Showing some love to local places of interest.
My father, sister, and I took a trip out to National Harbor on Wednesday and we had lunch together and strolled around the harbor and stores. The weather was beautiful!
We are loving being near our family and getting to spend so much time together during this holiday season! 🙂
On Tuesday, the girls in the family went on an outing to Meadow Lane Park in Vienna! Mio loves this park because there are so many fun things to ride and play with. It was extra fun for her that day because her Auntie Miwa and Obaachan (grandmother) came along!
Mio was having so much fun at the park that we knew it was going to be an ordeal to wrench her away when it was eventually time for her to go home. Sure enough…
Thank you Obaachan and Auntie Miwa for coming along with us to the park! 😀
Yesterday was Veteran’s Day — a reminder for all of us to remember and thank those who have served, and are serving, our country. They are the true heroes of this nation, and I will always be grateful for everything they’ve done to protect our freedom.
Mio and I came down with the cold late last week, and so we spent much of the long weekend resting, but we still managed to go out and have a little fun. Here are some snapshots from the past week, including the weekend.
Fast forward to the weekend, we drove to the Japanese school in Bethesda on Saturday morning to check out a bazaar where we got to pick up some children’s books and DVDs in Japanese. She was so excited, and immediately started looking through the books in the car.
Afterwards, we took her to Clemyjontri Park in McLean. It was our first time visiting the park, and it was huge! Literally a mini theme park for toddlers. Mio squealed as soon as we approached the entrance to the park, and we spent a good couple hours there, letting her run free and explore everything.
Just look at this aerial photo of the park! (There was even a carousel in the middle, but it wasn’t running when we were there.) If you live in the DC area and you have a young child, I definitely recommend checking this park out. 🙂
We then headed over to Pho Saté in Falls Church for a late lunch. Whenever I am feeling sick, pho feels like the perfect remedy…
Some more snapshots from the rest of the weekend…
On Monday, we went on a little family date to Reston Town Center.
There’s nothing sweeter than a family outing with s’mores. Excitement for everyone! 😀
What I also love about Veteran’s Day is that it’s the first of all the holidays that follow throughout the winter season — I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is already next week!
Happy Halloween! We have survived Hurricane Sandy/Frankenstorm and all of its pouring rain and howling winds it brought with it earlier this week. Thankfully, we didn’t suffer any damage to the house or cars, and didn’t even lose power. Unfortunately, some of our friends up north were not as lucky — we’re keeping them in our prayers, and hope that they’ll be able to regain a sense of normalcy back in their lives as soon as possible.
We have nothing planned for actual Halloween Day today, as we got all of our festivities out of the way this past weekend before the storm hit. Here are some photos from our Halloween activities this year!
Because Mio was sort of a Tinkerbell-esque fairy this year, I decided to wear this dress — it’s a vintage Betsey Johnson dress that I bought at a thrift store a couple years ago, and Dan always calls it my “Peter Pan dress” whenever I wear it. Instead of buying a costume, I figured I’d just wear it to be Peter Pan-ish this year. 😉
On Saturday afternoon, we took Mio to the Air & Scare event at the Udvar-Hazy Center, which is the annex to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. It was actually one of the first places I took Dan for a date when he first came to visit me in DC several years ago, when it had just opened in 2003, so it was fun to revisit it again after almost a decade. The Air & Scare is an annual event they hold at the museum, where kids can come in costume for safe indoor trick-or-treating and participate in creepy crafts, spooky science experiments, and other Halloween-themed activities. There’s storytime for younger kids like Mio, and opportunities to take photos with Star Wars characters all around the building!
Mio is too young for candy, and I knew that if we let her trick-or-treat, she would most assuredly put the candy in her mouth, so we avoided the trick-or-treating stations and just explored the museum and other activities. Between the permanent aerospace exhibits and the Halloween-themed activities, there was plenty to see!
I think the main attraction for Dan and I was seeing the retired Discovery space shuttle up close! We weren’t in DC yet when it made its final flight over the area back in April of this year, and we just missed the Endeavor space shuttle flying over California right after we moved away last month, so I had felt disappointed that we missed both opportunities to see the shuttles. Thankfully, one of the perks of living right by the nation’s capital is that a lot of such historical sights are open for viewing and can be easily visited. We stood in awe as we got to see the retired orbiter, which has made 39 successful missions in over 27 years of service as the oldest of the surviving space shuttles.
Later that night, we put Mio to bed and entrusted her to my parents in case she woke up in the middle of the night (which she never does), Dan and I went off to have some more grownup Halloween fun at our friends’ party! The theme was comic superheroes, DC vs. Marvel. We had a great time seeing a lot of our college friends again and catching up with them! 😀
Lastly, we also carved pumpkins as the weather got crappier into the weekend and we were cooped up indoors. Dan is always the skilled carver, so his is the awesome creation in the middle, but my sister Miwa and I also carved our own mini-pumpkins. Mine is the Angry Bird on the right.
Last Saturday, we took Mio to Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon, a historical farm where you can see all kinds of animals and experience farm life from the 1920’s. We met up with our friends Stephanie and Chwan and their adorable son Danny, who is three months older than Mio! We’ve been wanting to have a playdate for the two cuties to meet, and this was the perfect opportunity, since both of them love animals!
One really cool attraction they had there was cow milking! Even I’ve never seen a cow getting milked, so it was very cool to see and experience! I was trying to explain to Mio that they were squeezing the “minmi” (Japanese baby word for “milk”) that she drinks out of the cow, and she started pulling on her ears. Dan and I were confused for a few seconds, but then it dawned on me that she was confusing the word with “mimi” (which is Japanese for “ear”). I couldn’t help but laugh!
Because Frying Pan Farm Park is a historical site and they showcase farm life from the 1920’s, they have a lot of old-fashioned traditional machines that have survived for almost a century! This machine de-kernels corn, and it’s the original machine from the 1920’s! I couldn’t believe how well it still worked, and so efficiently too (it uses very little gas to operate)!
Another neat machine they had was one in which you’d throw apples in, and the apples would get transported up into a mechanism that would turn the apples into apple cider! They handed out apples for kids and their parents to throw into the machine, so that we could watch them go up.
After seeing a lot of the farm life of the park, we walked over to the carousel and playground area.
We ended the outing with a delicious Burmese lunch at Myanmar restaurant in Falls Church! It was a fun day spent with great friends. 🙂