I know it's a month later, but now I have the photos ready. We went down to Virginia in early August to celebrate Martie/Mom/Nana's birthday, and to have Dave and Doug (who flew in from CO) go through some stuff in the basement. While they worked, Katie and I played in DC.
The first day we met Alyce and Tobey Phinney at their house and took the Metro into the city to the natural history museum. We thought they'd like the butterfly house, but the aquarium was a bigger hit. They also loved the carousel on the Mall (big surprise there) and the Hirshhorn fountain. It was fun to see the cousins play together after so much time apart.
The second day Katie and I took the Metro in, planning to go the National Archives. The line was too long so we did the National Gallery instead - both west and east wings. Katie loved it, which was really cool. Her favorite pieces were this Manet ballerina and the Calder mobile in the entry of the East wing. She didn't know it was her parents' favorite art there, too!
On Friday we drove in to the National Zoo, along with every other tourist in DC, I think. It was hot and crowded, and we parked several streets away (I almost lost our car). But we saw the giant pandas -- my whole goal. We've been to three other zoos now, and this is the only one with pandas. I have to say that the zoo is not as impressive as I remember from my childhood.
On Mom's birthday we all went to the Udvar-Hazy center of the Air & Space Museum -- it's an annex at Dulles Airport. We met Rob and Tobey there, and later Alyce for birthday dinner with the extended family. The museum was really cool, for air geeks and non geeks alike. My favorite plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, was the first thing you saw when you came in, which I thought was great. This was our first visit and we'll go back.
There are so many museums in DC that I'm sure this will become a regular kind of trip!
Here's Katie on her first day of preschool (09/09/09, easy to remember). She told me (and later, Nana and Aunt Jen) that she loved, loved, LOVED preschool. I'm still not sure what all they did today, but apparently it didn't matter. Her best friend is in the class, as are several other kids we know at least by sight, and she's making other friends already.
