DC Day 3: Walking, walking, and more walking. (And Monuments)!

Our third day in DC, we planned to hit the National Mall for monuments. But first, the International Spy Museum!

We stopped at a Starbucks on the way to the spy museum, and then headed straight there. The Spy museum is a fun museum if you like James Bond movies. Nile wanted to go since Nate went two years ago. We moved through it fairly quickly, as I don't think he liked it quite as much as Nate had. We were through there in about an hour.

We stopped on the way back at Paul, the coffee shop where we had eaten breakfast the prior morning. Nile had been wanting to try one of their macarons, since Nate had talked about the "horrible pistachio macaron" he ate there. Nile opted for vanilla and thought that it was great.  While we were there, we put together a game plan for the rest of the morning.  We discussed heading to the White House, but Nile wanted to skip that and just head to the monuments. So, we started at the Washington monument after a quick walk through a sculpture garden on the way.

Holding up the Washington Monument

We made our way through the whole Mall, hitting all the major monuments. Nile liked the WWII monument best.

WWII Memorial

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Selfie at the Lincoln Memorial

FDR memorial

FDR memorial

We finished up around 12:30 after walking around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. It was lunch time, so we found a small sandwich shop a few blocks away and walked there.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel, where Nile lasted about 10 minutes before wanting to head back out. So we walked up to the Hirshhorn art museum and spent an hour looking at modern art. The main exhibit was on 80's art, so it was colorful and interesting.

Back to the hotel to regroup. We rested about an hour, then decided to walk to the Capitol building on our way to an early dinner.

Just one more picture, please?

Dinner was at an English pub, literally tucked away in a corner. It was a small place but the food was good.

After that we were pretty tired so we headed back to the hotel and called it a day. We had an early flight and we had walked just over 11 miles. We watched some TV and hung out there for the rest of the night.

It was a great trip.

DC Day 2: Air and Space Museum

A highlight of every trip to DC is the National Air and Space Museum. That was our singular goal for Sunday. 

In the morning, since the museum doesn’t open until 10, we headed to a coffee shop for breakfast. 

My breakfast: Leek Quiche with Greens and black coffee.

Coffee.

My breakfast.

Nile’s breakfast: Apple Turnover pastry, Lemon tart, and a mocha. With three extra sugars. 😂

The Lemon Tart.  It was really good.

After that, since it was only 9:30, we headed back to the hotel briefly before walking the single block to the Air and Space Museum. We joined the line of people waiting to enter and got in a little after 10 am. 

Not thrilled to be waiting in line.

As always, we enjoyed exploring the museum. We saw two movies: “Dark Universe” narrated by Neil Degrasse Tyson, and “D-Day 3D” narrated by Tom Brokaw. Both were fantastic. 

We finished up at the museum around 1:30and headed back to the hotel for a late lunch. 

Space: the lunar module

Bullets.  In many sizes. 

Tickets

Very stylish glasses

After lunch, we called for a ride to Arlington National Cemetery. We had pre-purchased a tour of the cemetery, which ended up being a good thing. Our tour started at 3:30, and we ended up on an open-air cart. It was a bit chilly. As we didn't have a ton of time, we opted to stay on the cart and didn't get a chance to see everything. However, the tour buses came around every 15 minutes and we knew we wouldn't have time if we got off a lot.

Then the evening was capped by a trip to watch the Washington Wizards play the New York Knicks. It was fun, and we had seats behind the sideline reporter for the Knicks TV broadcast. (She's the blonde in the photo).

Our seats

The view from our seats

After the game we had one more stop, to a gelato place that Nate and I had visited two years ago. It was as good as I remembered, although Nile was not as impressed. I had chocolate chocolate chip and black tea, while he had vanilla and chocolate hazelnut.

DC Day 1 Continued: The March

Once we got to Washington, DC we found the airport pretty packed.

Had I mentioned there was a major march going on in our nation's capital?  The March For Our Lives was planned to begin at noon that day.
(https://marchforourlives.com/mission-statement/)

Roads were closed, and everywhere there were people walking toward the march, carrying signs and wearing shirts with anti-gun slogans. Large groups were pouring out of buses with matching shirts and chanting. It's estimated that at least 500,000 people were attending the rally. There was a ton of news media there:

Nile wasn't interested in participating. To be honest, I would have loved to join in, to be part of something so special. Looking at the crowd from a block away was really hard for me, and I wanted to be there. But this is Nile's vacation and it wasn't my time to go. (But ohmygosh it was so cool!)

We had lunch (Quiznos), then did some sightseeing. We walked to the American Indian museum, and looked around inside. Then we headed to the Holocaust Museum. I had purchased tickets online while we sat at the airport. Tickets had been sold out for months, but they release a limited number of tickets each morning at 6 am EST.  Sitting at the gate in Moline was the perfect time to check, and we had been able to snag tickets for the 3:00 entry. 

As always the Holocaust museum was great, even though I have been there three times I am still moved. 

Later on we went out to dinner and then crashed at the hotel. Two mornings of waking before 4 am had caught up with me. 

More signs of spring

Photos courtesy of Novak. 

Spring photographer

Nate and Nile both had sports practices tonight so Novak and I were home alone. In all honesty I was desperate for something to entertain him as we had just returned from our vacation. I feel like I have been in full Novak mode all week. He has been in close proximity for much of the last week and I was tired. 

So I gave him my phone and suggested he take some pictures of the new growth that had started while we were gone.  Here are a few of my favorites. (He took over 100 during the one lap we took around the house.)

Turtle Plant

Novak found this plant growing in the flower garden (again this was a month ago). 

He called it a turtle plant. Can you see why?

Doppelgänger

A full month ago, on April 27, Novak and I were out playing with chalk. I found these photos that I had intended to post way back then. 

Finally!  Someone has figured out square chalk!  No more chasing it down the sidewalk!

Novak had never been traced before. He was unsure about the whole idea. But he loved it when we were finished. It was his idea to put his mini-me in shorts. 

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere!

Yesterday was the first nice spring-like day that I had been able to enjoy at home. Yes, I still love my Fridays off...

Novak and I went to GUMDROPS, a pre-preschool play group at a local church. He (and I) had a blast. He played nicely with the other kids, loved the stories and songs, and didn't want to leave at the end. Already I'm looking forward to next week.

Later my parents came over and helped me burn our prairie. Only a few times did I think the fire might get ahead of us...Dad lost a few leg hairs and the strings hanging from my ripped jeans have disappeared. But it actually went fairly smoothly.

As we waited for the big boys to get home from school, Novak and I pulled out the bubbles and played in the driveway.

And I'm still waiting most anxiously for the arrival of my new baby nephew. He was due Thursday, and so every day that goes by is more torture for my sister. Very soon she will have a bundle of love to snuggle. I'm so excited for this baby, he is going to be so loved!

Signs of spring

My daffodils (jonquils) are finally up and blooming. I took some pictures of a few particularly good blooms. :)

Summer Already?

It's still May - not yet Memorial Day. And yet, it's hot out already (the heat index right now is 98 degrees). Nate got a new sprinkler for his birthday - and with the heat, we let him use it on Sunday. He absolutely loved it, and ran around in it for at least an hour. (Thanks Andrew and Alex!)



Nile did not like it nearly as much. So, today when Nate asked for the sprinkler again, I dug out the old baby pool and filled it up for Nile. Of course then Nate had to join in too.
We've also learned we must have a lot of iron in our water - you might be able to notice the orange "ring around the pool" we have in the above photo. The boys' swimsuits and bodies are orange too. Either it's the water or it's the sunscreen we're using - or a combination of the two.

T-Ball Dancing

This is Nate's first time playing T-ball. Our camera has been on the fritz, so I didn't get any photos, but I did get to try out my new video camera. This moment was more than priceless. Check out what Nate does when he gets to home plate.

Landscaping

I spent the day today planting (about 4 or so hours of work!). These are two of the beds - we've now got something other than just brown mulch in them! Thanks to friends and family, we didn't have to purchase any of this - these are all things we were able to dig up from other people's gardens.

This area is a mix of grasses, prairie wildflowers (like coneflowers and black-eyed susans) and a few other blooming plants.

This bed is almost all daylilies, most of them we kept from our old house and stored them in Mom and Dad's garden over the last year. A few are new.

Tucked in the corner of the bed above is another grass.

What I didn't take pictures of are the beds that run the entire length of the house on the north side (all shady and still very much a work in progress) and the rear of the house (completely empty).

I love spring so much!

Gardening helper

Nate helped me plant some prairie wildflowers for a butterfly garden. We planted 15 different types of prairie wildflowers, thanks to Dad for driving all the way to Missouri to get them!

I especially love the top picture - he was pretty proud of the work he did!

(Nile, by the way, was hiding on the porch because he was freaked out by the bugs...)

4 months of entertainment

We broke ground on our new home this week. So far we've been over there every day to check out the site and see what progress has been made. The boys have been LOVING seeing the construction equipment and the "really huge hole" in the ground. I think we've found a new recreational activity.

I almost titled this post "free entertainment" but then realized that this is definitely not free.