A Fun and Busy Weekend

Last weekend (17th) I pulled the kids from school a little early and headed in to DC to spend the weekend with daddy. There were some things we wanted to do there and we had a stake temple trip on Saturday, AND the kids had Monday off so it was a great weekend to go. We met Aaron at Cox Farms for some fun Fall activities. I sure wish I'd pulled the kids from school a little earlier because we didn't have enough time to do all the fun farm activities before they closed.

Saturday we headed to the DC Temple. There were some volunteers from our stake who set up a fun play day for the kids at the stake center next to the temple. It sure was nice to have a temple date with Aaron. When we finished at the temple we took the kids to an indoor pool where we used to take Rylie and Karter when we lived in Maryland. They had a good time. Karter got pretty brave and even tried the high diving board (and loved it, of course.) Rylie tried it a couple of times too but didn't love it like Karter did. Afterwards we did the traditional Pizza Hut visit. Then we surprised the kids and took them to Krispy Kreme for hot donuts (Yum!)

Sunday we went into downtown DC to walk around and see the monuments. Among other things, we went to the new WWII Memorial (so cool!), and the new Pentagon 9-11 Memorial. I think some of the highlights of the day (for the kids) were when they saw some guy chased down by security outside the Pentagon for taking pictures. Poor tourist must not have seen the sign that pictures were not allowed in that area. The kids also saw a police officer on a horse for the first time. The funnest part of the day was when we let the kids play on the grass for a while. The worst part (at least for Rylie) was just how tired she got from walking so much. By the time we got to the Lincoln Memorial she was ready to take a nap right there on the steps. Unfortunately, we still had to walk across the long bridge to Arlington Cemetery to catch the Metro back to our car.

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On Monday Aaron had to work so I tried to be brave and take the kids back downtown all by myself. We didn't do too bad. We got frustrated when, by 10:00, all the tickets to the Washington Monument had been dispursed for the day (apparently, you have to call a day in advance if you hope to get tickets.) We'd also missed out on the first round of tours to the "place where they make money" (as the kids called it). We had to wait two hours before the second daily round of tours. So the kids played on the monument lawn for a bit and then I thought it best to go stand in line at the Bureau of Engraving to be sure we got in that day since that was the one reason we went back downtown. It was fun for the kids to see all that money being made. I remember seeing this sign in a work area the first time I took a tour many years ago and it was still there. It says something like: "How do you think I feel? I print my lifetime salary in less than an hour." It's hard to see but below there's a picture of the kids next to a glass box with black edges. The sign says "One Million Dollars in ten dollar bills." Wow! I guess I can see why the entrance is so carefully guarded.

After that tour I took the kids over to the Museum of Natural History. The worst part of that was when Rylie went missing. I was so scared. She was just so interested in what she was seeing that she kept wandering. If you've ever been in those museums you know how many passageways there are to get lost in. (Of course I was worried too that she'd been taken.) I was about a minute away from asking security for help when Karter spotted her watching a tv monitor.

So, second worst part of the day was when I got back to the Metro Station. The sign had said parking for all day was $4.50. When I got back to the station I was informed that you HAVE to have a Metro Smart Card (a card with a computer chip in it) and it costs $5 just to get the card. And, wouldn't you know it... the card dispenser at our Metro stop was broken! I had to take the kids to a different Metro Station to get the card. So I had to pay $10 for parking that day because that is the lowest amount you can put on the card. ARGH! I had left downtown intime to get back to our car without hitting the rush hour. So this back and forth Metro stop thing took us an hour and Rylie had to go to the bathroom so bad. There wasn't a restroom in sight and finally a station manager took pity on my situation and let her use the employee restroom. We ended up right in the middle of the rush hour because of all the trouble. WARNING: If you go to DC... check out all the snags you might run into (i.e. entrance tickets, Metro information).