For President's Day

Sometimes I have to pinch myself, and give my kids the big "you have no clue how lucky you are" lecture, when we get to do things that I only dreamed of doing when I was their age. This past weekend was one of those instances.

When I was in grade school and we learned about Washington and Lincoln for President's Day, I could only dream of getting to visit the monuments that honored those two great Presidents. But that is just what my children got to do this last weekend on our trip to D.C. We did some other things too. Here are the highlights.

After our last trip to D.C., the kids were most intrigued by the Washington Monument. So, for this trip, we got tickets to take the elevator to the top.
I kind of wish we could have climbed the stairs. I love to walk and it would have been fun to climb the 555 feet to the top. Also, when the monument was built, States in the Union, Mason Lodges, and other organizations sent commemorative stones that were inlaid on the inside of the monument. Back in the day when you climbed the stairs to the top, you got to see all of these. Now, you only get to see a few when the elevator slows on the way down and the elevator windows open briefly. Making the trip to the top was still wonderful though. The views were amazing. It would be fun to do this again sometime.

Here is what we saw from the top. It was actually a clear beautiful day, the windows that I was taking the pictures through were just dirty.

The Capitol Building.
The Jefferson Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial
The White House and the EllipseThe best view of the White House grounds is also from up there. Here, I zoomed in. One interesting thing to note, see the lone Evergreen tree standing in the top of the Ellipse? You can also see the top of it in the very bottom middle of the picture below. This is the national Christmas Tree and this is it standing on Friday. On Saturday, the wind blew it over. It has been growing there since 1978. Over the years, many different trees have grown in that spot since previous National Christmas trees have met a similar demise.
We traveled to the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution. Of course, you can't take pictures of those things. Here are the kids infront of the building though.
What was most interesting to me was seeing how faded the Declaration of Independence is. It is practically unreadable and the only signature that I could see any more was John Hancocks.

We also visited the White House visitor's center and then walked in front of the white house. It was kind of interesting to see the sniper on the roof. He was wandering around on the top at the right.

We made a quick trip into the Natural History Smithsonian, B's favorite, because we had 30 extra minutes. We stopped and looked at all of the jewelry, including the Hope Diamond which is currently in a special setting.

The kids had a great trip to the National Zoo while R and I got to spend a day and half by ourselves. (Thank's B&L!) We spent the major part of a day in the American History Museum where we saw a great exhibit on Lincoln. There was so much great stuff to see in the museum but one of my favorites was the flag that hung over Ft. McHenry, in Baltimore, during the war of 1812. It inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner. It is really impressive to see.

After meeting back up with B&L and the kids on Sunday, we finished our President's Day weekend visit with a stop at the Lincoln Memorial.