D.(isco)C.(cows)

What’s in a name? It depends, right? There’s nothing like planning a trip to Washington D.C. to find out the children accompanying you have no idea what the D.C. stands for. So far the suggestions/guesses include: Disco Cows, Dolphins of Color (after buying a Washington souvenir t-shirt with multi-colored dolphins on the front of it.), Devoid of Carabiners (after looking for a clip for Bill’s water bottle), Discount City (after noticing how many street vendors there are along the mall.), etc. This is after we read books all through June about American History. I suppose none of them touched on the whole District of Columbia part.


This morning we woke up to quite a heavy rainstorm, but braved the walk to the metro and then from the metro to the Washington Monument because we had tickets to enter (and ride to the top). (By the way-- a sure sign that you have been using a lot of public transportation: Your children echo the recording that tells you to watch the closing doors and then jinx the lady on the recording. Video of that may one day appear here.) The kids have been asking to do this since we arrived and saw the strange pencil shaped monument. We waited in said rainstorm for about 20 minutes and made it past security, (always a bit dicey with Romney testing how many pennies he can get in his pocket past the metal detector) and up the elevator. The views are wonderful and it is a nice place to get a feel for the layout of the city. We all enjoyed this “must-do” activity.


The rain let up a bit by the time we were finished and out of the monument, but it was still drizzling so we headed over to the National Aquarium for some indoor (but not a museum) fun. The kids (especially Romney) were both mesmerized more than I had imagined. Romney would spend 15 minutes at each tank just studying the fish and plant life. Big hits were the sea turtle (no surprise there), watching the piranha feeding frenzy, and the frogs. It was not a very big aquarium, and it is located in the basement of one of the federal buildings, but the kids were enjoying it so much, we spend a couple of hours there.


Next stop was supposed to be the National Archives to view the Declaration of Independence. We got there and found a 45 minute line to view it, so we decided to try it on a weekday and spend some time at the National Zoo looking at the pandas. We had a great time at the admission free, lovely zoo. I am not a huge fan of zoos in general, but this one was great as far as zoos go. Both kiddos loved the animals, but especially Romney, again, who fell in love with the 4 year old panda and the 8 month old baby gorilla. Lowlights: Watching a gorilla throw up over and over and then lick it all up-- ewww!

The boys were dying to have dinner at the hotel, so we called it an early night when the zoo closed at 6 p.m. and headed back the hotel (a couple mile hike) ate dinner and let the boys have some down time in the room. We will sleep early and happy tonight!