weekly wrap up 6/09/17-- Washington DC trip

We just came back from a trip to Washington DC.  Since we have been doing American history all year we thought we would wrap up our school year with a trip to Washington DC.  Since my parents live not too far away we dropped in to visit them as well:)  The kids have been to DC before but we still haven't seen all the museums so we tried to hit a few that were still on our list, we got into everything we wanted except the new African American museum.  We tried to get tickets but they were sold out:(.  We will just have to go back one day:)

I just give a brief run down of what we did.  My husband had to work for the first three days of our trip so I was on my own with the kids and at first attempted to to two museums a day which lasted exactly 2 days before we all agree that was just too much.  So then we just went to one museum each day and then went to the hotel swimming pool to relax before going out to dinner.  The kids did amazing, better than I even expected.  It was fun for them to discover something that we had read or seen in a book.

The first evening we arrived we went straight to the Vietnam and Korean memorial

My husband trying to find a person he knew as a kid who served int he war.

We found the names of the men in We were soldiers once

We also saw the steps in which Martin Luther king did his 'I have a dream speech'

Visiting the Korean memorial

 The next day my Husband had to work so I took the kids by train to Arlington Cemetery

MarioFan is an expert at maps, thankfully as he kept us off the wrong train several time:)

Kennedy's eternal flame

General Lee's home

An amazing view of the Capital

Watch the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown solider

The kids wanted to see the spy museum which was one of the two place we paid an entrance fee for.  They had an excellent James bond exhibit at the end

after the spy museum we toured the portrait gallery- kids are getting tired

The next day we went to see how money was made in the morning

and in the afternoon we went to the Holocaust museum

 It was at this point we decided we would only do one museum a day as it was just to exhausting for us all.  We were spending 3 hours in each museum and still not seeing everything we wanted to see so we thought a slower pace would be better.  Plus now my Husband is off work and could join us for the rest of the museum trips.

On the fourth day we spent the day at the Natural History museum

My husband loves the Air and space museum 

 After five days of non stop museum we decided to take a drive though Sky line drive and see some nature.

we took the kids to the winery where we had our wedding ceremony 

At one of the visiting station there was an excellent display of the Civil Corp that gave lots of information about the history of how this park came to be.  I had no idea how many people were cruelly kicked off their land:( by our government.

 On the seventh day we toured the portrait gallery and each of us had several artist painting we wished to see.  Here our just a few

I had to see the Vermeer Paintings (of which their are two)

My husband had to see Rembrandt's paintings

MarioFan said this was his favorite

And this was Firedrakes favorite

 ON the eight day we headed to the Newseum-- which was the second place we went to that we had an entrance fee for.  This was an excellent museum.  Four floors of history and journalism and if you think the press is bad or fake now, you should see what the press printed about George Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt back in the day.  Yikes!!!  Although my daughter said the insults were classier back then:)

 In the bathroom at the museum there were amazing tiles of badly worded newspaper headlines.  So were just out right funny:)

We ended each day exhausted and headed to the hotel pool, I was very disappointed this hotel did not have a hot tub!  But I survived.

 Next stop was a three day visit with my parents:)  I post that next week