The beginning of every story has to grab you and make you beg for more right? Well the beginning of our our story at the time didn't grab me in at all....it was quite frustrating...but in hind sight, it makes for a good story. (And I am SO glad this story doesn't include my sweet little Spencer because if it had I may be locked up in a little padded cell.) And for anyone who didn't know Ken had meetings in Washington DC and since that paid for a hotel we decided that I would bring Mark and Jessie and join him for the week. And so it begins...We dropped Abbie and Spencer off for a week of sleepovers at Grandma's house. Spencer almost didn't even say good bye to me because he was playing hide-and-go-seek with Grandma and was hiding in her laundry basket and didn't want me to give his hiding spot away.
The trip to the SLC airport was uneventful except we couldn't find a good place to put the apple cores from the apples we ate on the way up. (I better go check Ken's car for those before he heads to work on Monday.)
As we boarded our first plane Mark and Jessie were SO excited to be flying. We found our seats, put our packs under the seats in front of us and tugged at Mark's seat belt because he wanted it really snug and waited....and waited....and waited....and waited and waited for over two hours....just sitting there. We were informed they were fixing the air conditioning unit and since we were all going to miss our connections we could either be rerouted to a different airport, or we could wait until tomorrow to go! This is where a little bit of panic set in. Ken was going to pick us up at the airport so I hadn't even bothered to get the name of our hotel or the address. A very nice guy let me borrow his phone to call Ken...but no answer! Ahhh...so I pack the kids up and we truck to the front of the plane to see when the flight for tomorrow would land in DC. It would have us in at 4:00 the next afternoon (a whole day of vacation wasted). So we try phoning again and thank goodness Ken answers and we get the details of the hotel and let him know we'll see him about 1:00 am.
When we walked off the plane at the Dulles airport (instead of the Regan airport) this fun light board greeted us and the kids were totally impressed. Mom, get a picture of this was the cry and so with a few chuckles from the people getting off behind us I ran to catch up and take their picture. After getting our suitcase we wondered around a bit trying to figure out what to do since none of the city buses did midnight runs and I had no idea were we really were. Some helpful gentlemen pointed us to the line to get a taxi, but warned us it'd probably be $65 to $80 to get to DC. Not seeing much other choice we got in line for another first: a taxi ride.
The drive was very nice and when it only ended up costing about $53 I felt I was getting a great bargain. We knocked on Ken's room and woke him up right about 1:00 am. The kids were so excited to tell him everything that it was even later when we finally got to sleep. I don't have a clue how Ken got up for meetings at 7:00 the next morning because the kids and I slept until 10:00.We missed breakfast...got a little turned around walking around the block our hotel was on...but eventually ended up at McDonald's, ate and went to our first Smithsonian. It had works of art by women in it and the first two levels were quite interesting. The other levels were a little weird. Jessie really loved this picture. They had pictures here from the 1500's! Since educating women was highly unpopular back then then most of the women painters were either married to a painter or were the daughters of painters. There works were quite impressive. I think my favorite was one of Mary with Jesus as a toddler sitting on her lap. Mary's expression conveyed so much love.
This is a beautiful chandelier on the second floor.
Our second stop was the National Aquarium. This flag was on the building next to it, but it was so beautiful.
The sea turtles and the alligators were the kids favorites. We also got to watch the paranas being fed and although it wasn't quite as spectacular as one might imagine it was very interesting to learn about them from the lady who fed them.
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