National Book Festival & National Building Museum Festival

I've put the National Book Festival on my calendar for every one of the last five years, but I've never actually made it there until this year (though a student did get Mocking Jay signed for me one year).  I was very excited to go, and even though it turned out to be a pretty rainy day, I was glad I did.  I didn't try to get any books signed this time (I doubted Eli would be interested in standing in line), but I did get to listen to some favorite (Kevin Henkes among others) and interesting authors.  And hear from a librarian about doing genealogy work at the Library of Congress.  I'm hoping to get there some day soon. 

Theo would have loved all the PBS Kids characters that were there as well, but he and daddy split from us and went to the National Building Museum festival instead.  We've heard about this place, and when we saw the festivals would coincide we decided to check out this museum through their free festival.  Admission to the actual museum wasn't included, but the festival included many activites and vendors in their huge indoor courtyard.  Theo loved...

everything.

Since all the free museums in DC are still closed from the government shut down, we may have to fork out the fees to visit all of this museum during our next trip into the city.

Baby Goes to Washington

So we met my family in DC a few weekends ago when they came out to visit. We embarked on our second annual trip to view the Cherry Blossoms!

Many of the family had never rode the subway. I am now an expert at the DC system, don't even have to look at the map anymore (can't say the same for the NYC metro).

We came up Smithsonian station, right on the mall.

We saw the White House, getting ready for the Easter egg roll later in the weekend (I have got to try and get Theodore a ticket next year!).

We saw the new WWII Memorial (well, newish).

The Lincoln Memorial (I made it up all the steps.  C-section pain has subsided).

The Korean War Memorial (one of my favorites-really makes you think about the soldiers).

The often overlooked Memorial to "The Great War"

And finally the Cherry Blossoms!

This year the Tulip garden was in full bloom.

Matthew got this great shot!

It was a fun day, and exhausting! My family had driven the night before, so they were dragging by the time we got back off the subway at our cars. But we made it home to the hotel in time for the basketball games.

Lots of Bs

Last Friday night I got the idea that we should focus on only picking activities for our Saturday outings that starts with the letter "B". Don't ask why, I know it was a pretty dorky idea, but it worked out well during the morning.

First-we Biked into town. My first time on a bike in a while, realized how uncomfortable they are. We ended up going about 7 miles.

We first made a stop at Bing's Bakery. I was in the mood for my first ever Black and white cookie, and we otherwise just wanted to check it out. I loved the shop, and got lots of ideas for Brian's Ph.D. celebration in a couple of years.

Then, we went to a Bistro, for lunch. The Adrian Bistro was a coffee shop at the beginning of Main Street with some really good food. I had a delicious BLT, and appreciated the quiet, personal atmosphere.

After that we thought about going bowling, but the lanes were already packed at 11:30 in the morning due to some kind of tournament, so we did a little window shopping and then headed back home.

Later that day, we aborted the B-theme to attend a couple of festivals. All the shops and organizations of Newark came out for the annual Newark Night, which offered lots of food offerings for my hubby. We then headed up to town for the Wilmington Greek Festival, my first foray into Greek culture. I certainly enjoyed the fest, which had a good crowd of happy people eating, drinking, and dancing. We enjoyed the pork souvlaki, baklava, ouzo, and Aris, and will definitely pencil in the festival on next years calendar right now as a must-not-miss.

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Keeping with the B-theme, I was able to try another bagel place today, and think it was definitely my favorite so far. The Sunshine Bagel place in Middletown has a great turkey sandwich (especially on onion bagel).

Delaware Book Festival

Sunday we went to the Delaware Book Festival. The festival was quite a bit smaller than Arizona's, and still had some kinks to work out (food lines, book stores lines), but it was still a nice time. It was located in Dover, near the state capital, which is actually quite beautiful. I was most excited to meet Marc Brown, author of the Arthur books, and Jon Scieszka, one of my favorite authors. He is especially interested in getting guys to love reading, and has written the following: The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, Squids Will be Squids, Science Verse, and Summer Reading is Killing Me! Scieszka (rhymes with Fresca) was very entertaining-as are his books.

Here is a list of other book festivals:
National Book Festival Washington DC: (WE MISSED IT! Apparently this was in September)
Arizona Book Festival Phoenix, AZ (Undetermined date)
Free Library Festival: Philadelphia, PA (April 18-19)