Washington DC!

This past week was Spring Break for the kids. Three out of four of us stayed at home, and worked, or took it easy, but one of us had a grand adventure. We had been planning for this trip for almost a year, so it was surreal that it was really time for her to take off for the East coast...without us!

I don't have a ton of pics to share, but the kids had a packed week, full of sights, like the White House, the Capitol, the Udvar-Hazy Center (Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum annex), a haunted nighttime tour, Jamestown, Mount Vernon, ALL of the memorials and monuments, and...Dave & Busters, lol. Her flights out and back were non-eventful (thank God), and she learned what it's like to share a hotel room with three other girls. They didn't get a lot of sleep, they ate junk food, and overall, tasted a bit of independence. 

We missed Ava very much, and she missed us a bit, too, so the big hug at pickup at the airport on Thursday night was amazing! It did give us time to hang out with G, 1:1, which was really awesome, as well. G and I ordered Noodles one day for lunch, but that was pretty much the excitement of our week. Nothing like our travelin' kid! Oh, he and I did start a crossword puzzle, and we have been working on that everyday, so that was something different.

This was a really big tree in Virginia!

Ava's big win at D&B...meet "Ricardo, the lemur"

Overcast day at Mount Vernon

She spotted a beagle in a gift shop!

Random wall art

Spontaneous stop at the Embassy of Ukraine 💙💛

I think Ava missed Pria the most...she requested multiple photos of her throughout the week. 

This didn't suffice...Ava only wanted to see Pria, ha.

I just thought this was a cute comparison

Speaking of Pria...we did a DNA test on her, and she is, in fact, NOT 100% beagle. Ha, take THAT you horrible puppy mill! She's 92.7% beagle, with one great-grandparent having traces of either an American English coonhound, or a basset hound. The best part, though, is that they do a search to find any close relatives to Pria, for other dogs who have had their DNA tested. 

There was one beagle, where the DNA matched 57%, which is considered a close match...as close as siblings or a parent/child relationship. This dog (Bingo) was given away as a free puppy...and we know that Bingo was born in Missouri. Pria's latest rabies vaccine was done in...Missouri! I reached out to Bingo's owner to make a connection, and we think that Pria might be Bingo's mom! We connected on Instagram, too, so now I'll be able to keep up on Bingo's adventures, too.

Since we have ZERO info on Pria's background, this gives us hope that we'll be able to learn more about her past. If anything, it's fun to connect with another beagle owner (who lives in NY.)

We only had both kids home for one night, and now G is off at Grandma Deb and Grandpa Whitey's house for the weekend, which will end his spring break with a fun adventure, too!

Now if we could only get SPRING to show up...