Reston Zoo

A few people had told me that the Reston Zoo was a really good place to take kids.  They got to feed animals and see some exotic animals.  So this past week we decided to go.  It is in the middle of the neighborhood and about the 80 acres-so not as big as Grandma Chicken's house.  Piper was jealous because some people's backyards backed up to this zoo.  They had many farm animal and we bought some food to feed them.  A longhorn took most of Christian's food and a camel even took Piper's cup the food was in.  They have bird sanctuary just like Fort Worth Zoo but on a much smaller scale, but the birds were flocking to the kids sticks and they loved it.  We ate lunch and took the wagon ride.  The zoo was good, but a little pricey for what we saw.  We saw everything in about 2 hours.  I am sure we might go back again especially for the spider monkeys that Christian loved.  Here are a few pictures:

 Piper's cup in his mouth

 I don't know who child this is, but he wanted a picture with the Boa.  Piper took it not me

He loved the spider monkeys-I think because he is a monkey

Reconnecting

It was so fun today to reconnect with a friend from college, Heather Henson Shepard.  She was a roommate of one of my roommates in college and we were RAs together.  It was fun to share stories about our kids and husbands.  Our friend, Kelly, use to live here and moved to Alabama just a few weeks before I moved  here and is going through a lot that I am and it is just so comforting to hear about someone having some of the same struggles I am in this crazy move.  Our kids met and played together pretty well.  When you have some strong willed children with more strong willed children there will be some a few issues, but in the end they wanted us to stay so I think it was a success. It was fun to talk about people we both knew many years ago and what they are doing now and how we can't believe it.  It was fun to see how we are moms now and how crazy that is.  I am glad we got to reconnect today in our crazy lives.  Here is a picture of our kids:

All the kids-yes, she has 4

 The oldest girls

 The boys

The girls holding little Maggie!

She got a picture of us together, but I didn't.  It has been almost 20 years.

Climbing trees

One of my favorite things growing up was climbing a great tree in our yard.  I would even just climb it and sit up there and watch the neighborhood.  We had many neighborhood contests in that tree and I always won who could go the highest because I was the tiniest.  We have a good size tree in our back and front yard and Christian has climbed them both.  He loves climbing as much as his mommy did.

Fourth of July 2012

Our neighborhood has fireworks on July 3rd and we were excited to get to see them. We even got invited to sit with our neighbors in their secret spot and also one of Brian's co-workers-so we felt loved. The sad thing is a bad thunderstorm blew through about that time and so the only fireworks we got to see were God's. I did introduce Piper to sitting on the front porch and watching the rain. It is one of my favorite memories growing up is sitting on the front porch with the rain coming down and talking with my parents and sometimes just taking in God's beauty of storms. I have always loved storms. So Piper really wanted to see real fireworks and we could not convince her to watch them on TV so we went to a town about 20 minutes from here to watch their fireworks. It was a really good show and we had great seats and one person even commented it was better than the capital fourth. I told Piper she was right that fireworks are better in person!! A fun thing is right after as we were coming home a bad storm came through and we had to drive through it. God was protecting us as it stopped raining by the time we got home and we have a detached garage so we didn't have to go through the rain to get inside with sleepy kids. Here are some fun picture!!

 What do the Mckean's do while waiting for fireworks?  Electronics-Kindle, Phones, and Touches!

Already met the doctor

As most of you know I am not a big fan of the doctors so we never go unless for a physical or it is really necessary.  Christian had not been to the doctor in over a year until he had a 7 year physical.  Piper got sick on the way home from the Natural History Museum and had a horrible runny nose all week-we went through several boxes of tissues.  On Friday of the same week, Christian got the same fever and nose starting to run.  I know it was just a virus so I tried to ride it our.  Piper on day 10 was still miserable so I called the doctor and asked to see Christian too.  Piper did get antibiotics just because she thought she had an ear infection.  They are finally not blowing their noses every 2 seconds.  We went through 6 boxes of Kleenex in 2 weeks.  The doctor has a lot of the same view I do about sweating out fevers and not giving antibiotics and trying to just get over it.  Hopefully we don't have to see her again for awhile!

Natural History Museum

We ventured into DC. We took the metro,which the kids really loved.  It dropped us off and we walked right onto the mall.  They were setting up something on the mall so it was not as spectacular I would have liked for the kids first view to be. I didn't get many pictures just because Piper was not acting herself and turns out when we got home she had a fever. Piper and I went in the butterfly garden they had and enjoyed seeing all the pretty butterflies. Christian loved seeing all of the dinosaur bones but would not stand still long enough to get a picture. We saw the hope diamond, which is like seeing the Mona Lisa(which I have)-yep that is what it looks like in the pictures.   It is an amazing museum, and we will be going back again and it was super easy to get there on the metro.

Our first few adventure in Virginia

We live about five minutes away from the Air and Space Dulles Smithsonian. It houses the Discovery Space Shuttle, and many other planes from many different times. We decided it would be our first adventure. It was busy since it was a special weekend, but really cool. They also have a air control tower that you can see plans landing and taking off from Dulles. I can honestly say that the Discovery Space Shuttle was amazing. We will be going back. We also got to see the Piper Cub Airplane.  When we had Piper I think a million people when they heard her name asked if my husband was a pilot and my brother even called her Piper Cub for while.  Fun fact is when they flew the Discovery in the elementary school the kids will go to had an outside day just to watch it fly over. Here are some of the pictures