Washington DC

Well I am falling behind again but we have been out of town. We took
the three boys out to DC for 4 long days at the Smithsonian. It was fun, educational and made us very tired. Here is a quick rundown of all that we did.

Day 1 

Fords theater with a play about the day Lincoln was shot, White House,

Capital tour, library of congress (Thomas Jefferson's private library collection), a quick stroll at the botanical gardens (closed 10 minutes after we made it there) and a Looooong walk all of the way down to the Lincoln Memorial. This was Quincy's #1 place he wanted to see. On the way there Milton and I stopped to see a mother duck and her ducklings in the large reflection pool of the mall. We also stopped at the WWII Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial.

Day 2 

The Air and Space Museum. Yep, this is all that we did on this day. They had a great hands on area for the kids and we learned about propellers, rockets and jets during an interactive demonstration. Lost of great informative videos and a great puppet play about the write brothers and how they learned so much from books. Quincy loved all of the Apollo11 stuff and we all enjoyed all of the war themed rooms. Learned a lot about the write brothers and learned that the write brothers' fathers name was Milton. Cool!

Day 3 

National Archives where we learned about all of the information that is considered to be important to the USA's history. We also learned about the way the Declaration of Independence is kept safe and preserved. We viewed the precious documents of course and then we were off to the Natural History Museum. Oh My Gosh it is huge and we did not even go into anything that in depth. There are tons of people and there is soooo much. Highlights would be the collection of animal skeletons, bug room where we looked at some huge bugs, saw a tarantula eat and got to touch a tarantula exoskeleton (so soft), Kids discovery room (was nice to take a break and let Spike crawl around) and the Butterfly Pavilion where we all had a chance to hold a butterfly and one tried to hitch hike its way out on Johns hat.

Day 4 American History Museum where we got to see Ol' Glory American flag (its Huge), Ben Franklin's walking stick, Kermit the frog, Dorothy's red slippers, items from the funerals of the assassinated presidents, first lady room with their china and dresses, tech advancements, the sun stone from the Kirtland Temple, a piece of THE Plymouth rock and so much more. Then we took the kids to the Holocaust Museum to see the Kids exhibit and it was perfect and wonderful. Helped our war loving kids see how band the Nazi's really were. We stopped by the Smithsonian Castle (the original institute for free learning museum) and after a quick break on the grass we were off to the Art Museum. They had a great self lead tour with audio and it had a kids version. The boys (mostly Quincy) loved it. With the idea that we would only be in there for an hour or so we ended being pushed out with all of the other art lovers.

Wow, what a great 4 days. Don't want to even think about how much we spent but can you really put a price on a true experience and education?

But that is not all. On the way home we stopped at the Washington DC LDS Temple and took a few pics and went to the battle field of Antietam which was the location of the bloodiest days of the Civil War.

 Unfortunately my computer was freaking out and I am having trouble uploading all of the photos but here are just a couple of the day we traveled home.

What a great trip. So Whats next???