Day 1 : Monday, March 30. It was very windy and kind of cold today. The sun peeked in and out all day. Just when we would think it was going to get warm, we would get hit with these wind gusts. We started out each day with a great breakfast buffet included in our room at the hotel. The kids looked forward to breakfast each morning, especially Alex loved the breakfasts. In the picture below, they are all enjoying the link sausages.
Eating sausage at breakfast the first morning.Today, we started out at the aquarium. It was a small aquarium, but they did have some fun sea animals. It took less than 2 hours to get through it, and then we walked around admiring the cherry trees and getting lots of pictures.
This cute sea turtle was a favorite of all the kids.
See Dori (from "Finding Nemo") right between their heads. They enjoyed looking at all the fish.
Looking at all the pretty fish
I called this the "Stars and Stripes" fish. How appropriate for the US capitol!
Outside the aquarium, this firetruck was next to the road, and we decided to get a picture.
The girls in the cherry trees.
This is the beaver mascot of the Cherry Blossom Festival. He encourages everyone to not pick the cherry blossoms. Tessa and Jarem had to go give him a hug.
We got tickets for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, but not until 3:30, so after eating our lunches, we spent a couple of hours at the Holocaust Museum before going to our 3:30 tour. Although the Holocaust museum was pretty sad and depressing, I think each of the kids (except Jarem) came out with a new appreciation for life and liberty.
Writing notes about their feelings after viewing the Holocaust Museum.
Some of us outside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing...see those little figures at the bottom of the huge pillars...that's us!
This cool bench in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving had dollar bills of all values printed on it. The kids each found the one that they wanted for the picture.
I thought this was very interesting. These machines we saw, fold the bills repeatedly to test the endurance of the paper. United States bills can be folded back and forth on the same crease about 4,000 times before tearing!
There is $1million in this glass case that the girls are hugging in sheets of $10 bills.
Cool money glasses in the gift shop!
Jarem and Tessa both chose the dollar bill they wanted! How do they know how to choose the big ones already?
This cute sea turtle was a favorite of all the kids.
See Dori (from "Finding Nemo") right between their heads. They enjoyed looking at all the fish. 
Looking at all the pretty fish
I called this the "Stars and Stripes" fish. How appropriate for the US capitol!
Outside the aquarium, this firetruck was next to the road, and we decided to get a picture.
The girls in the cherry trees.
This is the beaver mascot of the Cherry Blossom Festival. He encourages everyone to not pick the cherry blossoms. Tessa and Jarem had to go give him a hug.We got tickets for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, but not until 3:30, so after eating our lunches, we spent a couple of hours at the Holocaust Museum before going to our 3:30 tour. Although the Holocaust museum was pretty sad and depressing, I think each of the kids (except Jarem) came out with a new appreciation for life and liberty.
Writing notes about their feelings after viewing the Holocaust Museum.Next we went to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. We all enjoyed that very much. It was so interesting to see how money is made and to watch the people actually printing money as we watched.
Some of us outside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing...see those little figures at the bottom of the huge pillars...that's us! 
This cool bench in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving had dollar bills of all values printed on it. The kids each found the one that they wanted for the picture. 
I thought this was very interesting. These machines we saw, fold the bills repeatedly to test the endurance of the paper. United States bills can be folded back and forth on the same crease about 4,000 times before tearing! 
There is $1million in this glass case that the girls are hugging in sheets of $10 bills.
Cool money glasses in the gift shop!
Jarem and Tessa both chose the dollar bill they wanted! How do they know how to choose the big ones already?For dinner, we started out at Jaleo(which had been recommended in an itinerary online), but after sitting down and looking over the menu we realized that bacon-wrapped prunes, squid, and goat cheese probably weren't going to be something our kids would eat(or something we would want to pay for). We ended up leaving and going across the street to Austin Grill and enjoyed a nice dinner of Tex-Mex. It was a much better fit for our family. I guess we just aren't very refined. :)
Each day of our trip, we asked the kids over dinner what their favorite thing of the day was. On this first day, most of the kids chose the aquarium as their favorite thing, although I think Alex's top pick was the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. That was my favorite also.
The girls next to a spider in the sculpture garden outside one of the Art Museums.
Beautiful gardens outside the Smithsonian castle.
We wanted to end our day with the Smithsonian carousel outside the castle, but it was out-of-order that day. Oh well.
3 comments:
I don't think either of my kids would have gotten near that spider sculpture...creepy!
love the spider sculpture and money shades, lol!
That is very interesting about how the our money can be folded 4,000 times before tearing, how interesting. That spider is pretty cool looking, I thought it was made out of trash or somehting.
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