Gettysburg and THE ROCK...

We went to Gettysburg on our way to the sweetest place on earth. It was beautiful we could have spent the whole day here hiking and exploring the battlefield.

This panoramic picture shows little round top and big round top.

This was a great spot, where if you squatted down, the statue looked just like it was a rider coming over the hill of the battlefield.


Here we are at little round top Matt was in hot pursuit of this rock formation. When he was a kid and visited here he took a picture with his siblings on this rock and it brought him many happy memories. He has had this picture with him at his desk since I have known him. Of course it is now at home, but if we had it we would scan it a put it in the blog next to these pictures! bummer...

Happy memories!!

He is such a good rock climber these rocks were big with lots of ravines between.

I on the other hand was not such a great rock climber.

I tried though...

Here's my rock, yea!!

After finding the rock on little round top, Matt was satisfied and decided that we could head on to the sweetest place on earth...

A sweet Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I worked an extra long shift on the holliday, I went in at 1pm and got off at 3am. So what is a girl to do on 3:30 am the day after thanksgiving??? Well JCPenney's was open at 4am, so I went shopping, hehe. Then I came home and told Matt that I did all of his christmas shopping for me, arent' you so happy?!

I came home and slept a few hours and we made a nice dinner that afternoon for our Thanksgiving and somehow we finished a bottle of champagne before we even new it!! oops.... We had fun, and yea Matt's family called to do a toast for his sister, Beth's engagement, congratulations we are so excited for you Beth and Stephen!!

On Saturday we went on a day trip to Gettysburg and Hershey, PA aka the sweetest place on earth.

It smelt amazing in the factory, cocoa, chocolate and sweet goodness. Of course the weekend of Thanksgiving it was crazy busy. But we enjoyed ourselves. We started at Chocolate world, where we had a free tour learning how chocolate is made. The town of Hershey was built by Milton Hershey to help support the people that worked at his factory. He was dedicated to building a strong community with adequate resources and a family atmosphere.

The process starts with quality milk, where they tried to assure us that the milk makes chocholate a wholesome snack!! Can you believe that?? We did for a day anyway...

Chocolate kisses being made, yummy.

Chocolate bars being wrapped.

Mass chaos!!!

This is a school for orphans and disadvantaged children that Milton Hershey and his wife started.

That evening we went to the Hershey theme park for Christmas CandyLane celebration. We drank lots of hot chocolate, enjoyed the christmas lights, saw reindeer, listend to christmas music, rode a few rides, saw a really good christmas play and froze a little.

Matt hanging with the reindeer... we couldn't get very good pictures, santa's reindeer are not very photogenic.

Hershey was fun, but a little overpriced, not certain if we would go back, but glad we had the experience anyway. It was a good kick off for the christmas season! Oh and of course we bought lots of chocolate.

On a side note we only have three weeks left here, hooray!! And plan on being back in Kansas City on Saturday the 20th if the weather and everything cooperates. This upcoming week I have a friend coming to visit and we will have our last hurrah in D.C.. We can't wait to come home for a while. We have only been home for 2 nights in the last six months and are getting a little homesick. D.C. is a great place to visit, but not to live. We have loved the experience but would not want to live here permanently. The traffic is horrible and you have to plan all your activites around the traffic. Even using the metro you have to plan, otherwise there will not be a parking space for you. And then I get a little claustrophobic when the metro is completely packed full like sardines. eek. Anyway, too many people for our taste. See you all soon in KC!

Baltimore Aquarium

Here we are in Baltimore at the inner harbor, getting ready to go to the Aquarium that everyone has been telling us about!

The Shark exhibit was one of the best I have seen, and they were very up close and friendly the day we were there.

He's smiling at us, ooops or is that a frown? Do sharks smile?

Those teeth look rather sharp, I bet he could eat through metal with those.

Turtle, turtle, turtle.

The dolphin show was a lot of fun, dolphins make me smile.

He poses so well.
Matt's favorite shark.
Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles!!!


That's about it, we walked around the shops and inner harbor. We watched a trapeze school training upcoming stars and then we fought the traffic to get home. It was awful, the traffic that is. A US Navy and Notre Dame game was just ending and I think everyone there was from Fairfax, VA because there was traffic the whole way home! We made it home in one piece though and had a good time.

Annapolis and other adventures...

We have been enjoying the fall weather with hiking, biking and day trips. It is just started to get cooler here with high's in the 40's and 50's, still great for a hike in the woods though.
Virginia has beautiful fall colors with quite a variety of trees and lots of them, so it is quite spectacular!

We went to the Chesapeake bay and drove on a long bridge across then had a picnic lunch at the beach. It is probably the only time we will get to the beach while we are here, it was a nice day for it.

Then we headed to Annapolis, MD, about an hour from where we live. It is a cute, quaint, historic town, I loved it! There is a great atmosphere there.We didn't spend much time there but walked around the historic downtown and on the harbor and visited the naval academy.

We were wandering a back street trying to find the main street of the downtown area, this alley opened the whole downtown area up for us, like a magical secret pathway! We walked right out onto main street, aha!

We went on a ship. The Pride of Baltimore II.

We didn't leave the harbor it docked the whole time, but we toured it.

Matt was only on for 5 min, then he got queasy and stepped off. He would not make a very good sailor. We did not sign him up for the Naval Academy!