Air, Space and Art

Rejuvenated after a blissful night in our wonderful hotel-smart thinking Bill changed our wake-up call from 8 to 9 so we could rest-we headed out for our second day on the mall. We started at the Smithsonian Castle because the boys really wanted to see where the movie "Night at the Smithsonian" was set. Pop-culture has such an enormous impact on society and it was evident when we discovered just how much D.C. is using that movie as a promotional tool to draw in more visitors to the city. Every single museum has merchandise to purchase and/or is showing the movie in one of their IMAX theaters. The castle has part of the movie set still set up, where the bad Egyptian guy has a pile of treasure surrounding his "throne" (Archie Bunkers' chair). The boys were totally excited to see the set and really want to re-watch the movie now. After walking through the beautiful gardens that surround the castle, we walked the the National Air and Space Museum. It was an incredible hit with the kids. They loved every inch of the place. They could not believe that they saw the actual Wright brothers plane or real missiles. Williams one request was wanting to do the simulator rides. Romney was big enough for the one that makes it look like you are flying in a plane. William and Bill, however, were both tall enough and brave enough to hit the one that lets you fly the plane or act as a gunner in a plane. My guess is that it isn't hard to figure out who chose which job, if you have spent more than 15 minutes in conversation with either one of them.
After burning out at the Air and Space Museum, the boys very politely humored me and let me enjoy walking around the Hirschhorn Museum of Modern Art. I am actually not sure if they were being polite or just trying to find a place to get out of the rain storm that started up seconds after stepping out of the NASM and my museum was the closest to get to. Either way I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Modern art is my personal favorite genre. Romney was enjoying himself as well. Almost a bit too much as he was having a hard time distinguishing the Art from everyday objects. One of the exhibits consisted of broken glass cubes and fex-ex boxes, and they were sitting in the middle of the hallway surrounded by a line of masking tape that squared them off on the floor. Romney thought that they looked just right to climb up on and started toward them setting off an alarm. Luckily, he was stopped in time and we had a funny discussion about the fact that they were art. Apparently Romney was not the only one to confuse them for something insignificant as the alarm sounded at least 20 more times before we left.
My favorite part of the exhibit was this guy. He was positioned in a corner and is made of fiberglass and covered in some kind of resin. He looked absolutely lifelike. If had stood up (which he looked like he might do at any moment) he would have been 15-20 feet tall. It appeared as if someone had captured a giant and stripped him down and placed him in a corner for all of the tourists to gawk at like an animal in the zoo. He was stunning.

The kids were totally museum-ed out and needed a break, so Bill and I decided we would take the metro to White Flint Mall in Maryland and let the kids play at Dave and Busters and we could grab some dinner there. It was mostly uneventful, except for the metro station on the way back to the hotel. While we were waiting for our train, the boys saw and chased and caught their first lightning bugs. Quite exciting, and a lovely way to wrap up day 2.