The Yates: My parents visit to Baltimore

My parents flew in on my dad's birthday (the day before Lily's) so I made him a special dinner and we had preliminary birthday cake to prepare for Lily's.

What is really nice about having visitors is that you tend to do more sightseeing. We had done a few things here, but we saw a lot more once our families came to visit.

Another picture at the aquarium on Lily' birthday.

It was really rainy the week my parents were here, so it encouraged us to find even more fun places to see. One of the not as well known gems in Baltimore is the Rawlings Conservatory. It is near the Baltimore zoo, which is fairly close to us, so I wandered in there one day with Lily and was in awe at all the cool things to see there. Plus it is very quiet and peaceful. So I decided to take my parents there and we all enjoyed it. I wish I had some more pictures to describe how cool it really is to see the unique plants from their 3 different environments: tropical, desert, and Mediterranean. I did get a couple pictures of an orchid in the orchid room and palm from their palm room.

It was built in 1888 and was one of the first conservatories built in the United States. I didn't take a picture of the front so I stole an image from the internet, because it is a cool building. The glass front was the original conservatory.

We also took another day to visit the Baltimore Bascilica, America's first cathedral, and the Johns Hopkins medical campus that has a Christus in the original building. Again, I didn't take any pictures in the rain (and I don't think they allowed photography inside the cathedral) but this is what the cathedral looks like.

The building that has the Christus in it at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The Sheikh Zayed Tower is the tower to the right with the colorful windows. This is the children's hospital. Most of Barrett's meetings and presentations are held in conference rooms here.

A walk around Loch Raven Reservoir. We were hoping the fall leaves would be around when our families were in town because there are trees everywhere here, but only a couple trees were changing colors.

Trip to Washington D.C.
Lily fell asleep walking from the car to the National Mall. And since she didn't have a binkie in, she fell asleep with the strap, ha ha.

The government was shut down during this time so none of the museums were open. Or the monuments, technically. But most of the "gates" blocking the monuments were pushed aside so we did see most of the monuments. Luckily, my parents had been there before to see the monuments. But it actually encouraged us to go to Arlington National Cemetery since it wasn't closed. None of us had ever been there before and we were all really happy we made the trip there. It was definitely worth it.