A Day in the City

I love being close to STUFF!  We've been busy settling into our house and shopping for things that we need here and there.  Dan starts school this week so we decided to have a fun day sight seeing instead of hanging our the house.  Our goals were to visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Holocaust Museum.

 

By the time we made it to DC, we could only get afternoon tickets to what we wanted to see.  We decided to fill in the morning with a walk around the tidal basin to see the Jefferson Memorial.

 

Next, we visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial.  I don't think I've ever been to it before.  There wasn't a museum attached and they didn't have a lot of informational plaques.  We told the kids what we knew about him mainly learned from trips to Warm Springs, but I think someone missed the mark on this monument.

 

My favorite quote of the day.

 

Jaelyn was not enjoying the heat or the sunshine or our walk.

 

I want to come back in the spring when the cherry blossoms are blooming around the tidal basin.  I imagine it's absolutely gorgeous.  It was fun to read the history about the cherry trees.  I knew they had been a gift from Japan.  I didn't know that the first gift of trees were infested with bugs and had to be burned.  It caused slight international tension.  The second gift of trees was bug free.  In the 1950, the Japan trees that ours are descended from suffered a blight.  We send babies from our trees back to replenish theirs.  Neat story!

 

"I'm starving" seemed to be today's mantra.

 

I made my first trip to Washington with my Grandpa Lou on our way to Philadelphia when I was 12.  I wanted to go up in the Washington Monument so badly.  Since then, I've tried to go up in it on every trip, but we've never manage to get tickets.  I was so disappointed to see the scaffolding surrounding the monument today.  It was damaged by an earthquake a couple of years ago and is being repaired.  It should be reopened next summer.  I will go up in it before we leave Virginia!!!

 

I have no pictures, but we took the kids in the Holocaust Monument Memorial.  It feels wrong to say we enjoyed it because it's such a dark period in history, but it's good, I think, to share history.  The kids all showed interest in Daniel's Story, which shared a fictional Jewish boy's experience.  The rest of the museum was pretty deep right down to the miniature models of the gas chambers and incinerators.  I think my favorite part was the list of people who helped the Jews at grave consequence to themselves, their families and in some instances entire villages.  There's good in this world! I told Dan I can't imagine that happening today with technology, yet it is.  Mass genocide is happening in parts of the world with no one (or everyone) watching today.  I might add the Diary of Anne Frank to Jaelyn's 6th grade reading list.

 

Again, no pictures, but we finally got to visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. We've tried to get tickets once or twice before.  It was really neat to see how paper currency is made from start to finish.  Did you know, they still made 2 dollar bills until 2 years ago?  I still carry one in my wallet my mom gave me for Christmas almost 20 years ago (she wrote on it and I've never been able to spend it.)

 

 

We've decided to make a monthly trip into DC.  Next month, the kids wants to ride the duck boats.  I'm not sure what October and November's visits will bring, but December will bring a visit to the Kennedy Center to see Elf the Musical and January will be a visit to the Spy Museum to celebrate Caden's birthday.  We are going to make the most of our time here!