Gilbert Street Stitches: A Little Update

Home, Sweet Pineapple!

We were away this week - decided to take a short trip and come home mid-week, to let the kids get rested up for the start of school on Monday. (Boo hoo!)

Anyway, we were here...

Taken from the WWII memorial. One of my favorite parts of DC.

...and it was just awesome. I miss it already! (Let me clarify: I don't miss the eternal walking or $6 hot dogs, but everything else was just great and I want to go back already.) I grew up about 1.5 hours away from DC, so we used to go there a lot. But it had been a long time since I'd been there - we're talking 10+ years - so it was great to go back. I definitely appreciated it a lot more this time around. The kids loved it too, which was really the point of our trip. :)

They liked the monuments & outside things a lot, and of course the Smithsonian museums are just really cool. We spent a long time in the gemstone exhibit at the Natural History museum; the kids loved that! They also both liked the "Star Spangled Banner" exhibit in the American History museum. No photography allowed in there, bummer! Anyway, *the* flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem is on display there. It is breathtaking.

DH & I could have spent literally all day in that one museum. Among other things, we saw the re-creation of Julia Child's kitchen, which was really neat. There is an amazing war exhibit that takes you, in great detail, through every war America has been involved in...we made it to about the Spanish-American war before we decided to get our super-antsy, super-bored kids outta there.

So we did Natural History, American History, and all the outside stuff - in 1 1/2 days. I cannot believe we couldn't do more, but each of those museums is just so packed full of really cool stuff to see, you can't just breeze through them! Not to mention, kids get TIRED. :) One thing that would have helped, would be if they opened earlier than 10/10:30 am. That really cuts into the day, IMO. Anyway, we definitely will be going back, hopefully this fall. Just so cool.

So after DC, we drove a couple hours north to Lancaster, PA. The kids were super-psyched to ride a "real train" (The Strasburg Railroad) and they were even MORE excited when we surprised them by meeting up with my parents, who live only an hour or so away.