Skewing the Dental Stats and a trip to Mount Vernon

Joshua has had the dubious honor of being in the most minute percentile. He will be 9 in less than a month and it was only yesterday that he lost his first top tooth. The poor kid has only lost his two bottom teeth until now and it was starting to get a little worrisome. Each time we'd go to the dentist, he would tell us Joshua was in the 1% of kids that age who still had baby teeth there. And the number kept getting smaller.

Yeah, he said I could take a picture and then he did this. Little turkey!

Isn't he adorable?! I think he looks so cute. Unfortunately, I think it makes him look a few years younger. Poor kid.

And on to today's adventure! The weather was beautiful today. We finally had a day that was not brutally hot and not rainy. We decided we could not stay inside, and we could hit the pool on one of those other brutally hot days. So we went to Mount Vernon. We have season passes, but we still hadn't seen everything. Today I wanted to see the 16 Sided Barn, and that was our goal.

The girls got to shell dried beans. It was so cute. They didn't want to stop. Why can't they be that excited to help at home?!

Today was fantastic because they were running the horses at 10:30 and we were there at the right time. Callie was so happy to get to pet the horse. His name is Mikey.

Marian also petted the horse, but I'm not sure Joshua got close enough to.

This is the 16 sided barn. Why is this cool, you ask? Well, here is your history lesson. George Washington decided there had to be a better way to thresh the wheat than by smacking it with poles. He was losing 20% of the crop with this method. So he built this barn and it is circular. He essentially made it an indoor arena for the horses, and they would toss the wheat on the second story and run the horses around the perimeter, and the wheat would fall through the cracks in the boards to the area below to be collected. GW calculated that his grain loss dropped to 7% with this method. I thought it was very cool!

Here are the 2 horses trotting around on the wheat. We got to sit in the center of the barn and watch them work. It was pretty neat! GW was a brilliant man. That's why I love Mt Vernon. You learn all kinds of fascinating things!

Here is Cool Callie!

Marian is cool too! They were so funny with their wheat stalks.

The 16 Sided Barn is waaaay far away and requires a bit of a hike to get to. That is why we never did it before. Here's Dan and Rylee, strolling on their merry way!

We stopped by the wharf and it was so funny, seeing all 4 bottoms in the air! I couldn't resist.

Joshua was too distracted by all the trash in the water to turn all the way around. Silly man.

Of course, at the end we stopped by the kids area. You can see the blur that is Marian as she violently wrangles with the stuffed animals. Delaney was adorable with the house; she was very concerned about the bedding and bed in the baby's room. Rylee just pulled all the doll furniture out of the dining room and tried to crawl in it. So we distracted her with the wall that lights up when you push buttons.

Yep, she liked it a lot!!

So, a very successful day with a shocking lack of complaining! Yay!