The Air and Space Museum

I have not updated this blog in a LONG time. I figure a post is well nigh due! Understandably, a lot has happened since Christmas: Ariel turned 4, Trevor turned 8 and Rachael turned 6. We visited parents, we went camping, we celebrated holidays. Our kitten, Stripey, had to be put to sleep- FIV. We went to a breeder and got a Newfoundland puppy who is now 5 months old and the best dog ever in a drooly, hairy, good natured sort of way. The kids start school soon and Ariel will be starting preschool this year. I am still in college and feel like I will be forever. But there is an end in sight.

BUT-- enough of all that. This post would be too lengthy if I talked about the year until now. So I will jump right in with our trip to the Air and Space Museum. I post most stuff to Facebook, so it has kept me from updating a blog. I mean, everyone who would WANT to see pictures of family, well, they are friends on Facebook, right? Anyway....

Yesterday we went to the Air and Space museum with my friend, Sharon. Sharon and I have been friends since like 8th grade, I think, when I moved to Florida. After I got married and moved to Virginia, we kept in touch, but ended up with very different lives. She is single, has her masters and travels to foreign countries teaching. I got married, had children and became a stay at home mom. This time around her job brought her to DC for a few days for orientation before jetting off to her newest assignment. So I got to see my best friend since high school! I haven't seen Sharon since she, Ray and I met up in Vegas, hmmm, 3 years ago? So she stayed with us for the weekend this time, and then Friday I met her in DC at the museum with the kids. We had a nice time. She had never been to the Air and Space museum. I've been a few times, but I love going to any of the DC museums and this is one that holds the kids' interest well. Here's some pics!

It really annoys me that blogger posts all my pictures in reverse order. This is one of the many fake people chilling at the museum. There were more fake people here than there are in department stores. This woman is showing us what people ate on the plane in the 50s (I think). Ariel was convinced the coffee on the tray was real.


I don't know what was up with Trevor's desire to punch all the fake people. Everytime I saw another one, I would call the kids excitedly and say "oh! Go stand with that fake person and I'll take your picture!". Ariel looks like she is thinking "please mom, stop making me pose already."


Then we saw this big plane front and I told the kids to go stand in front of it and instead, they tumbled under it and acted like they were being run over. Just don't take me places, I'll make my kids be kids AND I'll take their picture as proof they aren't model citizens smiling politely for a camera. In fact, they rarely humor me. I used to say "Just humor me guys" so often, it became a phrase they uttered to each other whenever they weren't getting their way. heh


When Sharon was with all the kids I told her I HAD to get her picture of her being "mom-like".


A fake person landing on us in a hang glider. I couldn't sling the kids up into the picture, so Ariel got to get out of taking a picture with him. I would love to go hang gliding.


The moment we got into the museum, Rachael started in about seeing "this balloon that goes up and down!" I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about as there is no balloon that goes up and down in the museum. Sharon wanted to see Early Flight, so we meandered that and, since we were on THAT side of the building, we wandered the exhibits on that side. The whole time Rachael was asking to go see this balloon on the other side of the museum. So, finally, mystified, we wandered in that direction to see what she was talking about. She ended up making a beeline for the hands on part of the museum and there was this balloon that went up and down based on how much weight you loaded into the basket. It was small and it sure made an impression on her because she must have remembered it from last year when we were here. And Rachael, after whining about seeing this balloon for an hour, spent like ten seconds playing with it before moving on. I told her she had been whining about this balloon for an hour and she better get back over there and play with it some more this instant. But she ignored me. I get no respect. Or maybe she knew I wasn't serious. But here they are wandering in the direction of the balloon. Both girlies looked impossibly cute today. Rachael got some new shoes from the LL Bean catalogue. They are a size too big but she insisted on wearing them because they were the same blue as the ice creams on her dress. I'm glad she could walk in them, they really were huge on her.


I don't really know what Trevor is doing with this fake boy. But it looks like he's dancing with him.


Checking out this exhibit about velocity and pressure. You turned a wheel and this box went up and down this pole. Really, not a thrillfest of an exhibit, but you would have thought the kids made fireworks by turning that wheel the way they argued over whose turn it was to turn the wheel! The guy in the background was "sleeping" but when the kids would argue, he would open his eyes a bit and peek at them arguing until they worked it out, then he would go back to "sleep". Weird. If you want an argue-free nap, mister, you have to go home, or at least not be in the kids area of the museum.


Sharon doing the gyroscope exhibit. The wheel would turn, and the chair would turn in the opposite direction as the wheel. Pretty cool.

All in all, we had a great day at the museum. We rode the metro in, which I actually really like doing. The kids are old enough to walk with me, sit nicely and be a pleasure to be in DC with. I really like taking them into DC. The trip home on the metro is always a little trying, though. The kids got super silly and Rachael, who is a decent reader now (she's reading on a Henry and Mudge level) saw the Foggy Bottom metro stop and sounded it out as Froggy bottom. All the kids thought this was hilarious and spent the rest of the trip home say froggy bottom to each other and giggling. That tried my patience a bit, but I made the mistake of laughing because they all thought it was so funny and so inadvertently encouraged them. Oh well! We all had a great day, though it was bitter sweet to say goodbye to Sharon for at least a year.