Daily Archives: March 28, 2011

We had a GREAT day today!  After having a very satisfying, large breakfast, we drove downtown, found a place to park, and started all of our activities!  The first stop we made was to the National Archives.  It was really cool to go in there and see the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and other founding documents of our country.  We also saw other things like an original Gutenburg Bible.  The Magna Carta is also there but unfortunately it was not on display today.

What a humbling experience to see the documents in person, read through the words written on the page, and see the signatures.  It is amazing to me every time I think of the sacrifices that our founding fathers made for us!  It also makes me sick to see how much some of what they originally thought for our country has been trampled under foot!  🙁  There’s no better place to live, however, and we are all VERY grateful for our freedoms!  🙂

We then walked over to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.  Zach really wanted to see the Hope Diamond so we indulged him!  🙂

We also saw a lot of other things like additional gems and stones, dinosaur bones, and stuffed animals.  🙂  The funny thing is that our Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (we think) is better than this.  That said, we didn’t spend too much time in there.

We then decided to go to the Air and Space Museum.  On our way, we walked through the Museum of Art.  This was a beautiful building and we saw a lot of Rembrandt paintings along with many from the Impressionist Period.  I wish we could have taken more time here, but the boys really didn’t want to look at a bunch of art.  They wanted to get to the planes and rockets!  🙂

The Air and Space Museum was by far our favorite museum of all the buildings on the Smithsonian campus!  🙂  There was so much to do, see, touch, and experience!  The boys LOVED it and we had a hard time getting them from place to place in there!  Once they found something they could do (i.e. sit in a plane, touch a moon rock) they wanted to keep doing it over and over!  🙂

We saw a LOT of really cool things, like Lindburgh’s Spirit of St. Louis, the Wright Brother’s first plane they flew at Kitty Hawk, Amelia Earhart’s plane, the first command module from the moon  visit, Sputnik, and  much more.

We could have spent a few more hours (if not all day) in there, but we ran out of time and had to start making our way up to the Library of Congress for our tour.

Fortunately, we had some time and didn’t have to run to our tour.  We were able to walk a little slower (we’re not usually used to that), and enjoy the day.  Flowers were in bloom and the day, although a little on the cool side, was beautiful!  On our way up to the Library, there was a group filming a movie in front of the Capitol.  The girls went over to check it out and the director asked them if they wanted to be extras in it!  🙂  They were pretty excited and  so we hung around for awhile waiting until they were needed.

Unfortunately, as movie filming goes, things went slow and we had to leave for our tour before the girls were needed.   🙁  What a cool thing for them, though!

We really enjoyed our tour of the Library of Congress.  Our tour guide was really funny and had a huge amount of experience with the library.  He took us to a couple of the reading and discussion rooms that are normally reserved for members of Congress (we weren’t really supposed to be in there).  🙂  The building is beautiful and the architecture is amazing!

The one thing that we got to see that really excited Zach was the reading room that they showed in the movie “National Treasure 2.”  That was his highlight for the tour (unfortunately, we couldn’t take pictures there)!

When we were done with our tour, we started our long walk back to the car.  We were all beat!  We drove back to Fairfax to the hotel, ate a quick dinner at Chili’s, and then the kids went swimming!  This is really why Ben and Zach wanted to be on the trip.  As long as they got to swim, they were happy!  🙂

We are now “officially” dead tired and will sleep great tonight!  I think we’re going to change things up a little bit tomorrow so we don’t have to walk as much.  Our feet need a rest!