A Day in the Life...

Spelunking, the Easy Way

Technically, I don't think I can use the term spelunking if we were walking on an eight foot wide man-made concrete trail, but we did go on a cave tour.  It was freezing cold that day and we were happy to finally get into the warm 60 degree cave. 

 

It is huge!  Surprisingly huge!  It has the largest entrance of any commercial cave at 126 feet wide and 25 feet high.

Wow!  

The guide said that there are 2600 caves within a 50 mile radius of this one. 

  

A view back to the visitors' center.

There were lots of stalactites and stalagmites, of course.  Here is one called "Santa with a club in his hand."  The girls found that one amusing. 

  

This "room" is the cave's namesake.  The discover's wife thought it looked a lot like a cathedral.  It was originally called Bat's Cave, but they thought Cathedral Caverns might bring more visitors.

  

This frozen waterfall looks a bit like a parade of elephants walking away from you.

  

I forget the name of this one, but it looks like some kind of monster to me.  Or maybe a giant eel.

These formations at the bottom were broken by an earthquake...yep, an earthquake in Alabama...who knew?  

 

Behind the girls is Goliath, a massive column that is 45 feet high and 243 feet in circumference.

   

The cave at it's tallest point is twelve stories from a deep rocky pit to the soaring ceiling.   (This is a more well lit shot from their website.  No matter how many ways I tried to take the picture, it looked like a black hole.)

 

This is a rarity...the five of us in a picture together! 

 

After 1 1/2 hours trekking through the cave, we were all happy to take a seat.

Mike and the girls with Grandma and Grandpa.    

The tour went quite deep into the cave, but they are going to start "wild caving" tours sometime soon.  Past the man-made tour trail was a river and a crystal room.  You couldn't pay me to do that, but Mike was all about it. 

Lego-mania

Earlier this year, we signed the girls up for Lego-mania at a local recreation center.

They divided kids into age groups.  Thankfully, the girls were in different groups (balloon colors) and got to make different things.  At the start of the 45 minute time limit, the announcer gave the theme that each group was to build. 

 

Rachel was the only girl in her age group and man, were those boys serious about their Lego's.  Some of them had all the parts for huge spaceships, which happened to be their theme. 

I think she did pretty well considering she didn't bring any spaceship parts.

I wasn't sure if Erin would be that into it, but she really was!  You don't often see her this serious.

Her category was space...anything to do with space.

Erin enjoying a hot dog while the judges did their thing.  Just in case you are wondering, all those white things are stars, the big red thing is a planet with a man standing on it.  And, the lone green door leads into a spaceship.  Erin said, "If you just look at it, it's not all that great, but if I tell you what it all is, then it's really cool." 

Alli had to build a skyscraper. 

Almost done!

The finished product...She was in for a surprise when she won second place in her age group!

I'm not sure if she is smiling because she won or because she got to have hot dogs and Oreos. :)

 

   

 

 

The Other DC Trip...

Last week, the girls and I, along with Erin's friend Shelby, took a trip to DC.  I decided to try out the Metro system, mainly because it was Friday and I'll do just about anything to avoid weekday traffic in DC.  I thought if we parked outside the Beltway and took the train in, we'd be spared from all that.  It didn't go as smoothly as planned, but we had a great time.

Our starting point...who knew so many people biked around in 20 degree weather.  Nippy!

Shelby has three brothers and a baby sister...she was looking forward to some "girl time".

First time on the Metro...they were so excited!

Actually, it was my first time on the Metro too!  Maybe that's why it took us two and a half hours to get to DC when it should have taken a little over one.

We went to the museum of American History.  It was opening day after two years of refurbishing. Yes, it was really crowded.  They have the original Star Spangled Banner and Dorothy's ruby slippers.  (We saw neither, but they are there!)  Hey, we did find out who invented Kevlar!  It was a woman who worked at 3M...we'll leave it at that.

There is quite a bit for kids to do there.  Here is a windsurfing demonstration.  It's tougher than it looks!

Real scientists work in the kids' lab and do lots of hands-on experiments.  She is explaining that this is a model of a cell and the nucleus is where the DNA lives.  The red part is the DNA.

Using various chemicals, they proceeded to extract a gooey looking substance from what once was a plain watery-looking liquid. 

There it is!  I know it looks like something else, but that is cow DNA.  Cool...little scientists in the making!

Leaving earlier than we wanted to so as to avoid that traffic.   See the Washington Monument peeking out from behind the museum?  No time to get any closer to it today.  (Plus, they were freezing and begged me not to.)  Next time!

This is us on the wrong train headed to the Pentagon!  That didn't help our "let's get out of DC quickly" plan.

We finally got on the right train and ended up back at the car with seven minutes still left on the meter.  Whew!  Unfortunately, I also missed my exit on the interstate.  There went my plans to get home by 4!  We ended up an hour from home (going in the wrong direction), so we decided to hit Cheesecake Factory and see a movie.  (Highly recommend "Bolt", by the way.)  I think we finally wandered in at 9:30-ish.  It still ended up being one of the funnest days we've had in a while.  But, I didn't even get out of my jammies the next day!

 

   

   

Washington National Cathedral...Wow!

Rachel has a week off from her co-op, so I decided to do a couple of field trips.  We went to DC last week to see the grand re-opening of the American History museum.  This week we went back to DC to see the Washington National Cathedral.  I had never heard of it until I happened upon a PBS special about it.  Actually, I meant to record a cooking show , but when I went to watch it, the Cathedral show came on.  It was amazing!  I wanted to go immediately!  Did you know that you could lay the Washington Monument down the center of the Cathedral?  Wow...what an incredible structure!

The Cathedral is a Protestant Episcopal Church that still holds regular services.  It even has boys' and girls' schools on the property. 

If you are planning a trip to DC, the Cathedral is a must.  Then take the same road toward the National Mall and you will drive right by Embassy row...also very cool.  And you will pass the Naval Observatory, which has the Vice President's house on the property. 

You'll never guess what happened as we drove by the Observatory!   At first, we notice lots of armed police officers at the entrance.  "Gee whiz, I hope everything is OK," I was thinking.  As we drove past, a "herd" of black SUV's surrounded by motorcycle cops zoomed past us in a real hurry.  "I think we just saw the Vice President, girls!" I squealed.  What an adventure!

It is nearly impossible to get the entire building in one picture, but this one came close.  We were out in the Bishop's Garden, which was beautiful even with everything dormant.

 

The stained glass windows were incredibly beautiful.  I was never a huge fan of stained glass before, but that all changed when I saw the amazing workmanship and beauty of this glass.  They were everywhere.  It is nearly impossible to capture what this really looks like.  It is just breathtaking.  Notice the reflection from the other side of the cathedral showing up on the wall below those windows.

All of the stone is hand carved limestone...from Indiana. 

There are five or six different chapels in Cathedral.  This one is the Children's Chapel.  Notice the hand-carved ceiling (wow!) and that cute little door...yep, it was locked.

   

OK, aren't those little chairs and kneeling pads just too darling?  Each one of the kneeling pads has a needlepoint of a different animal.   

A kid size pipe organ...and more stained glass.

Each window tells a Bible story.

The Resurrection Chapel was covered in these beautiful mosaics. 

Again,it's hard to see all the incredible colors, but this is another mosaic in one of the chapels.

 

I just can't get enough of these cool ceilings!

 

This is the smallest of all the chapels.  It's the Good Shepherd chapel and it only has these three seats.  (That is Erin's foot!)

Another view from the Bishop's Garden.

The kids..finally all in one place at the same time.  :)

My camera battery quit right after these shots (bummer), but we went in an elevator to the 7th floor of one of the towers and we could see for miles.  All the way to the Capitol and even the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It is the highest point in DC. 

If you are interested in learning more about the Washington National Cathedral, they have on-line tours at their website.