Spring Break with the Virginians!

For Spring Break we went to Virginia! We'd heard so much from Brooke and Josh plus, we really wanted to see them!

Yay! So we were greeted with a "Welcome Snelson Family" sign, even if they did go to the escalators a bit late. We arrived Saturday.

On Sunday we went to church with Brooke and Josh and we had so much fun with all her young women. We went by Saint John's Cathedral where Patrick Henry gave his "Give me liberty, or give me death" speech. The tour cost money, so we ended up looking into the cathedral from the out side windows. For the rest of the vacation, at every church we saw we had to stop, and see if it was opened. It was our joke to hurry and drive away from any church by us.





We came back to the hotel and all took naps. Brooke and Josh ended up on the floor with a bunch of cushions and I swear I took a picture. I'll have to search diligently for that one.

The following day was Williamsburg. In Chanelle's words, all we did was look at old houses. What a great attitude. At first, it was sort of chilly, but when the sun came out, Chanelle and I welcomed it.

Personally, I thought it was nice spending time with the family, and letting Chanelle's and mine inner child show.

After arriving at our hotel, the following day, we went walking along and looking at the stores. Our hotel is right on the beach, and across are all these little shops. We had a great time looking at all of them, although Dad only lasted about 15 minutes. Here's the view from our hotel...

This sign actually has a really interesting story. So Chanelle and I wanted a sticker with this sign to put on our doors or where ever. But every store we went into, didn't sell them, or they were out. I guess it wasn't met to be. Some time we'll have to go back to Virginia Beach and get ourselves a no swearing sticker.

The entire time we were shopping, it was really windy and Chanelle wanted to go fly a kite. So she got a nice fancy one, and I just got a classic kite. We went out, and my kite went up pretty good, but Chanelle's just kept going around in circles.

This nice man was watching us in his room, and ran out to help us. He told us if we tied something onto the tail, it would go up higher, and lo and behold, it went straight up. Higher then mine in fact. We tied them to the trash cans on the beach, and when we came back later, no one had ripped them off. That's what Mom was most worried about.

The next day it wasn't as windy, and more sunny and pretty. We rented some of these bike things, and rode them up and down the walk. We didn't get a picture of Mom and Dad in their rad bike, but in this picture, you can see it in the background.

After we checked out, we drove on back. We went to Brooke's office, and saw all the people she's been telling us about. We went to dinner after, and repacked out bags to smaller ones, then all squished into our rental car. We made it to our hotel and awaited the fun day ahead in D.C.!

The next day, we got up, and got ready for a day filled with the Smithsonian. We had fun on the subway, and I'm sure that every one gave us weird looks when we took this picture.

First we went to the Air and Space Museum. Chanelle and I had fun on a simulator ride. You're supposed to be on a plane, and it went up side down a lot. But the high light of our day was at the National History Museum. Nope, it wasn't the Hope Diamond it was a butterfly exhibit. There were 150 butterflies all around and we just had a lot of fun seeing all these rare and beautiful butterflies. We weren't in there for long, but it seemed like forever.

After we went to lunch at Cosi. When we went to New York on the church history tour, we went to Cosi. We loved it a lot and still remembered what a great time we had there. So, after asking 8 people, we finally found it and went for lunch. It's nothing that special, just the fact that we had so much fun there when we went a while ago.

While we were walking towards Mom's cherry blossoms (the festival was over, the blossoms were gone, and Mom was sad) we saw this strange looking little um, dance hall type thing. There was a gate and a little bridge, and we hopped it and explored. When we came back, there was a little girl, Sasha, who wanted to go too. We helped her over, and then Chanelle walked with her and they picked flowers. She was cute, and Sasha's Dad appreciated it.

We came back, and while Dad and Mom went to the temple, we had a delicious dinner of popcorn and ice cream.

The next day, we went to an old house. I can't even remember the name, but I'm telling you, becuase of this awesome picture of Chanelle, it gives you a good idea of what might happen in 5 years.

We went to the National Cathedral next. We thought it would be boring, but there seemed to be a lot of picture oportunities. Could you see Chanelle being the next preacher?

On the way home, we stopped and did a lot of shopping. The boys were good sports and just went to see a movie. We had a lot of fun despite the super croweded high ways!

On Saturday, we couldn't believe a week had already gone by. We went to the Virginia Home. We were trying to hurry and get through so we could get some more shopping time. After looking through stores and gave the guys some time to fill up the car, we said our good bye's and came back home.