DC

Today we toured Washington DC.  Sue & Jeffrey suggested we be up and downtown by 6:30 in order to get decent parking and avoid the insane traffic.  You can imagine how frightened Landon and I must have looked.  We aren't the type to be up at that time of the day.  Even the thought of it turned our stomaches.  Sue Sue & Jeffrey must have seen our faces and known we would not succeed at an early departure.  They said we could also try to leave behind the traffic around 8-8:30.  This was a little more realistic, but as the record stands, we didn't leave their house until a little after 10.  

Traffic was fine, but parking was terrible!  What exactly did we expect?  After an hour of driving all around, we finally settled on a spot for $13 for the day.  We were VERY happy to pay this price!

We enjoyed a picnic lunch in front of the Museum of American History.  We saw the actual uniform worn by George Washington in all his early portraits!  We also saw his sword.  Other highlights included Bob Dylan's jacket, the furniture that Lee & Grant used to sign an end to the civil war, Harriet Tubman's lace collar, and Lincoln's hat & suit.  The kids were focused on eating lunch, riding the escalator, and feeding the birds.

Then we went to the Museum of Natural History.  The kids enjoyed this one a little more.  Dinosaurs, gems and mummies are a little more exciting I suppose!  

Kyndale had a rough time at this museum.  First we went into the "discovery" room where Kyndale opened a drawer marked birds hoping to see some interesting pictures of birds.  Instead, she found herself face to face with a box of stuffed dead birds.  She quickly shut the drawer and cringed.  Once she was over the initial shock, she went back to the drawer to further investigate.  

Later, she developed a migraine headache.  She threw up and took a short nap in one of the dark movie rooms.  I thought surely this would be the end of our day in DC, but after a 15 min nap, she was ready to go again!  Ahh the resilience of children!  

We stopped by some sculptures at the Hishhorn museum and garden.  We viewed some sculptures.  Each kid interpreted the sculptures in their own way.

Here was their favorite sculpture. (It's real.)

Finally we made it to the air and space Museum. By the time we got to this museum we were experts at knowing what exhibits to look at. We moved quickly to do anything that looked interesting and did very little reading. Lucky for us this museum was full of interactive exhibits.

Here we saw a really interesting exhibit in which a camera could detect our body heat. Needless to say we had fun with this one!  It looked much better in person.

DC part two tomorrow.