National Arboretum

Karina has developed a new hobby: eating and destroying junk mail. A few days ago I was dealing with a very angry princess who didn't want to do anything but scream it seemed. Then I took her to get the mail and put her beside me on the couch while I went through it. She started grabbing at things very contently, so I was encouraged by a happy baby. Nearly an hour later and she was still going at it like it was the most exciting thing in the world. Karina is now officially our junk mail destroyer. Here is a sample of her going at it:


She's mischievous. And her guilty, happy face by the evidence:


For being so cranky most of the day, I managed to get lots of smiley pictures. I was rolling my tongue at her, making noises, and she thought I was hilarious. I took about 20 giggling pictures of her laughing at me, and here is a sampling.





Today we decided to enjoy the beautiful weather by going to the National Arboretum in Washington D.C. We have wanted to go the last couple years while the leaves were changing color, but the timing never worked out. The timing was wrong this year too, but we decided to go anyway and explore the park. We think the leaves will be at the peak Fall beauty while we are in Miami. Too bad, as we love the red, orange, and yellow that Fall brings. We brought the tripod along and managed to get some nice pictures as well.

We spent most of our time in the herbal garden, state tree section, Dogwood, and Asian tree areas. Karina and me in a covered portion of the herbal garden where we saw plants like cacao, turmeric, coffee, cinnamon, etc:


A pretty pagoda in the Asian section:



The Asian section was along the Anacostia River, but that river is gross and an icky brown color, so we didn't take any pictures too near it. We did find some nice bamboo trees near the river though that provided a decent back drop. It was fairly easy to get Karina to smile in pictures with either just me or just Nate, but Karina refused to smile for the tripod, as you will see in later pictures. See the pretty grin:



We were excited to get family pictures, even if Karina doesn't giggle for the tripod.



Nearly all the trees in the park were still green, but we did find a few colorful ones and took some pictures because we were excited for the colors.


Karina was happy to walk around in Nate's arms in her carrier:


There were several massive sandstone columns in the Arboretum that were originally in the U.S. Capitol. The flowers around them were kind of pretty too. We happened to be there while an Ethiopian wedding party was there taking pictures, which was fun.


I think Snoopy was super excited that he got to come on today's adventure. Nate and I sometimes wonder if Snoopy thinks we always explore fun outdoorsy places when he is abandoned at home. I hope he realizes we are someplace indoors and boring when we leave him at home.