Author: Caroline

I love Buy Nothing so much. • Another mom took my four unused Pull-Ups, saving me the guilt of throwing away perfectly good pieces of plastic. • A complete stranger who works in IT came to my house to help me sort out my modem situation.  • The library has every book in the Magic Treehouse series EXCEPT…

Last photo dump from Virginia, saved the best for last: Colonial Williamsburg! Everyone I asked, “Have you been to Colonial Williamsburg?” The response was invariably, “Yeah, when I was a kid.” Now I can say, “Yeah, when I was 42.” There was a whole chapter in our 5th grade history textbook dedicated to Colonial Williamsburg…

IN MY HAPPY PLACE! I couldn’t stop smiling like a crazy person from the moment I walked in to the National Gallery of Art East wing and saw the giant Calder mobile in the atrium. My child is named for Calder, that’s how big of a fan I am. His work exudes joy and playfulness and I…

When court’s not in session, you can sit in the actual Supreme Court courtroom for a 30-minute intro to the court, the justices, and the architecture of the building. Just line up in the lobby, easy peasy. Security is weird about photos: you can take pictures standing at the doorway of the courtroom, but not…

Jamestown, est. 1607. First permanent English colony, home of Pocahontas… and it’s now an active archeological site. The original James Fort had been abandoned, overgrown and thought lost to erosion until archeologists found it again in 1994. They’ve been digging up artifacts since. We got to watch archeologists at work, and they even let kids…

Unpopular opinion: the Air & Space Museum on the National Mall is… meh. The exhibits are nice, sure, but it was SO PACKED in there it was muggy inside from all the people bodies squished together. Ew. The Udvar-Hazy Air & and Space Museum by Dulles, on the other hand, was AMAZING. The second we…

The evening before we went to Monticello, we bumped into a family at the hotel pool that had gone to Monticello that day. The dad told me, “Hey, Madison’s house is on the way, and Monroe’s house is right next to Monticello.” Wait, WHAT. That smelled like a giant marketing opportunity to me. The third,…

I knew I wanted to see Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello; I did not know it would take two hours of driving on little country roads in rural Virginia. But, worth it. Monticello, which Jefferson designed himself, is filled with natural light. Big windows, skylights, mirrors everywhere. Absolutely gorgeous.

I am so glad we got another chance to see the giant pandas at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. In November, Tian Tian, Mei Xiang, and their cub Xiao Qi Ji, are all returning to China.

The Smithsonian museums on the National Mall are always PACKED, but just a few blocks away, it was nice and chill at the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum. Half the building is American Art, the other half is portraits. We went to visit our favorite presidential portraits, and had time to explore the third floor.…