The Rogers Family Goes to D.C.: Day 1

On Sam's birthday in June, we left for our big summer vacation. This was our first time traveling with a DVD player and it definitely made a huge difference. We checked out several DVDs from the library as we were driving out of town. Unfortunately, Claire wasn't content to let anyone watch anything except the ones that interested her, so we were all subjected to an awful lot of Caillou. And even with the DVD player, riding in the van with children for that long was rough.

We stopped in Richmond, VA for dinner, and since it was Sam's birthday, we let him pick what he wanted to eat. He wanted pizza (of course), so we looked online for what looked like a good place. We found a place called Mary Angela's in the neat little neighborhood of Carytown. Sam declared it the best pizza in America and has often spoken of it since.

By the time we arrived at our hotel in Vienna, VA, everyone was exhausted and went to sleep quite quickly. Except Claire. She was pretty jazzed up to be on vacation. 

The next morning, with visions of checking out all the cool museums and monuments, we took the metro in D.C. The kids were pretty excited to be on the metro at first, but became disinterested well before we actually arrived at our stop. It was a long ride. 

It was a hot day. Really sunny and hot. We walked to the Air and Space Museum. It was crowded, but not awful. I thought Nathanael would be TOTALLY into it. But it didn't take long before the kids were bored and ready to move on. Next we planned to head over to the Museum of Natural History. I was actually really looking forward to seeing some darn dinosaurs, but we didn't make it. Things kind of started to fall apart right about here. It was hot, the kids were hungry. We were starting to lose them. So, we decided to look for food. Perfect, we spotted food trucks! A bunch of them, all together in one spot. We'd surely be able to find something for everyone. So we perused the selections and decided we could get everything we needed to satisfy everyone's tastes at two different trucks. Paul was going to go to one truck with some of the kids while I went to order from the other truck with whichever kids were left. As I was waiting in line, a cop came walking down the line of trucks telling the workers things like "what are you serving for free today? Give these people free ice cream" or "I hope you didn't just take money for that hamburger. If you did, you're going to jail." Apparently, they were all there illegally, and in one fell swoop, the cop shut them all down, threatening tickets, arrests, and towing them all away. I had been so entranced with the cop, trying to decide if this was really happening, if he was serious or joking, that I had not given much thought to which kids were with me. But, I thought I had Nathanael in my charge yet I did not see him. My heart immediately started racing and I began to panic, thinking someone had snatched him. I started calling out, loudly, "where's Nathanael?! Where did he go??" There was never sweeter relief than when I saw him walking over with Paul, having been with him all along. Our quest for food was officially crushed. 

                           

Then it was over. There was more to the meltdown but let's suffice it to say that thus ended our parade of museums. We popped back on the metro and went back to our hotel to eat pbj sandwiches in our room. Some of us got a much needed nap. 

We did regain our composure and later in the afternoon we drove back into DC to hit a few of the monuments. We had a good little walk from our van to the monuments and it did start to rain a little while we were sightseeing. We didn't mind. It was just a light drizzle and it was clearing out some of the crowd. But when it started to pick up intensity we decided we better head back. Unfortunately the heavens opened well before we made it back, but luckily the hail held off until we were safely inside the van. 

On the drive back to the hotel, we drove by the White House, but although it was early evening, it was dark as night from the storm clouds and we could see very little of the White House. It was not as I had envisioned it, however.
The storm was crazy! It was the darkest storm I have ever seen. Nathanael, already terrified of storms, was growing more and more weary the longer we drove in the storm. Then a tornado warning alert, instructing us to seek shelter immediately, came up on Paul's phone and I made the mistake of reading it out loud. That was it. Nathanael was beyond reassurance (I was feeling plenty nervous myself). We were headed to Chick-fil-A to pick up dinner to take back to our hotel, but to calm Nathanael (and me), we went back to our hotel, first, to seek shelter under the hotel, in the parking garage. After a short time, we decided to venture back out, but poor Nathanael had his appetite scared right out of him and he refused to eat a thing. Bless him.