DC trip!

We left for DC with mom on Saturday June 8th. We had hoped to make it to the Braves vs. Nationals game but got stuck in awful traffic and got turned in the wrong direction so we went back to the hotel.

The kids handled the disappointment better than me with Hallie saying we really came for the museums and Justin saying there probably wasn't much difference between major and minor league games.

The Braves ended up losing and the pitcher was one we didn't want to see anyway.

Our hotel had a shuttle to the Metro station.

Sunday morning we did the long walk of the monuments.

WW2- it lists all the states on each column.

Korean war

Lincoln

Washington 

Vietnam 

Einstein statue that Hallie's art teacher told us about!

Capital building

Jason, me, and Hallie went to the permanent part of the Holocaust museum (mom and Justin went through the Daniel's story part).

It starts out with the rise of Hitler, then the Final Solution, and profile many people who resisted and/or hid Jews/etc.

Then we went to the American History Museum to see the Star-spangled banner flag that was hung over Fort McHenry (it is huge!) 

In the entertainment section, lots of sports and movie/TV memorabilia.

Babe Ruth's signature is at the top, along with other members of the Yankees team.

Glove of left hand a pitcher 

Sandy Kouflax

Next day we did the Air and Space museum.

It had one of the original Wright brothers planes.

There was also a place where a small piece of the Wright brother's plane was taken to the moon by Neil Armstrong.

I thought that was pretty cool that he would credit them as the source.

We went to the "west" side of the art museum which had the Renaissance, more classic art (we did not go to the modern/contemporary area).

Saw more Van Goghs!

We have a print of this Monet painting in our bathroom...

We ended the day at the Natural History Museum. It was different that mom remembered it from when we came in the 90s- I don't remember too much.

They had a really neat dinosaur area,  lots of gems and minerals- Jason saw one that was from North Carolina.

Exhibits about space/planets and the ocean. We watched a video of people who had gone down to the bottom of the ocean floor and the things that they said were incredible- about how the organisms are translucent and light up and even watching a dead whale get consumed by other animals.

But like going to outer space, it's another place I never want to visit!

The kids got these shirts the day before! This is beside a dinosaur humerus bone.

We rode the metro back and forth.

This was at the end of the day....you could tell Justin in the first pic was a bit tired.

Our last day in DC (Tuesday), we had been unable to get tickets online for Fords Theater. But they have a certain amount of "day of" tickets so we went  and were able to get in at 10am!

The kids were most excited about this since they had seen in "National Treasure 2" how Lincoln's assassination happened.

In the museum part before going to the actual theater.

In the theater.

One of the creepiest things I read was how Lincoln had seen Booth in plays.

 There was one play where when Booth delivered "threatening" lines of his character, he would look up and glare at the President's box. 

A person that the President was with made comments that that actor was looking at him quite threatening and Lincoln agreed.

The bed where he died.

We went to the International Spy museum that afternoon. It was interactive where it gave you a spy identity with a mission and after each section, there were some tasks to do like decoding a message and remember what things could blow our cover like cameras and police.

It had all kinds of gadgets to hide things and talked about spy planes, cracking Nazi codes in WW2 along with how the Allies planted false information, the enigma machine, the Argo story, even stuff from the Revolutionary War.

The most interesting thing to me was they had an interactive thing about the Bin Laden compound raid.

You had to make an anyasis based on the information as to what type of person might live there: a criminal, a business man, an Al Queda leader or Bin Laden.

They said the walls were higher than other houses in the neighborhood and had barbed wire. They had satellites instead of internet cable. They burned their trash despite having a pick up trash service and they could see that someone came outside in the inner area but concealed their face.

 You could choose all people that could apply to. The person from the CIA  who had to give the information to  President Obama said he was 60%  sure it was Bin Laden, which was interesting.

Wednesday we went to Arlington ceremony to see the tomb of the unknowns and Kennedy flame. 

Long walk!

They do 21 steps, pause 21 seconds, change the gun on their shoulder and then repeat since 21 is the highest military honor.

After getting turned around the wrong way again, we got to the Air and Space museum that is near one of the airports that houses tons of planes.

This is the Blackbird that was a Cold War spy plane war that we learned about at the international spy museum.

The Discovery space shuttle!

It's amazing thinking something this big could defy the laws of gravity and get in the air!

Capsule that John Glenn would have gone in.

Nazi plane.

Car napping on the way home on Wednesday!

We spent Thursday at home and Friday went to Wendy & Corey's for dinner and swam in their community pool for about an hour. It was hot so it was very refreshing!