Sightseeing

Yesterday Dan, Melinda, Bob, Nathan, and I spent the day sightseeing in D.C. We also asked Luke if he wanted to go, but he's not real big into walking or cold, and we knew there would be plenty of both, so he wisely chose to stay home with Grandma and Grandpa and have a day of being the "oldest" brother. People always tell me about all the great educational opportunities downtown, esp. all the free ones, and I always feel terribly bad when I say really we've hardly done anything since we moved here, but it is quite difficult with 4 boys between the ages of 7 and 1 to do it by myself. So when Mom and Dad volunteered to watch the little guys, I jumped at the opportunity. Dan had several ideas about what to do--he especially wanted to see the FBI Building--but as it turned out, everything he suggested was closed (in fact, the FBI Building has been closed for renovations since 2002, but should open sometime next year), so we had to look for other things. We started out at the National Postal Museum, across from Union Station in the old Post Office building. We got a great parking space, so the day definitely started out right! This museum was surprising interesting, with a lot of hands-on activities for Nathan. We played "Memory" with stamps, designed the best postal routes from various points, made a post card, and looked at a lot of interesting exhibits about the evolution of the mail trucks, how a national postal service brought the nation together, and lots of other stuff. We thought about you, Uncle Jim! Good work keeping the mail coming! : ) We ate lunch across the street at Uno's in Union Station. Except for my spilling Dan's water glass all over his sweatshirt while he was using the restroom, it was a good lunch. Then we drove up to the National Cathedral. I learned a lot there. For example, I didn't know it wasn't completed until 1990! We parked kind of in the back and walked through the Crypt before going into the main part. Downstairs was really neat too--like being in a real castle, I thought! Nathan got a kick out of that thought too, since we've been doing so much with castles for school. There are several smaller chapels downstairs, as well as just neat passageways, doorways, and arches. The main part is very beautiful, esp. all the stained glass. We listened to a guide talk a little about the stained glass. The upper windows tell stories from the Bible, and the middle ones celebrate human endeavors that enrich life, like music, art, science, etc. For architecture, they even had a picture of the USAFA Chapel--it was disconcerting to see that in stained glass! There was also one that memorialized the moon landing, representing science. There is even a real moon rock embedded in the glass. The bottom ones are scenes from American history. They really are all quite beautiful. We also took a ride up to the 7th floor observation deck where we could look out over the city. By this time, we needed to head back hoime, since I was worried that traffic would pick up. It wasn't too bad though, and we got back in plenty of time to go over to the Lorenzinis' house for dinner. So now we can say we've at least done a few more things here in D.C.! And it was a lot of fun to do them with Dan and Melinda too.