A Day In DC

Last night Papa Bear and I lay in bed racking our brains to come up with Family Fun activity that we could do for very little or no money in weather that would start off fairly cold and if we were lucky warm up to the mid 50's with all 3 kids with little to no prior planning.  We sure do love living just outside DC!  We checked a few metro schedules, unearthed old metro cards from our days working in the city, checked museum opening times, packed snacks and a lunch and our plan was hatched.

We (by we, I mean Papa Bear who blessedly let me sleep in due to a long night with kids) packed the lunches, snacks and diaper bad and caught a metro at 9:23 in the morning and headed into the city with some very excited little boys.  Little Man had a million questions about the metro and Peanut just wanted to "go super super fast".

Sweet Pea was happy to be along for the ride.  (See her back there behind Peanut in the purple hat?) She was our MVP of the day.  With no nap, a piece-meal lunch and a bunch of graham crackers (HFCS-free of course) she was a trooper and happily hung out and took in the sights.

We took the metro for 13 stops while the boys alternated between staring out the windows and walking from seat to seat hoping the sway of the train would knock them down.  We arrived in still chilly buy beautiful DC weather and walked, ran and skipped to the Natural History museum.

We visited with the dinosaurs, lions, foxes, whales and butterflies.  Peanut was scared of the giant whale but loved the T-Rex.  Go figure.  Little Man took more time at each area, asking questions and showing more interest than he has before.  Peanut was a blur.  He ran from exhibit to exhibit taking each display in for a second before moving on.  I learned that I had to tell him to look up because he tended to take in each display from his eye line and when I told him to look up we heard "Awww, wow! So big" but then we would have to remind him to look down again when he started walking because you can see how that might be a disaster.  Sweet Pea loved walking around and touching any object at her level.

Peanut measured up against the leg of an elephant and even our Peanut wasn't as big as an elephant.  I think he was a bit disappointed about that.  And then we tried to get a picture of all of the kids together which was a challenge and good for a laugh.

(At least the monkey and Sweet Pea were looking at the camera)

After a lot of fun, we ate our picnic lunch on the Mall in the sunshine, played a little chase and then headed back on the metro.  We arrived home with happy and tired children and then we all took naps.  Total cost = .84 in added metro fare; Total fun = priceless.