Escape

Sometimes life can get a little crazy.

Building a house, moving, doctor's appointments, dentists, job schedules, VBS, family and friends visits, paperwork, research, long meetings, phone calls, etc all crashing in a small, few day time-frame creates quite the chaotic storm. 

While adults grab bottomless mugs of coffee and plunge forward, these five little people don't know quite how to handle the cacophony of their world. 

Couch jumping, aggressive wrestling matches, and bickering crank up a notch and it's clear to everyone we need an escape. 

Escape days are actually kinda imperative to survival and in truth are as much anticipated by me as they are the kids. 

If you know me, I'm the biggest party animal there is and always look for an excuse to have a good time, celebrate, or search out an adventure. Maybe that's why God gave me these awesome five kids to always have adventure partners.  

So when it becomes apparent an escape day is needed we all eagerly fill up water bottles, grab some granola bars and pile into the car to see what direction we end up. 

This past escape day found us driving into D.C. 

I try to have somewhat of a plan but usually the day materializes as we go and thats exactly what we did. 

We aimed for a location we hadn't spent much time in before, scoped out some God provided parking and loaded the stroller for a full day of escaping. 

Eager for the break, I watched my 5 literally refresh before my eyes as they recounted facts about monuments, presidents, museums, and traffic patterns. 

I watched the stroller basket fill with additions to rock and stick collections, I heard made up jokes and stories, and watched little fingers draw pictures and write stories into the dirt on the National Mall. 

We posed for the obligatory pictures of eager foreign tourists who gawk at the fair featured large family, a common occurrence that happens every single time we head into the City. 

We looked at dinosaurs and held rhinoceros beetles, we said 'hi' to mounted police and played hide and seek while entertaining a mountain biker on his break. We made friends with a mother-daughter tour group and a POW-MIA group at the Jefferson Memorial, and observed the tide coming in at the Tidal Basin. 

We laughed, we learned, we escaped. And we were ready to plunge forward again into the craziness waiting back home. 

I love taking pictures of these day together knowing there will be many more like it and knowing they will each be precious memories. I can't wait to see what adventures are still ahead and I can't help but feel privileged to know I have these 5 to take them with and to live the days in between alongside.