A Capital Celebration

This month we celebrate ten years as a family--it's a big year so there will probably be several big celebrations.  This week we joined D on a trip he had already planned so that we could explore a few landmarks on the Mall of our nation's Capital.  First stop:  the monuments at night.  Two-thirds of the kids kept it together and we'll keep the identity one-third a mystery.

We walked part of the Memorial Loop from the Jefferson Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial and we were surprised by the FDR Memorial which I had never seen.  What a beautiful collection of sculpture and waterfalls.  J got the camera for this portion and snapped this touching depiction of a depression-era bread line.

Somehow we didn't get any pictures of the very stunning Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial which we saw just before visiting Mr. Lincoln.

On Saturday while D worked we met up with my good friend Nilla and her little girl to learn the ropes of the Metro, see the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, locate affordable eating at the Department of Agriculture building, traverse the Mall, and finally explore the National Museum of American History.

Occasionally I snapped shots of her while she was snapping shots, and ultimately I felt no pressure to capture what I saw because I knew she was doing a far superior job.

The kids would have been happy to spend the entire day at the Invention at Play exhibit downstairs, and I got so many ideas for how to use ordinary things to play with my kids to encourage innovation.  Some of the the ideas included building on a slanted surface-- 

 --encouraging play with wind--

 --using two mirrors to enhance visual compositions with tangram pieces--

--and utilizing ordinary kitchen objects to create marble runs and other fun sculptures.

After Nilla left, we made it through several more sections of the museum with such impressive displays.  I didn't read a single display while trying to keep track of three little bodies.  The World Ward II jeep suspended from the ceiling in the Price of Freedom exhibit was particularly impressive to my soldier sons.

But by the end even the most novel things were not enough to hold their interest and we concluded this very full, very fun Smithsonian trip.  By the end two-thirds of our kids had fallen apart, and luckily J was still going strong so that he could push the stroller as I had planned on.  The kids were thrilled to get some simple dinner and watch a movie from our hotel beds that evening which seemed a fitting end to our family time together.