A Weekend in Washington D.C.

Our time in North Carolina is rapidly coming to an end, so we are trying to get in some sight seeing before we leave. We finally made the weekend trip up to Washington D.C. we have been talking about since we got here two years ago. Riding the metro was an amusement park ride in and of itself.



We spent a morning at the Museum of Natural History.


We made the trek all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial with stops at the Washington Monument, World War II Memorial, and Vietnam Wall. It was a long hike and Julia and Blake fell asleep, but there wasn't anyone to carry Brayden.




We had to bribe them with ice cream to make the trek back.


We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Air and Space Museum. There were too many great things to see and do.

The next day we went to the Zoo. The adventure was the process of getting there. Our ill planned attempt to park in downtown Washington D.C. resulted in a great deal of unanticipated sight seeing in some of the less typical tourist locations. Several hours after our planned arrival time we finally showed up at the zoo. Saturday is probably not the best day to go to a free zoo. The best shot we got of the pandas was on this sign. We only had a little bit of time and we probably spent half of it waiting in line to use the bathrooms. I think we still managed to have fun though.

The high point of the entire weekend for Brayden was on the sidewalk in front of the Museum of Natural History. It was a combination of two of his favorite things; money and picking stuff up of the ground. The ten dollar bill was burning a hole in his pocket all day long until he was able to unload it at the gift shop of the Air and Space Museum later that afternoon.

If you have read the blog entries over the past several months you might have picked up on Brayden's money fixation. Since he figured out you can use it to buy stuff he has been preoccupied with getting it. He had planned on building a robot that could make money, then he started just making it himself with a green crayon and lined paper. He has been reading and writing incessantly to earn money, first for the Wii, and more recently for Legos and other future acquisitions. My friend Philip was staying with us the week before our trip to DC. Brayden was telling him that we were going to Washington DC and invited him to go with us. Philip explained that he had already been to Washington DC. Brayden was pretty excited to hear that and asked, "Is there a lot of money there? Did you see it? Do they have a bank?" Turns out there is a lot of money in Washington DC.