison & Cole who took us out for a wonderful dinner. Thankfully, Alaire behaved beautifully at the fine dining venue, however, we learned later that she was simply storing up her toddler meltdowns for the plane ride home. Oh well!

Thank you to our wonderful hosts and hostesses along the way and to Grandma & Grandpa Vail for helping along the ride.