First Things First!

In case you were wondering, we did leave for our trip...and just got home! The destination? Washington, D.C. and the Cherry Blossom Festival!

If you remember from this post, being in D.C. during the Cherry Blossom Festival is something I've always wanted to do. With just a couple of weeks notice, the husband offered to take us all along on a business trip and have a little holiday. It was great! Of course, every trip has it's challenges, and this one was no different. We had little girl constipation issues, we had gaping wound in the mouth from a wisdom tooth extraction issues with the husband, boy ruined his only shoes and had to wear my much bigger spare pair. But I digress...

We've been to D.C. before, but this time we did things much differently. We took the metro (subway) everywhere which was good. We saw a ton of different things we'd never seen and a couple of favorites. We didn't see the Lincoln Memorial this time which seems like a crying shame unless you consider everything else we did see and that we've seen the L.M. a couple of times before.But the blooms!!! Oh! They were spectacular. We actually arrived the day before peak bloom. It was just what I'd hoped it would be. They really are beautiful. We spent half of one day under plastic sheeting walking in the rain--that was not fun. We had one day of low 70's and one day near arctic temps. I felt like I was back home in Indiana! Except for rain gear, we were pretty well prepared. Here's what we saw:

The National Gallery of Art (of our Art Calendar! And of course there was the DaVinci!)


The room where Lincoln died (Ford's Theatre was closed)

Lincoln's hat, Kermit the Frog, and a few other items from the American History Museum (also closed) on display at the Air and Space Museum.

The Museum of Natural History (oy vay! A lot of "millions--and even billions--of years" gak there!)

The American Indian Museum (by far the best restaurant for healthy eating of any of the museums.)


The Spy Museum (Truly a history museum.)
The National Archives
The American Portraiture Museum (where all the presidential portraits are.)


Whew! We tried to do the Washington Monument but one couple told us that after standing in line for 2 hours, the tickets ran out before 1/4 of the line advanced! The line was really long even in the pouring rain! Fortunately, the only other place that we really dealt with lines was the National Archives where we waited 2 hours to see the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.


Our time ended on Saturday with the official start of the Cherry Blossom Festival and a Kite Flying Contest and Extravaganza! I don't know that I've ever seen so many people or so many kites! It was awesome. Later in the day, we got our kites (at the Air and Space Museum of course!) and flew them. It was really fun.


We walked about 1000 miles (I'm pretty sure about that!) and my legs feel ripped. (Yeah, right!) I did have to limp home one evening after doing something funky to my knee, but the 'ole back held out pretty well.

Our drive home was not so fun. We had about a 12 hour drive and our little one was not feeling so well. She ended up throwing up just 15 minutes from home! We got home and bathed her and tucked her in and she's fit as a fiddle this morning! We all slept pretty good in our own beds--doesn't everyone? I'll post a few more details of our trip throughout the week, but now you have the highlights.