Who could have predicted that, when we scheduled our trip to D.C. to tour the White House, the weather was going to be 75o and beautifully sunny on January 6, right smack in the middle of Winter?! Wow!
I took the three older kids, and we met some friends of ours, and headed to DC. We took the Metro, which the kids always think is more fun than the rest of the trip. Take us country bumpkins to the city and we can have all sorts of fun with things like subway rides and chasing pigeons.
The only disappointment was the actual tour of the White House. I couldn't even take my camera because they don't allow cameras into the White House, and that really bites since when I go "tourist" I need my camera. I was tempted to take a cell phone picture, but I didn't want Secret Service agents to come out of some secret entry and body slam me against the wall and smash my phone. The Secret Service (what a misnomer: everybody knows who there are; it's no secret) has got to be the most unfriendly bunch of people you'll ever meet on the planet (no offense meant to any agents out there that I haven't met, and who might be friendly). The friendliest guys we talked to were the ones out front, holding their giant P-something guns and looking very military. They chatted with us and the kids and were very nice, and willing to answer our silly questions that I'm sure they've heard a gazillion times. Back to the tour: you walk through the metal detector, through a few rooms with antique furniture, and back out another door. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was a little more than that. I had much more fun, a couple years ago, touring George Washington's home at Mount Vernon. You got to see much more of the house, and were allowed to roam around the grounds and get a really good feel for what life was like in the late 1700's. Today, we didn't even get to see the White House bowling alley, which the guards told us was directly beneath the spot at which we were talking to them. They could have told me I was standing over the Bat cave for all I know, but it sounded good.
Next stop was the Washington Monument. I was in it a few times as a kid, but my kids never got to go in, so they thought it was pretty neat. The elevator takes you to the top (when I was a kid, they allowed you to walk up the stairs, but the stairs are closed now because of too much vandalism-a sad statement on society, if ask me). The whole thing stands about 555 feet high. The observation area has windows that face all four directions of the compass, and you can see everything. This was absolutely the perfect day for this. You could see all of DC, into Maryland and Virginia. Alas, no camera, or I'd have some incredible pictures to show you.
Then we tried to visit the American History Museum. After walking almost all the way around the building, we discovered it was closed. Some better signage would have been helpful.
So, next door to that, we headed to the Natural History museum. That's a hard one for me to visit because so much of what that museum expresses as fact is, in fact, theory. Namely, all that stuff about Evolution. It was still a theory the last time I checked, but you'd never know from the exhibits. Us wacky Christian Creationists just don't get it, I guess. It still gives me 'teaching moments' with the kids where I can explain some of the faulty logic and unproven 'facts' that can be found in the Evolutionist doctrine.
Then, we found out about an exhibit about the Bible at Sackler Gallery. We thought we'd try this, but the exhibit was a two-hour guided tour, and was absolutely packed (it closes tomorrow so it seemed everyone waited until the last minute to visit it). We had a bunch of tired kids and one pregnant lady with us so we decided that would be too much for us to handle.
We headed back home, via Metro, the kids again having more fun on the train ride than at our nation's capitol (except for when they were chasing pigeons). I wish Vicki could've gone, but, besides having Kearsyn to lug around, Tyler wouldn't have lasted two seconds in the White House without breaking something or setting off some kind of alarm and shutting down the whole city.
Next time we go, we'll skip the White House and take a camera.
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3 comments:
"Tyler Goes To Washington"- sounds like a great comedy! (another homeshool project)
Evolution... One of my kids, about 6 or 7 years old at the time, went to the hospital to be checked for a heart murmur. They hooked him up to a monitor and put in a video about dinosaurs (supposedly to help him lie still). On our way out the technition asked him how he liked the movie. He looked up at her and said, "Well, they certainly don't know much about dinosaurs!" I wasn't sure whether to laugh or hide.
Hold your head high. Connor, who's in fifth grade, recently had a question in Language Arts where he had to give examples of things that evolve, to demonstrate he new the definition of the word. The choices were plants, humans, animals, and automobiles. Connor chose plants and automobiles. The answer key said, all of the above. I only marked hiim wrong for choosing plants. I was very proud of him for not choosing animals and humans, and once he remembered that plants were also created by God, he slapped his forehead and said he should have known better.
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