Washington, DC

On our way home from our weekend in PA, we decided to take a whole day to see Washington DC with the kids, who had been asking to go since last summer.It was only about a two hour ride from my brother's house, where we had spent the night.Our first stop for our day in DC was at The National Zoo, where Ellie was excited about seeing the panda bears. when we arrived at the zoo, we were practically the only ones there and it was a cool day, unusual for August, so this was by far the most pleasant experience we've ever had at the zoo! Although the one downer was that years ago, you didn't have to pay for parking and we paid $15.00 to stay 1-3 hours.At least the zoo itself is free! We saw lots of animals, almost every kind--tigers, lion, elephants,apes,reptiles,zebras etc. But the pandas were a favorite of everyone.
Steve took this shot of me while we waited for the kids to finish their souvenir shopping at the zoo before heading on further downtown in the nation's capital.
Wow, the size of these tortoises is amazing!
I dressed Ellie in her 4th of July outfit and she received lots of compliments throughout the day, even from the security guards at the museums!
Here is Felicia in front of the Library of Congress. She loves books and as we headed into the building, she wanted to know if you could check books out of this library and if there were any kids books. It is a beautiful and ornate building, inside and out and I'm glad we got to see this. Inside we saw Jefferson's library on display and the Gutenburg Bible!
In front of the Capitol Building, impressive and iconic.
This is my favorite photo I took of the Capitol that day. It was such a pretty day, it made this look like a postcard.
One of the kids snapped this photo of Steve and I in front of The Washington Monument.
You have to walk quite a bit in DC, but they have such pretty gardens and fountains all throughout, so you have plenty of places to stop and rest for a few minutes. This fountain was located across the street from the National Archives.
In the Rotunda of The National Museum of Natural Histoy--not as interesting for the kids as I thought it would be.
Dorothy's Ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz was something Ellie really wanted to see in The Museum of American History. This was a really neat museum Steve and I could have spent more time on.

We found it fascinating to look in the donations box and see all teh different currencies from other countries put in there !
Our last stop of the day was The Air and Space Museum.

This is Sam's favorite museum and he played tour guide to show us all his favorites, as he was just there in the spring on a school field trip.