Our Capital Adventure || Part 1

Hello from College Park, Maryland! We are here vacationing in Washington, DC, and are enjoying it immensely :). I'd have to say, it's a little bit of a different style of vacation than we are used to. It's different than chilling at the beach for a week or hiking in the mountains. We are quickly discovering that it is a type of vacation where you pack as much into a day as you can, crash each night exhausted, and wake up the next morning to repeat (feels a lot like home...). It's been good though, and we have found some time to relax here and there :).

Instead of describing anymore here, let me start at the beginning. Join me as I embark on a chronological narrative of our 2016 family vacation beginning Friday, September 30th.

We left our house at 8:10 am: a pretty remarkable time for a family of seven - if I must say so myself - considering we had no time crunch and only needed to leave when we were 'ready'. We traveled smoothly (aside from a constant off and on pattern of rain) to Beckley, West Virginia in our Nisan Quest (rental van :)). We ordered pizza in, went swimming, and crashed at our hotel for the night before hitting the road again early Saturday morning.

On Saturday, we traveled a little farther in Virginia now to tour Monticello - Thomas Jefferson's home and gardens. We were pretty impressed at the large vegetable garden but so thankful that ours at home was all ready to be tilled :).

the weather was just kinda gray and foggy all day - but it could have been worse! 

At the home of Thomas Jefferson

The grounds were beautiful - would have been even lovelier with a little sun :). 

Mr. Jefferson's Tombstone

We arrived at our campground to get settled into our cottage for the week, and for some reason our reservations got a little swapped and we ended up with a larger cottage than we had reserved - for the same price! It actually sleeps thirteen people which is much bigger than we need, but hey, I'm not gonna complain about having my own bed for the week :).  It was such a nice thought to think we got to settle into our cottage for seven nights and soak in a whole week of vacation in one place! 

because it's the organizer in me... 

there is even this little nook outside my bedroom with a desk and chair... almost immediately I set it up as a little study area. Online classes and late night deadlines while on vacation don't seem so bad with a quiet spot like this. :) 

We spent Sunday worshiping with our tiny church here in DC. We nearly doubled the church in size! After services there, we enjoyed spending our afternoon at the National Cathedral. We realized this is a must see if simply just for the architecture... It's incredible and simply indescribable! We also sat in to listen to the choir and original pipe organ briefly as well. It was a really neat Sunday afternoon experience!

Outside there was a beautiful little English garden and the sun was shining ever so perfectly... so we spent some time there, too :) 

and trust me, pictures like this don't even do justice...

Not that I know what being in Europe would feel like or anything... but it felt like we were in Europe:). It actually is the sixth largest cathedral in the world.

We came back to our cottage and enjoyed the beautiful evening with supper on the deck, some mini golf, and a rousing game of Dutch Blitz.

That's it for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but I'm only just beginning! Stay tuned for some packed posts featuring our full days in the city!! -Faith