Monday, June 30, 2003

So, It has been a few days. Here are the latest updates on our fun filled summer.
Monday, June 30, was our monument day. We walked about 5 miles that day. Cameron was a real trooper. We started with the" big spikie thing" as Cameron nicknamed it. The rest of you might know it as the Washington monument. The kids wanted to ride the elevator up to the top, but I need to get tickets months in advance for that and so we just looked from the outside. Here is a side note. There were extra fences everywhere. I am assuming it had to with crowd control for the fourth of July. We had to take the round about way to get around the reflecting pool. so we didn't get very close to it.
We went to the World War Memorial which is very nice and quite impressive. It is very large with a big reflecting pool and fountains.
We walked from the Washington monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Again, Cameron was not impressed with the size of it. He must think everything is huge based on pictures.
We walked over to the Tidal Basin and The FDR Monument. It is a really nice memorial with lots of water features, statues and few people. I don't know if it is off the beaten path or people just don't know about it. The walk around the basin was very long and the kids were very good about it. Cameron had fun feeding the ducks.
We walked around the basin to get to the Jefferson Memorial. We made it inside just inside as the rain came down. Except Ethan that is. He apparently did not read the sign. This is Cameron on a 100 year old Bridge that we went over as we left the Jefferson memorial. When we came out the kids were starving so we headed to the nearest pretzel cart. It kind of helped, so we could carry on. We finished off the trip with a trip to the Holocaust museum. I would recommend for young children. They have a very nice kids display that walks them through the life of a young jewish boy. The display is based on a book called Daniel's house by scholastic.
We stopped on the way to the metro at the printing and engraving gift shop. Wesley was worth the most of our kids. Guess It's time to cash him in.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Wow, Forget everything I said about the weather in the earlier post. It was so HOT today. It might have been that we were not in any museums. We started off the day at the Iwo Jima memorial and from there went to Arlington Cemetery. Here is my hind sight advice. Pay the money for the shuttle bus. It was a long hot walk all over the cemetery. We did make it in time to watch the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Cameron's comment was "well that wasn't worth it." He has not enjoyed most of DC. I am glad he is my youngest.
Okay, Jacob just walked out of the room and said, "one down twenty more." He is refering to how many more days until he gets home. He informed me he is a home body.
After the cemetery we went to the National Zoo. It was cooler there and most everyone was some what entertained. I would not recommend eating the food at the zoo though. Yuck.
After the zoo everyone was tired and ready for some air conditioning. We headed to the Washington DC temple. I am wondering why it is the Washington temple when it is in Maryland. It is a very pretty temple. The visitor center had this very neat photo essay of President Hinckley and the temple dedications he attended. A local couple had gone to most of the dedications and taken pictures. It was very touching to see the Prophet and his sweet wife we all loved so much is these great pictures.
We topped off the day with a night drive through DC to see the memorials lit up.
Something I forgot to add yesterday was that my brother, Robert, who lives about a 1/2 mile from us called me to ask what was on fire by our house. At the time I was standing on a platform waiting for the metro. When I told him that he said " Oh in that case never mind. I'm sure it's not your house." as it turns out a near by orchard was burning some branches.

Saturday, June 28,2008

So, that was Ethan's previous blog about our trip. It needs a few more explanations. First off he hates to swim in public pools, enough said. The weather here is not as bad as I thought it was going to be. There has been a nice breeze most days. The crowds today were pretty big. There was some kind of folk culture festival happening on the mall today. Robin said it best today when she said we can only see 2 museums a day. Today we made it back to the Air and Space museum and we also saw the Natural history museum. Robin told me the natural museum was her favorite so far. We thought we lost Cameron in the Natural history museum when we went into the gift shop. He had slipped past us and went farther into the store and I thought he had gone back into the museum. Clark, Wes and Jacob split up into the museum while Ethan looked in the store. I am not even sure how you would find a lost child in that museum and with that many of people. Glad we found him.
Our biggest challenge is food. We have breakfast down, but lunch and dinner are another thing. There's a pizza place right across the street. We have had it for dinner the past two nights. We get back from the city late and no one wants to sit and wait for food. Lunch we eat what we can find down town, subway, fast food. Ethan who is the pickyest eater is getting tired of chicken strips, since that is the only thing he will eat. Here are some pictures so far.

First few days

Hey all you guys, its been interesting the past few days. Wednesday night we were panicking with packing. Thursday was ok, but really boring. Some of us had just gotten Tetanus shots so our arms were sore. On the flight there was an inflight trivia game, Ethan won 4 times and Clark got the alltime high score on the trip. Once we landed we freaked out about how hot it was and how cramped the minivan is.
It didn't help that the GPS device was programed to take us into N. Carolina, and we didn't notice until we had gone about 20 miles past the hotel. We made a U-ie and made it back to our hotel, only to find out it has a ridiculusly tiny pool. We went out and rented Mr. Bean's Holiday from a red box.
On Friday we went to go see the Int. Spy Museum. It was a lot of fun for some of us. It was interesting because it only talked about Spy stuff more than 20 years old. Guess they're not giving away any hints. We also went to see the National archives and the Dec. Ind., Bill of Rights, and Constitution. The Archives Gift Shop was outrageously priced, wanting 4 bucks for a pen (Admittedly they did have an interesting design which made them great for left handers, Ethan was so disappointed that they were so expensive. After that we made our way down to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which we were only in for a half hour before it closed. We are going to go back tomorrow to see more stuff there. (and that building has awesome A/C, and DC's heat index is supposed to be at 105 tomorrow).
Sorry pictures aren't up yet, it took a whole hour and a half to even get them on the computer, and its 12:12 AM here so I need to go to bed. I'll put in some pictures tomorrow.

Setting up

Hey, this is the blog for the Christensen's summer vacation. We'll have more stuff up around friday or saturday!