Shuttle Discovery Flyover

We had a little excitement here today when we got to see the Shuttle Discovery fly over our house, not once, not twice, but three times this morning!  The shuttle was being flown from Kennedy Space Center to Dulles Airport so that it can go to join the collection at the Air & Space Museum near the airport.

We headed outside a little after 10:00 after seeing that the shuttle was making better than anticipated time on its route up the east coast.  The plan was for the shuttle to fly up from Florida, fly over Dulles, the take a couple of laps around Washington, D.C. so that there would be some great photo ops before coming back to Dulles to land.  Our house is pretty much right on the flight path for planes coming in to land at Dulles.  Up until now it's been an occasional annoyance when the jumbo jets come in low and loud early in the morning from their international flights and wake up Emma when we'd rather be sleeping but today it was really cool!

We saw the initial flyover when it arrived in Northern Virginia but didn't have our camera ready.  So we went back inside turned on the TV and figured out the schedule for the shuttle.  Once we figured out when to expect the shuttle to come back we went outside to wait.

Is that it?

No?  Okay, I'll smell this flower instead.

Seriously Mommy!  This is sooooo boring!  What's so special about this airplane that we're waiting for.   I want my Duckie, my Kitty, my water, my cereal!!!

Okay, well a wagon ride with my buddies might make this wait a little bit better.

Here it is, coming in for the second time.

There was an escort jet accompanying the shuttle, notice the size difference!

This was on the surprise third pass.  After the second flyover, we went back inside and on TV they were saying that the plane wasn't landing and that it was taking another lap before coming in to land.  So we headed back outside to try and see if we could get any more pictures.  It seems that they made better than anticipated time on the flight up the coast and there were so many people out waiting to see the shuttle that NASA made a decision to keep flying a little longer.  From what I've heard, traffic on the local highways came to a standstill as people stopped to watch.  Where we were though, it was hard to get a good shot of the shuttle without the 747 blocking part of the view.

Oh yeah, I see it now.

 

Uh... that was it?  Really?  Can we go have lunch now?

Click here to see a few more pictures from the flyover.

Wanna Play Hide and Seek?

Do you want to play hide and seek with Emma?

1, 2, 3 to the Zoo!

Last fall we got a membership to the National Zoo and since then we've gone down a few times to take Emma to see the animals.  This weekend we made a big trip in with her friends Alex and James along with their parents and grandparents.  

Emma was eager to get started and wanted to wear her bear backpack.

We met up with Alex and her family right away.

Then we quickly found James and his family by the panda bears.  It seemed the a perfect chance to take a picture of the three amigos together.

Now, if you've ever wondered "How do you get three 18-month-old toddlers to sit together in one place for a picture, much less look at the camera at the same time?" the answer is...

    

   

   

You don't.

So we abandoned our attempt to corral the children and headed off down the Asia trail to see the fisher cats.

Here are Emma and Grandpa Harris looking at the clouded leopard.

Further along we came to the sloth bears. 

This one was sleeping with his tongue hanging out.

Is anyone else concerned that he might not be alive?  He's not really moving...

It was about this time that Emma decided we needed to pick up the pace so she started pushing the stroller herself.

    

It turns out she just really wanted to go see the cheetahs.

So the cheetah is actually capable of traveling 23 feet in a single stride, did you know that Daddy and Grandpa?

After seeing the cheetahs, everyone was trying to decide what to do next.

Alex took matters into her own hands and after careful consideration determined that we should all take a break for lunch.

Emma picked a spot.

   

And everyone settled in for a break.

After a little R&R...

...we all packed up...

...and headed off again.

   

Some members of the group required a few extra minutes of rest though to be fully recharged.

Next up were the gorillas.

And then the tigers and lions, Emma's favorites!

 

 What does a lion say?  "Roar!"

Everybody had a good day at the zoo.

After one last snack...

...and goodbye hugs...

...it was time to head home. 

Maybe next time you can come to the zoo with us!  In the meantime, to see even more pictures from our day at the zoo, click here.