Unexpected blessing

Zane's adoption has been finalized since he was just a couple months old.  We have been dying to take him to the temple, but wanted to have our family there with us.  Over Spring Break the stars aliened and we made it to the temple; and even had lots of family there as well.

We decided on DC because it was easier for my parents to get to, but the added bonus was that Mark's parents were married there, lots of my siblings were sealed to our family there AND Flossie, Bethany and Hannah and their families were all able to make it to share this time with us!

We decided to make a family vacation out of it.  Mark took work off and we drove down Wednesday. Our first stop was Cafe Rio for a late lunch.  Then we met Mark's parents at our hotel in Old Town Alexandria.  We spent the evening walking along the water and checking out the downtown.

The weather did not seem to know that we were on vacation.  It was cold and rainy.

Thursday, we dressed in our rain gear and took the metro to the national mall.  We went to the Air and Space Museum first.

Addy was picked to show how airplane wings work.

We were lucky that it rained while we were inside and stopped when we were out.  After the museum we wondered around outside while the sun broke through the clouds.

We got distracted by the water outside the Capital Building and fed the ducks the rest of our lunch.  I love that my kids can go to NYC just to climb rocks in Central Park and to Washington DC just to play in the water.  (I have many fond memories of doing the same thing as a kid.)

Zane is finally sitting-it has taken so long!

Early afternoon my parents and little siblings arrived, so we headed over to the Natural History Museum to meet them.

After visiting the dinosaurs, the mammals and some amazing photographs we headed back to the hotel.  The rain held off until we got off the metro and then it let loose.  We were all drenched by the time we had walked back to the hotel.  Even poor little Zane, who I had hiding under my poncho, had rain dripping down his face.

For dinner we ordered pizza (our Hawaiian was a sad disappointment because they used orange marmalade as the sauce), and then met everyone (Flossie and kids had arrived at this point) at the hotel pool.

Friday was the big day.  My parent's came by early to take the 3 older kids to the LDS bookstore.  We got ready and headed out with no time to spare.  Of course, our car GPS took us the longest possible way, so we were 30 minutes late to the temple. I walked into the temple stressed out and trying to hurry things along.  We sat down to go over paperwork, and realize we had not brought Zane's adoption papers.  Even more stressed out, I called Stephanie at the adoption agency and she faxed over the needed paperwork.  The temple workers made us take our time and then some.  I sat long enough to stop being stressed and start to think about what an amazing experience we were about to have--and it was.  Zane was a perfect angel through the whole thing, he sat there, as Flossie held him at the alter, and just smiled at us.  What an unexpected blessing he is too our family. It was so fun after the ceremony to look at our family in the mirrors they had on the front and back walls and see our family go on forever.  We are so grateful for temples and eternal families!

Katie is wearing the dress she wore to Jaxon's sealing and her baptism and Addy is wearing her future baptism dress.  Zane is wearing what both Marcus and Jax were sealed and blessed in.

On the way out of the temple we saw the most beautiful painting of a black women.  It really spoke to Addy and she has been talking about it since.

After the temple my parents headed home, and the rest of us went to the zoo.  Marcus and Cooper spent the whole time "par coring" from bench to rock to bench (it ended with Cooper getting hurt as you can imagine).

Every time we go to the library Jaxon picks a new animal to learn about.  He picks 4-5 books about the same animal and spends a couple weeks reading all about them.  His current animal before DC was lions, so he was very excited to see 3 real live lions!  He (and we) had way too much fun watching one of the lions pull a ball out of the water and play with and fight over it.

His reaction to seeing pandas

After the zoo we headed to Cafe Rio for round two, yum, so good!

Sat morning after packing up Grammy and Grandpa had to leave.  We decided to check out the Torpedo Factory Art Museum.  They had artist working on site.  Some were not so excited when they saw our group of crazy kids, but a lot of them were kid friendly.  A few even let the kids help with their art.

Trying to bead an earring.

Before leaving town we had one last hurrah with my sisters.  We met at a bbq place that was big and loud and they didn't even notice the group of kids we showed up with.  

After hanging out as long as we could without having a meltdown, we packed it up and headed back to CT.