Tourists in Washington DC

Jacob was asked to meet up with a company he has been coding for in Washington DC. He kindly let us tag along on his business trip! We drove up to DC on a Wednesday. The weather was great. January shouldn’t be so nice! The first day was warm, perfect for mall wandering. It had hosted the inauguration just the week before so they were still cleaning it up, cell towers and special barricades were everywhere as well as the seating and flags hanging from the Capitol. We found an Allred at the Vietnam Memorial. And climbed the stairs to see Lincoln, now Anna points him out on all our pennies. 
Jacob and I acknowledge that this isn’t a big temple trip season of our lives right now, since we always have a newborn around. But we did make a trip to the grounds to visit with the children. I really enjoyed seeing the temple during the sunset. I had just gone to a fireside where a man who helped built the temple (and set in Moroni!) shared his experiences so I kept seeing things a bit differently this visit.
The second day was windier! We stayed inside doing the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum. But almost got blown away crossing the mall. The kids weren’t used to not being able to touch exhibits so Air and Space was us reminding them to have fun and look around. But they did love the room where they could drive the air craft carrier. Anna couldn’t get enough of that room. My dad says it looked just like the room he had to check during his time in the Navy. Jacob got to see the real model Enterprise filmed in Star Trek. It was like 5 feet long. Very cool.

The kids were just dying to see the Dinosaurs at the next museum and we failed at doing our research, they are redesigning the Dinosaur hall…to be opened in 2019! Whoops. But they did have a back corner room with one triceratops and one t-rex hanging out on plywood. I don’t think the kids noticed anything was off at all. Isaac wanted to touch everything and was so excited and called the triceratops by name and the stegosaurus we saw in pictures. He loves his dinosaurs. But seriously, we were in the animal room before the Dinosaur room and I asked Isaac if he could guess what animal the bat bones belonged to. He said “Teranadon! Wraaaait!” Yep, he randomly dinosaur screeches everywhere we go. Jacob says that Isaac gets his noisemaking honestly: apparently Jacob was always making random and loud noises as a little boy. I was excited to explore the Eygptian stuff with Anna but she was wigged out by the mummies and wouldn’t get into it. I don’t really blame her, dead people aren’t a big interest of mine either.

And unexpected favorite room was the gem room! Anna wanted me to take a picture of her with every stone and necklace. She thought they were all so beautiful and we would make up descriptions and stories about the rocks. These look fuzzy. These look like fingers. Anna thought this awesome red rock looked like the remains of a crumbled city! Then Isaac found this magnetic rock and he literally could have stayed there the rest of the day playing with the paper clips and making games up to play with me. I love seeing this guy light up!

The kids favorite part of the whole trip may have been the metro ride. It was so exciting to see the other trains and ride into the city. On the second day on the way home Isaac fell asleep on my side.

On Friday, Jacob has his business meeting. The company was so happy to put a face with a name and I think it went well. Jacob is really glad he got to see the operation first hand and get a better feel for his projects. He dropped us off at the nearby Chuck E. Cheese and we stayed there the whole morning. It was fun. I was frustrated by the card system. A) They were easy to lose and confuse with the fake id’s one machine prints out. B) I couldn’t control the money! Just give me some tokens please. But Anna reminded me that this was where kids rule so I shouldn’t be in charge anyway and ran off with her card. They had a great time. The only disaster was when I tried to play skeeball while wearing sleeping Eliza and Isaac wanted to help but every ball he rolled ended up 10 feet behind us somehow. I’m sure we were quite the spectacle. Otherwise my kids were magnificent. Isaac loved the rides and the pony. I liked teaching them air hockey. And the mouse threw out way too many tickets for a Friday morning at 11. Seriously the preschoolers got bored with picking up the tickets before they were all cleaned up. So we snagged some pretty cool trinkets for the ride home.