Grandma and Grandpa Ball's (brief hurricane shortened) Visit

This weekend Grandma and Grandpa Ball (Jim's mom and stepdad Ted) visited Avery--and us--from St Louis.  They drove in and arrived Friday, just in time for the preparations for Hurricane Sandy that forced to leave early and shorten their trip.

On Friday night we went to American City Diner just inside the District line from Chevy Chase.  Since they love malts and 50s diners we thought that place was a good choice since they advertise about their malts!  They have a model train running around the ceiling that kept Avery entertained too.

Then we drove around and showed them the monuments at night since they are very neat lit up.

Saturday was the day we spent the most time showing them around and driving around since it was going to be the last warm sunny day before the storm hit.  We went downtown and they first wanted to see where Jim works.  We saw the outside:

And the inside:

Then we walked around the waterfront by Jim's work:

Then we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, since they wanted a picture of the Spirit of St Louis plan that Charles Lindbergh flew.  They work at Lindbergh School District in St Louis and wanted a nice picture for their work.

And here they are with Mr Lindbergh himself:

Avery studied up on the scientific properties of lift / drag on different shapes of wings:

And ran through a jet engine:

And saw the Apollo space capsule (that went to the moon) up close behind the protective casing it was in

When you see the tight seating arrangement up close it is amazing the astronauts spent 3 straight days in that without getting claustrophobic!

Then we left there went and got pictures in front of the Capitol building:

We walked a bit more around the National Mall

That evening we went to IKEA since there are none in St Louis and they wanted to see one.

Sunday we went to Mt Vernon in Virginia to see George Washington's estate.

He had a nice view of the Potomac from their mansion,

They had 8,000 acres of their own.  There were so many outbuildings on the estate and the inside was so intricately decorated that you could tell he was really rich even for his time.  You couldn't take pictures inside the buildings, but it was well worth it to see it preserved exactly as they had it, with the original furniture, pictures, portraits, dishes, etc still there in their original place.  Avery did love the working farm still there:

Then Sunday evening they headed out (Stopping in OH for the night) to beat the storm and the potential for snow in the Appalachian mountains they had to cross.