First day of first grade

Yep, this guy started first grade. The entire time he was eating breakfast on his first day, he kept mumbling to himself "I cant believe I made it, I cant believe I made it to first grade. Me either buddy, me either.

Washington DC

John had a work meeting in Washington DC last week so we decided we would take the kids and make a week long trip out of it as a sort of last summer hurrah. James has been wanting to see The White House and monuments since they talked about it in school and of course we knew he would love the museums.

Museum of Natural History was our first stop.

Matthias slept through all of this museum.

Unfortunately, the Hall of Dinosaurs was closed for renovations but there were still several skeletons displayed and tons of fossils for James to look at. He didn't know what he was missing so there was no complaining. The hall is closed until 2018 so we will have to make the trip back once it has reopened for him.

Madeleine's favorite area was all the gems. She wasn't that impressed with The Hope Diamond (because she has fake rings that look the same) but she loves the big quarts and all the different colored stones. There were also real crowns on display that she couldn't get over that actual princesses and queens wore.

Our next stop was The Museum of American History. 

And Matthias missed most of this one too...

We tried to only stay out every day until about 2 or so, and then we would come back to the hotel to rest and then swim! We didn't want to push the kids too hard with all the walking since we had a whole week to sightsee.

The metro was one of James' favorite parts of the city. He loved the whole experience of it. I, on the other hand, was a big ball of anxiety. Taking three kids on the metro made me very happy that we didn't need that in Charlotte. All I could think of what sort of accidents could happen. However, John is such a seasoned traveler that he pretty much took charge of all the navigating so I just had to focus on the kids and not which line we had to get on or what stop to get off at. So in hindsight, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. And once again, James loved it.

On the second day, we went to The National Building Museum which had a huge ice burg exhibit and lots of hands on exhibits for the kids. We only planned on staying there for a few hours but ended up spending all morning there because they kids had so much fun. And Matthias was actually awake for some of this one!

We got a travel bouncer for Matthias for this trip that has to hook up to a doorway. Since we were getting a one bedroom suite, we figured that there would be several doorways that we could hang this from. Totally and completely wrong. The ceilings were so low (old building) that the only doorframe was in the closet... that was on the other side of where we all were. So the poor third kid was stuck in the closet half the time we were in the room and he was all the way down the hall from us. Thankfully he never seemed to care and was just thrilled to be able to have a bouncer!

Our next day we took a tour of the monuments. We signed up for a tour but knew the kids probably wouldn't make the whole trip, but it was fun to get some information on everything we were able to see with the tour. We ended up breaking off about halfway through and walked around on our own.

I found these really cool kid maps on Amazon for the kids to help see where everything was. They came with stickers so we could mark off where our hotel was, what museums we went to, monuments and lots of other really fun sightseeing places. They also make the tour much more fun for the kids.

And yes, Matthias is asleep again.

After we broke off from the tour, we went to lunch at The Hamilton. Which was AMAZING.

The next day we took a tour of Arlington.

Yep - out cold

And of course we were able to visit Grandpa Al's grave.

Then we checked out John's favorite museum, The National Air and Space Museum. John and James were able to do an in flight simulator and there was just so much to see.

We ended up at a park right by The Capitol and we let the kids run (because for some reason they still have so much energy). The squirrels in DC are so friendly from being fed by people that they kept chasing the kids around, in a very friendly non scary way, which they got the biggest kick from.

On our last day, we went to The National Postal Museum. I really didn't think stamps were cool until we went here, and then somehow we walked out with like 600 stamps because they really are just that cool.

It was an amazing trip, probably the best we have every taken. We did so much more than I don't have pictures for - Union Station, Vietnam Memorial, WW2 Memorial, listen to music in the park, went to an outdoor market, and lots of other just fun stuff. And lots of lots of walking. Every night we crashed, but every morning we were up and excited to get back out there. James is already planning on what we can do on our next trip to DC since there were still a few things we weren't able to get to this time. Hopefully John has another work trip to DC in the next few years and we can do it all over again.