DC Adventure :: Nationals Game

the Nationals game was really good. Me and Uncle gabe got there right at the middle of the third inning. There was already one point scored by Pittsburgh, so I rooted for Pittsburgh and Uncle Gabe rooted for the Nationals. The Nationals won by one point.

I discovered that I like baseball peanuts - I got a triple peanut! Uncle Gabe said that usually only Pop Pop gets those.

The Metro back was really crowded. 

DC Adventure :: Caverns

I was a little sick of museums, so we toured two different caves. The first one was called the Skyline Caverns. It had a bunch of different lights that made the rocks light up in different ways. It looked a lot better than the next cavern that we toured.

The Luray Caverns weren't as good because they didn't have as many stops and the stops to see things that they did have weren't as cool.

Both caverns had a room where marriages happened. I liked Skyline caverns more because it didn't have anything mechanical in it for the instruments. You could hit the stalagtites with your hand and it would make a noise.

The Luray Caverns had so many flies, that if I would have just carried around the electric flyswater it would have got like 30 flies while I was standing there in line, not even swining it!

DC Adventure :: Smithsonian - Air & Space

This museum had lots of artillery including missiles, attack planes, and different types of bullets. The biggest one I saw was four inches long.

I got to work the controls of a battleship. It didn't really do anything. It looked more complicated than a modern one would look like.

They also had this station where you sit on a spinning tool and held a bicylce wheel and someone spun it and when I turned the wheel, I turned on my stool without having to move myself.

Compared to all the other planets, Saturn was bigger  than I thought - almost as big as Jupiter, bigger counting the rings.

DC Adventure :: White House & Capitol

We went on a tour of the White House, but no cameras are allowed. It wasn't as much of a tour as I thought it would be. The White House was very big, but we only got to tour a small portion and couldn't see any of the working part.

While we were walking to the White House, there were police escorts and Uncle Gabe said that since it wasn't a big group, like 5 or 10 cars or so, it was probably Michelle Obama, not the president.

My favorite part would have to be the blue room because it had the coolest stuff, one was an actually cukoo clock which I'd never seen before. But, it hasn't been wound up for 25 years.

The strangest thing was the picture of one of the presidents daughters holding a raccoon.

At the Capitol there were a bunch of pictures and sculptures of leaders and stuff. Before we did the tour of it, there were these security guards, and they wouldn't let Uncle Gabe's water bottle pass through, even though it was empty.

At the start of the tour we watched a video and started touring. I was at the front of the line the entire time. There were these two annoying kids that wanted to push past me at the end.

The dome of the building has a big strip of a story that went all the way around the dome. I couldn't tell where it started and where it ended. It was all pictures, so I really didn't understand it.

DC Adventure :: Monuments

Bayley -- I really liked the monuments, especially the WWII Memorial where there were a bunch of pillars and on each pillar there was a name of a state. We went the long way to find Oregon, but it was fun doing it like we did.

There was a big pool in the middle of it, and it would be fun to play in it if they let you.

The reflecting pool was a big giant dirt field with a bunch of pipes sticking out of the ground, since it was under repair. I wish I would have brought shoes, and not just sandals.

My favorite memorial was the FDR Memorial because it had a bunch of sayings and life lessons on it. There were a bunch of fountains. And a waterfall. Some of the waterfalls smelled like pee and they were yellow.

The Lincoln Memorial had more steps than I thought it would, and the statue of Abraham Lincoln was much bigger than I thought it would be. On two of the walls, there were some really long speeches. On the left wall there was a long speech, and on the right wall there was another speech, three times as long!

DC Adventure :: Smithsonian - Natural History

Bayley's update :: I am in the Smithsonian touring the Hope Diamond and crystals section. I've already seen about the dinosaurs, ocean and mammals on the first floor.

These crystals are really amazing. I am taking lots of pictures. There is a crystal in front of us that looks like nachos.

I saw this crystal ball where if you looked at it from the inside it reflected images back and you and everything would be upside down, but if you looked at it from the inside out, images would be magnified and you would have intensified vision.
It was really fun!

DC Adventure :: National Zoo

Bayley - I really liked the zoo, and I think it is better than the oregon Zoo because there was more animals and cooler ones. There was even an octopus, and I looked at a live shrimp. Did you know that shrimp are blue?

It is kind of a zoo, aquarium, and insect house in one. It has a waterfall in it. 

Lizards are shinier than I thought.

Bayley took a lot of pictures of animal butts. Because he was only 9. He claims the animals didn't want to be photographed, and that is why his pictures came out that way.

DC Adventure :: Getting there

Bayley's first plane trip - a red-eye flight to NYC. He didn't even doze off!

After a morning in NYC (including the Empire State Building), it was time for Bayley's first train trip - from Penn Station to Virginia. Once they were in the right state, it was onto the Metro to Uncle Gabe's condo!


Bayley -- I liked the metro a lot because the seats were comfier than I expected. The only bad part of the plane was when my body got bored of sitting there and during landing my ears popped and it hurt a lot.

New York, New York

I thought it would be a great idea to take a red eye flight and sleep away the 6 hour flight. Except the tall one had no interest in sleeping his first flight away. I talked him into trying to rest, but once the flight attendant gave him free headphones to watch the seat-back TV, my chances of resting vanished.

After a very smooth flight we took a car to the hotel, but there was no room for us at the inn, at least not until the afternoon. So, we dropped off our bags and set off to explore. We found the Hershey store and a crew setting up for the Transformer’s premier that night – Bayley enjoyed seeing Bumblebee, but not the smoke effects!

We breakfasted at Junior’s Café, famous for its cheesecake. They had strawberry blintz…but their blintz are deep fried. I kept thinking I was eating a cheese filled doughnut.

We decided to trek down to the Empire State Building. We took the SkyRide which gave the basics o f the history of the building and the layout of New York. The motion ride is good, but for the price you think they could make it look more finished. I kept thinking they keep the lights dim because everything was half done.

On the observatory deck we realized the weather was too hazy to see very far. We made it half way around before Bayley got tired of it. Grrreat!

Uncle Gabe arrived and we went to lunch at Joe Allen, a bistro that seemed to cater to the theater set. I turned my Cajun sandwich into a salad, Bayley ate a baked potato and claimed he was too full to eat his mac & cheese!

We made it back to the room and Bayley promptly fell asleep! He was out the entire time I got ready and registered for conference! It was ridiculously hard to get him to wake up so he could take the train to DC!

Report Card Dinner

 

When the boys bring home good grades, we take them out to dinner and they get to pick the restaurant. So...even after a Chuck E Cheese birthday party at lunch time, Bayley wanted pizza for dinner. At Out of This World.

I really think our local pizza & play space is a great idea. Especially during our long rainy winters and on days when it's too hot to play outside (plus, on days over 90 the kids get free ice cream). But, I do not like taking Grace there. She's at the chase me stage, and it's exhausting.

So, we made a deal with the boys. We'd take them if they took turns with Grace. And for the most part, they did. They tried to get her to do the things they like, but she's still too scared to go through the blow-up maze to get to the giant slide, or even climb through the blacklight play structure. So they took twenty minute shifts, and when they decided to complain about it, we left!