Science Museum of Virginia

I didn't manage to take any pictures of any of the Thanksgiving prep or Thanksgiving.  My sister-in-law did, she owes me pictures.  It was yummy.  We all ate too much.  That about sums up everyone's Thanksgiving, right?

On Friday we went and saw the movie Hugo with the cousins, the aunt and the uncle.  Little Guy stayed home with B and the grandparents.  I had read The Invention of Hugo Cabret several years ago when the book came out and Aunt H told us about the movie when they visited a couple months ago so we hurried and read it with the kids before this trip.  The movie was in 3D and was pretty cool.

On Saturday  we went to the Science Museum of Virginia with everyone using Grandma and Grandpa's recipricol grandparent membership to a museum they go to in Ohio.  The rotating display was toy trains.  Perfect for all the boys and Grandpa!

Buddy (and Little Guy) especially loved the giant Lego set up a scout troop had done. 

The museum used to be the train station in Richmond, so we went outside and ate a picnic lunch next to the train tracks and toured a caboose.  The train tracks were a hit with the boys.  Buddy, Little Guy and cousin S spent most of the time going up and down the train tracks and I know Buddy and Little Guy were both pretending to be trains because I heard all their train noises.  :)

I like these pictures of Buddy because he's so happy that he's been able to spend the last 30 minutes being a train he can hardly contain a normal smile.

We saw rats play basketball and all of the kids pet a rat.  The kids "solved" a crime. 

We saw some science stuff and some optical illusions.

Aunt H, Little Guy and I pretended to be astronauts.  Little Guy and Uncle G pretended to be under attack by a pteradactyl.

Kids with the Camera

The kids get a hold of the camera and I have no idea what I'll discover.

Princess Sparkley took pictures of us putting the first load of family presents under the tree.

Then they built some stuff with Legoes. Mostly tall towers (during which, Princess Sparkley figured out how to use the self-timer! She's 8! Some adults can't figure that out). PS also built a rose out of Legoes and Buddy built a Shake Weight (B takes them in the As Seen on TV store at the mall too often).

And Buddy documented some train track layouts he made and was being forced to clean up.

Burke Lake Park

B's sister called us up earlier in the week saying they had a free Saturday, did we want to go down to them, or could they come up to us. Since Buddy had the later T-ball game (not getting over until lunch time), they came up. They were very nice and took us to lunch and then we headed to Burke Lake Park. We'd never been before, but they'd been once with our brother-in-law's family when their kids were babies.

The park has a train, a carousel, a playground, a lake, a ice cream parlor, a disc golf and mini golf course, and more. Uncle G was super nice and bought us all tickets for the train ride and the carousel.


Little Guy was THRILLED.




Buddy was also THRILLED. Notice PS's crazy face in the background.


Cousin G and Cousin S.




The lake. Cousin G was excited to get in the water and PS was right behind her. Buddy wandered in a little ways.










Little Guy wanted to go in the water too, but was wearing Nikes with socks. He was content to throw sticks in.


Cousin G and PS. Cousin S was too far away for me to see while still holding on to Little Guy and his horse.


This might have been Little Guy's first carousel. He liked it a lot for the first few times around... but then it kept on going. He'd say "horse up and down."


Buddy named his horse White Chocolate Chip.


The Carousel went around about 20 times too many. And I was the only adult brave enough to go on it. Bleh.

National Train Day

Today was National Train Day with an event at Union Station in Washington DC. I printed our free tickets a couple months ago. I know my boys and my boys LOVE trains.

We took the Metro into the city and for the first time, alone with the kids, we transferred trains, getting off at Metro Center and switching to the red line to Union Station. Once at Union Station there were A LOT of lines. We waited in line for about 30 minutes before getting to a point in the line where, if ticketed, we moved forward ahead of all those who weren't ticketed. (Could I have gone to that point when we first arrived and not wasted that 30 minutes??? I don't know.)


The ticket and line were for touring private and Amtrak train cars. This was pretty cool even for me (except for the four trains worth, the slow moving crowd and the kids from behind who kept trying to push their way forward). Some of the cars were super fancy (sleeping cars, dining cars, etc.).


Little Guy loved it. Doesn't the smile attest to that?


Buddy LOVED it. Another smile attesting to this truth.


But everything was a line... we waited in line and slowly made our way through four trains... probably five cars each. Some double decker.


Little Guy testing out the seat and cup holder.

All the time we saved by printing tickets ahead of time and moving ahead in line was wasted when Buddy insisted we stop and wait in line to spend two minutes "driving" a train engineer simulation thing. We saw the guy, unticketed, who had been behind us go past just as we were getting our turn "driving."









PS enjoyed parts, but was also very bored. As this picture attests.
MARC (the train they are in front of) is the Maryland Area Regional Commuter. Virginia has the VRE, Virginia Railway Express.


Little Guy escaping.




Lovely smile, isn't it?


In a regular cafe dining car. I didn't get any pictures of the fancy ones, but they had them all set up with fancy place settings, and sometimes real food. One dining car table even had a chocolate Capitol as the centerpiece. These were all real train cars that were chartered for the event.




I love Little Guy's smile in this picture... he's trying so hard to smile just like I asked him too AND look at the camera, which his older siblings have yet to master. If only the smile didn't overpower the ability to keep his eyes open.

After the train exhibit we went and got a bunch of free Train Day stuff (posters, magnets, pop up cards, etc.) but no engineer hats, they had run out. We saw an S scale train (Grandpa M, are they the pretty small ones... the track is about an inch or less wide?). The line for the guy making balloon animals was shut down and he was just finishing up. We got some coloring books, and that was about it. Our tickets had been for two and by the time we finished the train tour, it was after three and the Day shut down at four.

We headed back down to the Metro, just missing the last train for 20 minutes. Sat and waited, got on the next train, switched at Metro Center on to a SUPER crowded train - almost Cherry Blossom Festival crowded -I think because we were on the train with a bunch of Washington Nationals fans on the way home from an afternoon game. I had to stand, holding Little Guy holding onto a pole for a large chunk of the ride. And driving traffic was bad for a Saturday afternoon. But we finally made it home.

Cherry Blossoms at Full Bloom

When we showed up at the Metro station last Saturday morning and had to wait in a line of maybe a half dozen people (per ticket machine), I thought that was crazy. Today, being a weekday, we had to miss the commuter busyness of the Metro, so we showed up around 11AM, shocked to see a line stretching back so far, we couldn't even SEE the ticket machines. (Note to self: buy SmarTrip cards for the whole family and load them). We get on at the last stop on one line. By the time everyone was on our train, most seats were filled. Thirteen stops later, it was PACKED. I was glad I didn't bring our stroller. Getting off at the Smithsonian stop (where everyone else going to see the blossoms was getting off), there were actually people taking pictures of how crowded the station was. We could barely get OFF the train, because there were lines for the escalators filling the entire platform.

As soon as we emerged from the underground and started walking, the kids all claimed starvation and the need to eat immediately or they would pass out. We stopped and ate sandwiches I'd packed. We always end up in DC at lunch time because we leave late enough to miss the morning commute, and want to head home before the afternoon commute... lunch time.

Once we were done eating, we joined the masses walking towards the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin. The blossoms WERE beautiful. The crowds actually felt about the same as Saturday (only Metro crowdedness proved to me that there were indeed MORE people).











We skipped the Jefferson Memorial having seen it on Saturday, but took the kids' picture with Waddles, (the beaver on the kids' National Park pins they are wearing in a lot of the pictures). Waddles reminds us to not pick the blossoms.




Baby X insisted on walking along holding this chain. Luckily, this part of the Tidal Basin wasn't AS crowded.













It was a beautiful day. Princess Sparkley kept complaining about how hot it was. It was probably in the low 80s. I reminded her that this was when we wanted to be walking around in DC rather than July or August.

We stopped to see the George Mason Memorial (since B's attending GMU).


I had to repeatedly yell at Baby X all day, "[Baby X], look, there's a duck on Mommy's head." I was trying to get him to look at the camera, but mostly he just said, "What, Mama? What, Mama? What, Mama?" So, then he was looking, but talking, not smiling.


George Mason


Colorful Washington Monument... taken from the George Mason Memorial.


Then we made our way further around the Tidal Basin toward the FDR Memorial.


It was too crowded on the bridge's sidewalk to step back and get the full effect of the Tidal Basin with both the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial... I tried.








Trying to get a lovely picture of all three kids (but somehow, the Washington Monument is ALWAYS crooked in my pictures and of course, the kids are not smiling, not looking, making weird faces, shadowed by baseball hats, etc.)








B saw the FDR Memorial several years ago when he toured DC on his own as a college student and rep for BYU's College Republicans. He is not a fan of FDR and told me that if we were going to see it (which, PS IS a fan of FDR, so we needed to at some point) we had to do it without him. So we circled the other side of the Tidal Basin this time and visited this enormous memorial. It's strange. Not so much a statue, but one side of the Tidal Basin dedicated to rocks and waterfalls and fountains and statues of FDR.





Then we SLOWLY made our way back to the Metro. The sidewalks were crowded. The kids walked slow. Baby X was not in a stroller (I knew it would be way too crowded to bring a stroller on the Metro) but walking (and being carried). By the time we reached the Smithsonian stop, it had taken forever (three hours since arriving for basically just walking around the Tidal Basin). And there were police announcing that the entrance we showed up at was CLOSED. Instead of battling the hundreds of other people trying to get on at that exact station, and that exact train, we pulled out our map, found the next Metro station, and walked to the L'Enfant Plaza stop. Not so crowded. A man was nice enough to give me his seat since I was holding Baby X which is difficult to do while standing on a train. Then the lady next to him gave Buddy her seat so I didn't lose him. Which was nice because the train got very crowded very fast. AND, when the train pulled up at the Smithsonian stop to load all those people, we were already on it. It was CROWDED all the way home. Pushing, yelling, swearing. I was glad we were all in seats (with Baby X on my lap, Buddy, Princess Sparkley and I can all sit on one row - 2 seats).

Shockingly, this is just some of the pictures (I took nearly 90 today).