Washington DC - Birthday!

Our last day of our trip was William's actual birthday.  We started our morning stop at the hotel's Starbucks for round one of breakfast.  Then we walked to breakfast two for fancy donuts and a few more hours of walking around and a visit to an art museum before we headed to the airport to travel home.

 

 

Washington DC - Day 3

On Sunday, we went to the National Archives, short visits to two Smithsonian Museums (American History and Natural History) and then Arlington Cemetery.   That evening we were so tired from our 20k+ steps that we ordered pizza to our room and watched hours of River Monsters on TV.  The boys had a blast!

I'm not sure that William had the same fascination for the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution that Desiree and I did.   But having a giant Bomb Pop for breakfast afterwards helped a lot with the William's disposition for the day.   Getting to spend his souvenir budget on two stuffed toys and a t-shirt helped, too!

   

As we left Natural History, we caught the end of Rolling Thunder, the annual Memorial Day motorcycle rally.  We did some of the highlights in American History (the Star Spangled Banner and a few war displays) before taking the subway to Arlington Cemetery.  We took the tram around since our legs were already worn out.   And we ended up standing in the perfect spot for the Changing of the Guard, since the guards had to walk right in front of us on the way in/out.  The decorated grave is Audie Murphy, who was Aiden's Living Wax Museum portrayal this year in school.

 

Washington DC - Day 2

Our second day started early with a White House tour that Desiree arranged.  Luckily our hotel was just a few blocks away, so we didn't have to get up too early for our 7:15 a.m. check in.   As we were waiting in line outside Treasury, we enjoyed watching Secret Service walk the German Shepherd dogs one at a time.   Once inside, we enjoyed finding some of our favorites:  the Reagans (William's focus of his 2nd grade presentation) and Hillary!  The funniest part was all the parents who described the portrait of former president Bill Clinton as "Hillary's husband."

 

 

 

I had to snap a shot of this woman in her "Make America Great Again" hat.  I later saw many of them for sale on the street with cheap t-shirts, sunglasses (which the boys both purchases) and fidget spinners.  These people were asking Secret Service about how to visit the White House, and sounded like they were visiting from a foreign country.  We were done there by around 9 a.m. so got coffee and regrouped at our hotel before checking in at our highlight site - The Spy Museum!  Apparently I didn't get any good photos inside of the Spy Museum - which was tons of fun - but did get pictures of the boys with their souvenirs:  Aiden got handcuffs and William got bean boozle jelly beans.  The picture below is him getting one of the gross flavors while we were at lunch.

We ended our day with dinner with old friends at Matchbox and then a walk around the Jefferson Memorial, the one Mall site that I have never seen.   As we walked back from Jefferson, we also saw the MLK and Korean Memorials, and as we walked past the Reflecting Pool we saw Marine helicopters swooping in.   The Trumps were coming back into town from their overseas travel.  One helicopter flew over the Tidal Basin, one around the Mall, and the third landed on the White House lawn.  It was really cool to see.