Birthday Camping Weekend

This weekend is Mike's birthday weekend. Tomorrow is his 26th birthday and we just got back from our camping, biking trip that we decided to take in pre-celebration of his birthday. Friday after Mike got home from work we headed down to Burke, VA, which is right outside of DC. We barely made it there in time to rent a camping spot (about 15 minutes to spare before the store closed). Once we got to our site, we realized we had two flashlights, and no firewood. We ran back to the store which had already closed by the time we got back to it. So while I worked on setting up the tent with flashlights, Mike gathered sticks and wood in the barren forest. Luckily, Mike is determined, and he came back with a whole bunch of sticks and logs! By the end of the night, we had a cosy fire to sit by and hot italian sausages off the grill. It was a fun night! The next morning, we got up fairly early and headed off the the bath houses for showers. Mike kept teasing that we were really roughing it...but after showering with 3 daddy long legs IN the shower, I am convinced that was roughing it enough for me! We then packed up and headed off in search of the Mt Vernon Trail where we planned to take our first long distance bike ride on our birthday bikes! It took us a little longer than we expected to actually find access to the trail, but once we did, we unpacked and got in our gear to head off on our bike ride.

We got to see a lot of pretty scenery while on our bikes, the path ran along the Potomac river and went all the way from Reagan National Airport to Mt Vernon.
This is a picture of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge crossing the Potomac River.
We road 15 miles down, stopped to eat lunch at George Washington's House, and then 15 miles back. We're pretty proud of ourselves for making it the whole way with just a few stops to stretch our legs or drink some water.

On our way back, we got to stop in Springfield, VA which is where I lived from 1st-4th grades. With the help of my sister and our GPS, we were able to go by my old house. It brought back a lot of memories to get to see it again! We also made a starbucks run and walmart run to buy an air mattress for the night and some burgers for dinner. We spent the evening cooking on the gril and sitting by the warm fire. We were so thankful to get to sleep on an air mattress the second night since the first night we spent it on just a couple comforters for padding on the hard, cold ground. Although our air mattress was comfortable, it was still quite cold out. I woke up in the middle of the night so cold, Mike thought I was having a bad dream. I spent the rest of the night in my sweatpants and hoodie trying to keep out the cold. I checked the weather for that area tonight and it's supposed to get as low as 33 degrees, I have no doubt it got that cold last night. We slept in this morning and headed back to MD for the afternoon. Mike wanted to catch the Raven's game (we're ahead 27-13 right now, yay!) and I was happy to come home and rest my sore biking body on the couch.

This next week is an exciting week! Tomorrow is Mike's birthday and we're excited to get to go out to dinner with his parents for his birthday. Wednesday, my sister Stacy is having a C-section and our new little niece will be arriving. Also this week, hopefully Mike's brother's wife, Victoria, will be having her new little baby girl. We have been praying every night for both little girls' safe arrival. That's all for now, we plan to spend the evening cleaning up from our camping trip and we might watch the Indiana Jones movie tonight that we gave in and bought at walmart : ).