Ariel visits the museum

Having grown up in a suburb of Washington DC, and then having lived in another one for nearly four years with my children, I was shocked to find out that Bracken had told his preschool teacher that he had never been downtown to see the White House or the Capitol. He has, of course, been down to see the sights several times but apparently none of that ever sunk in. Justin and I vowed that this trip back home would not pass us by without a trip to the national mall. Unfortunately for us the weather did not cooperate on the chosen day. We headed down to Washington last Wednesday and it was a cold and rainy day, I think it was only around 40 degrees and it wasn't just drizzling it was pouring down rain...fun. Abbie came appropriately dressed for the copious amounts of rain in her newly-acquired Ariel costume that used to be her Aunt Kelly's.

It actually was fun once we found a parking space (which literally took one full hour of circling), we finally decided to exercise a little faith and pray that a parking space would open up and one did IMMEDIATELY after I said Amen. It was a great teaching lesson for my kids, although now I'm sure they will start praying for all kinds of things and expect instant gratification. We did have to run through the rain for about a block but once the kids were inside the Natural History Museum it was all worth it. Our brothers, who found a parking space nearly 40 minutes earlier than we did, were so much fun to be with and made the trip a lot more fun for the kids. My younger brother Josh and Justin's younger brother Spencer have been good friends since Justin and I began dating twelve years ago, they were 7 and 8 years old at the time. Spencer just returned from serving a full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in London, and Josh is entering the Missionary Training Center tomorrow to begin his mission in San Bernadino, CA. It was a great reunion for us all because we hadn't seen Spencer in two years before this trip and we know we won't see Josh for the next two years. We love them both and are grateful for the example they set for our children.

We had planned on hitting multiple museums and several more sights but because of the bad weather we settled for just the one museum followed by a drive through Adams Morgan for pizza. Jessie and Taylor have experienced the joys of Pizza Mart with us on another trip (we went to the zoo that time) but this time we thought that Spencer would get a kick out of the 24" slices. The pizza is good, especially when you are famished from a day downtown, but we go more for the novelty and experience of going to such a dive and ordering a slice of pizza taller than some of our children.

The gang in front of the iconic giant elephant

Two scary kids

Tate is fascinated by the T-Rex skull

My little dinosaurs

The boys touching the rock "like Ms. Sarah has at school"

Abbie's turn to touch the rock

Uncle Josh viewing the rocks with the kids

Abbie having the time of her life

Bracken making a typical Bracken face

Bracken, Abbie, and Tate trying to grab the 3-D molecules in the precious gems section

Mermaid Abbie outside the butterfly house

Bracken asking me if they had to kill that butterfly...unfortunately, yes

Tate really trying to see what was living in that bubble

they are really checking out what's going on in there

The kids crawling through a bug house at the bottom of a faux tree

the whole gang (except me) sitting in front of a window overlooking Washington

Spencer and the kids looking down at the giant elephant

Abbie with a blue tongue from her lollipop

Bracken imitating the orangutan

Abbie looking like a zombie