MARINE CORPS IWO JIMA MEMORIAL a.k.a. we love living here!

watching a plane take off from National Airport

Boris the Botanist

on the shore of the Potomac

Royal discovered a bee on the flowers he was admiring

FIRST ROAD TRIP OF THE SUMMER

So, finally got around to uploading the pictures from our long weekend in Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, there weren't many to choose from, so not a lot of variety here...

Hitting the road, not-so-early Friday morning:



There weren't any good pics of Boris from the visit to the Falls, so here's one from his School Field Day a few days prior to the trip:



The Official Family Visiting Niagara Falls Portrait (our scanner is not working, so it's got pretty bad resolution):



If you've never been to the Falls, you may not know that you can actually walk right into a part of the waterfall. You take an elevator down to the 'Cave of the Winds' (which, these days, is really a concrete tunnel), then walk along the edge of the cliff to a wooden walkway. Following the walkway takes you on a loop through the water. Here's some pics from just before entering the deluge. Royal hated wearing the required raincoat:






And then, after shedding the maddeningly sticky and hot raincoats, here's the happy family post-waterfall:





I wish we had some decent pictures of the Mays (Mandy, Jordan, Bradley & Sammy - friends we stayed with), their amazing Tenenbaum-like house, or Nanny (Christina's 97-yr-old grandmother).

It was a great weekend, the first time since Christmas we had all been able to spend more than a minute hanging out together as a family.

We've got at least two more major road trips planned for the summer, so stay tuned...