Brown and Pink Polka Dots : NIh day 7

What is life without a little adventure.

I went to DC with my parents when I was 10. I went to a brand new school in 8th grade so we didn't have the typical 8th grade trip to DC so I haven't been in this area in around 20 years. Brent came to DC in 8th grade however he had been chosen to participate in National History Day in WI during the same week so he was in DC for a couple days and then flew home before doing many of the big things so he had multiple things left on his DC bucket list.

Normally when you come for this program at NIH you are flown in on a Sunday and out on a Saturday leaving very little time to see the area but because we have two kids we are here for almost 2 weeks so we are lucky enough to have a weekend.

So we decided to go check off some things on Brent's bucket list!

There is a Metro station right off the medical center campus so we walked to the Metro (this campus is bigger then the Whitewater campus). The inn lent us a couple of Metro cards but we needed to add money to them so we tried doing that and the machine ate the money so the station master helped us out (thank you!).

The kids thought riding the Metro was really cool! We got to Metro Center and figured out how to get out (the wheelchair exit was on the other side of the tracks). We got up to street level and there was a Starbucks (amazing!!!). We then walked to the American History Museum... check one off of Brent's bucket list. He has always wanted to go to the Smithsonian. Jillian loved the inventor part and Lydia loved the little market. We grabbed lunch at the museum and then headed up to the third floor to look around. Lydia was starting to get tired and we knew seeing the monuments was really important to us so we headed outside.

First we walked over by the Washington Monument. It is currently closed but Jilli thought it was cool to look at. Lydia fell asleep

We then walked to the Lincoln Monument. We found the elevator! Lydia was asleep so we took time to teach Jillian why this monument was built and what slavery was and how the brokenness of it still hurts our country (in 6yr old terms). We are really behind on where I wanted to be with school this week however I don't think you get much more hands on with teaching US history then standing in the buildings.

At this point Jilli was very tired and wanted to come back to the inn so we started the walk back to metro center (not a short walk lol). We talked past several of the war memorials and the white house.We got back to Metro center right as our subway pulled up.

We got back to campus and figured out where we needed to go to get back on (its the weekend so not all of the security spots are open... to get onto campus you need to go through airport level security so we traveled as light as we could going into the city.

We got back to the inn to rest for a while (we left the inn at 8:30am and got back at 3:00). Brent made us some speghetti for dinner and then we opened some mail and headed to bed early... I fell asleep before the kids.