With GiGi, Grandpa Don, Chayton, Bryce, Aidan and
Brendan
Washington D.C. – Day
1
I am really excited for the D.C. Trip. I am in the house
that we are going to stay in for 3 days. I want to go to the Smithsonian.
Particularly the art museum. It has been good so far. The plane ride was long,
but worth it. I also really want to see the White House and Jamestown. The back
yard is very nice and has a river flowing through it. That is what they have
instead of a fence. The river marks the boundary. It is nice to go with
Chayton, Bryce, and Brendan instead of just me and Brendan. Dinner is bound to
be good because Grandpa and Gigi are such good cooks. The house that we are
staying in right now is very old and has kind of a less strong smell of the new
car smells. Well, this is me logging off. Bye
Washington D.C. – Day
2
Yesterday was a very fun day at D.C. Me, Bryce, and Chayton
made a dam in the creek, and it was actually knee deep. Then we made 2 more
dams so we each had our own dams. When we were going inside to be done for the
day, we saw a rope swing in our yard. We put on our shoes, and tried it out. We
went so far. We got Brendan to come and Bryce accidentally got it stuck up on a
branch, so Brendan came and saved the day. He climbed up the tree and lifted
the rope above the branch. He got it down, and we swung on it until we left.
What did we leave for? The National Air and Space museum. It was very
interesting there. There was what looked like a bath tub, but was a hovercraft
that military people used. Not to mention the space capsule that Felix
Baumgartner jumped out of who was sponsored by Red Bull and GoPro was there.
Dinner was Burgers, and Grandpa Don and Gigi are such good cooks. Although
their fries were a little bit hard, I still fell asleep at the dinner table.
Well, got to go. Bye.
Washington D.C.– Day 3
Yesterday was so cool. We got to see hundreds of "not"Jewish
"religous right wing" people protest about gay marriage should be I league at the Capital. Then we
walked all the way down to the Washington Monument. After that, I rolled down
the hill and started for the reflection pond. Then we went for the Lincoln
memorial. It was really cool to see him, his speech and the reflection pond.
After we headed towards the Vietnam memorial. There were so many people. Just
about 50,000 people. That is a lot. Then, we went to have lunch in a park, and
we had an intense game of water bottle volley ball. Then we went home. Had a
delicious dinner, brownies, a shower and went to bed.
Washington D.C. – Day
4
Yesterday was so cool. We went to the American History
Museum. There were lots of things to see like a 1949 mustang, or Tomas
Jefferson's desk. We also saw things like a World War II jeep and Edison's
first lightbulb. We also had a very big treasure hunt throughout the museum.
There were so many things. Almost 30. But we got them all. Grandpa was so
shocked. He thought we would only get half. Wrong! For a prize we got 1 free
simulator rides (which is now on YouTube). We chose superstition as our theme.
Then we went home. We worked on our water slide a little bit and swung on the
swing. Then we had a delicious Taco dinner, but ran out of tortillas. I wonder
why Gigi had 2, Grandpa had 2, I had 3, Brendan had 4, Bryce had 5 and Chayton
had 5. That was dinner and for dessert, we had Brownies and ice cream. that's
it. Shower and bed.
Washington D.C.– Day 5
Yesterday
was really cool. We went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. There
were lots of things to see like The hope diamond or all the minerals.
You can
also see dinosaur bone layouts of a body and a giant elephant. Then we had
lunch, went back to the museum and explored for another 2 hours. We then left
the museum and went back to the house. We went on the the swing and played in
the creek. Then we watched TV for a while. When an episode was over, I went to
go on the swing and saw a turtle.
I quickly ran up got Chayton, Bryce and
Brendan. They all ran down , decided to keep him and named him Mr.Turtle. We
put it down the water slide and bring him to a plastic container. Then we had a
dinner of frozen pizza, had Jello for desert, took showers and went to bed.
Texts Day 5 (Saturday)
between Aidan, Chayton, Mom and Dad
C: Pic and dc
texts
Washington D.C. 7 & 8 Day seven
of the Washington D.C. Trip was held out on the road. It was a long
trip, but somehow we survived. For lunch we had Wendy's. It was good. I
had a Cheeseburger with fries and a drink. Then we went back on the road
and got to the resort in about thirty minutes. Then we went swimming
and had dinner. Dinner was spaghetti served with salad. Then we had
dessert, took a shower and went to bed. The next morning we woke up and
had breakfast. That was Eggs and Bacon. Then we set off for Colonial
Williamsburg. There were lots of different things to see like like Tomas
Jefferson, or the governor's mansion. There was also a giant bush maze.
Then we went to some gift shops, and went back to the car to have lunch
and left. We went back took a swim, and played volleyball and ping
pong. By then it was time for dinner. We went out so I had a Jumbo
Cheeseburger, and the rest had Gyros. We came back, played hockey in the
basketball court and went back to our room. There we had dessert, took
our showers and went to bed.
5:10 AM
Washington D.C. 9 Yesterday was
pretty cool. We went to Jamestown and Yorktown. At Jamestown we saw the
church and the statue of John Smith. At Yorktown we saw a cannon, and a
musket fire. We also saw there camp site. There was also a 1790s farm to
show us how farming was back in the day. It was very interesting. That
is why I like Yorktown better. After those two, we had lunch and went
back to the resort. Us kids went to went to the pool. We played Ping
pong and went back. For dinner we had Hotdogs and spaghetti. Then we
took showers,and went to bed. That day we went to bed early because
there is a special event tomorrow.
5:11 AM
Washington D.C. 11 Yesterday was very interesting. We went to Mt.
Vernon.
We saw lots of things like his mansion, or his dentures. We even
saw Cherry trees in his garden. We went to his farm and saw his old
tomb and his grave. There was a museum with a 4-D movie. It shook when
cannons fired, and when they spent the winter in Valley Forge, it had
snow coming down from the ceiling. After all of that was over, we went
back to the old house and played hide and seek. Then a little after that
we had dinner of tacos( I had 5, Brendan had 5, Bryce had 5 and Chayton
had 5)and we went to bed.
Washington D.C. 12 Yesterday was a cool day. We went to the American
Indian Museum. There were lots of things to see like a hand made Canoe,
or a pray dance thing. But my personal favorite is a answering machine.
There are three answering machines with three buttons you push for
choosing your answer, and the screen asks a question. Whoever selects
the right answer first wins. Then we had lunch in their Cafe. After
Lunch, we went to the National Air and Space Museum. There were lots of
things to see there too. I really liked the Wright brothers plane. I
think it is astonishing that a person could actually fly in that. They
probably didn't know about physics back then, so they must have been
randomly experimenting. After that Air and Space Museum, we went back
home. We played hide and seek, and watched a movie until dinner was
ready. Dinner was Barbecued Chicken with corn, and it was delicious.
Then we had dessert of ice cream and brownies, took showers, and went to
bed. Washington D.C. 13 Yesterday was a sad day. We went to the Air Force
Memorial. There were lots of names,and some medal of honors. There was
also a statue of 4 army men with an American flag. After that memorial,
we went to the Pentagon Memorial. That is there to remember the people
that died in the Pentagon, or airplane during 911. There were cement
things coming out of the ground with water underneath. Then came the EOG
memorial. And the Arlington Cemetery. There were tons of graves, and
even John Fitzgerald Kennedy's grave, and both brothers. After seeing
those, we went to the tomb of the unknown soldier, and left. We went
back home, watched a movie and came back inside for dinner. Dinner was
Steak. I had a lot. Then an annual story every night about history, and
things. We then had a dessert of Ice Cream, took showers and went to bed
Washington D.C. 14
Yesterday was really cool. We went to the National Spy Museum. There
were so many fun things to do there. You could crawl up in an air vent,
and play spy trivia. You could even detect secret codes. Then, on the
next floor, there was one of my personal favorites. It was a bar where
it lifts you off the ground, and you try to stay on for one minute. The
challenge is that a fan blows air on you. It also rotates while it
blows. My first try was 44 seconds, and my second was 1 minute. Then we
went to the gift shops and saw lots of things such as edible paper, or
glasses that also have mirrors in them. After that was over, we went to
have lunch at a park, and went to the Holocost Museum. There were many
sad, and disturbing things there. There were burnt people, or dead
bodies left behind. At the end, there were movies about the people who
survived. Most of the people cried in the middle of their speech. Some
didn't. Then we read and watched stories about a kid named Daniel who
got sent to concentration camp. He survived and was liberated with his
father. After that was over, we went back home. We listened to the
radio, talked about some experiences and ate dinner. Dinner was sloppy
joe's. I had three and a half. Dessert was jello. Lots and lots of
Jello. Then we took showers and went to bed.
I really liked this trip. We saw lots of things, and had lots of fun
experiences. I think my favorite museum was either the natural history,
or the spy museum. My favorite building was either mount Vernon, or the
White House.
My favorite dinner was either Tacos or the barbecued
Chicken. Those were my favorite experiences. I liked this trip, and I
will see you next time.
The kids asked for a day off from museums, so today we slept in and had pancakes for breakfast. Around 11 we made our sandwiches, all piled in the car and headed out to Fort Foote, a Civil War fort which was built to defend the capitol.
It was a short drive to the national monument and it was very quiet there--very few people. We hiked along the path, reading the story boards along the way. Fort Foote was built in 1864 and had two huge cannons which could shoot 15 inch cannon balls. The cannon balls weighed 434 pounds and the crew practiced until they were able to clean,load and fire the cannon in 4 minutes. We couldn't even imagine how they could load that heavy cannon ball. Fort Foote was one of 18 military forts built around the capitol.
The hike was
pretty short, and there must have been quite a wind storm recently
because at one point there was a huge tree that had fallen over and
broke down the bridge over a ravine. ABBC were able to scramble over
the tree and teeter across the other side of the bridge and then they
found a little trail that went down the embankment to the Potomac River,
so they went down there, using a rope to get down the steep part. GG
and Grandpa watched through the trees as the boys ran up and down the
shore, threw rocks into the river and did the normal boy things--except
no one got a shoe wet.
We returned to the car and had our picnic lunch before heading home. For their day off all ABBC wanted to do was to sit and watch cartoons on tv, but Grandpa said no and hid the controls. So then they were bored for awhile. Eventually they played cards for about 10 minutes and then began to complain about nothing to do. They started a rousing game of hide and seek and played that for awhile. While they were hiding they ran across some racquets and a tennis ball, so they went into the court and played ball for awhile. At 4:30 GG relented and told them they could watch TV for a hour while she made dinner. For dinner we had pork roast, rice-a-roni and spinach salad. Those boys love that rice-a-roni and ate it all up again.
Tonight we have to say goodbye to the turtle and put him back in the wild because tomorrow we are off to Williamsburg.
Today, June 21, we went to the Museum of Natural History. Everybody loved this museum. We started out in the Gems and Minerals section where we saw huge gold nuggets from Nevada County and Placer County.
There were hundreds of big diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls and many other semi-precious stones, some set as jewelry and some unset. We saw the famous Hope Diamond too.
GG's treasure hunt lead us to find a big lump of Cu and find out that this is the symbol on the Periodic Table for Copper. We found meteorites from Allende, Mexico, and found out that Brazilanite is green. We read about the Vesta and learned that it is one of the brightest and largest asteroids visible from Earth. We searched the big globe and found that we live on the North American Plate.
From the Gems and Minerals area we went into the special Genome exhibit where we could follow a chart that maps some traits--dimples or no dimples, attached ear lobes or not, pointed hair line and can you curl your tongue. Following the chart we found out that we are with 2% or 9% of the population, even though we all look very different.
Then grandpa took us to the coolest display where our images were shown with images of dinosaurs. In the mirror it looked like we were punching or patting the dinosaurs.and grandpa took some pictures of us.
We stopped for lunch in the park across the street and then we spun and spun and spun, making ourselves dizzy and disoriented.
After lunch we returned to the museum where we searched for the polar bear, and saw displays of all kinds of animals--rhinos, giraffes, and a model of the first mammal to walk on earth--a kind of mouse type thing. The Hall of Human Origins displayed skulls of apes, hominids, humanoids, and homo sapiens through the centuries and explained how we evolved over millions of years.
There was a lot to see at this museum and we explored on our own for a while after agreeing to meet at 2:30 to go home. We were getting tired of museum walking and went into the museum store and considered buying some stuffed animals, but changed our mind after awhile.
It was time to go home and take a break, so we got in the car and drove back to the house, dropping GG off at the grocery store.
While we were playing in the back yard we found a big turtle and tried to convince GG that we should be able to keep it , but she said no, we could just keep it through tomorrow and then we had to let it go.
We had pizza for dinner and then it was off to bed. We are having a day off tomorrow, so we will sleep in and take a hike later in the day.
We all got up feeling perky in our clean underwear today. After breakfast we headed out for one of the museums on the Capitol Mall.
At the Museum of American History we had a treasure hunt. GG told us to go find Thomas Jefferson's desk and read about what he did on it. It was on the third floor and it didn't look like a desk at all. It was a little wooden box, about the size of a big binder. He wrote the Declaration of Independence on this desk. We ran back to the central hall and told her the answer and she gave us another thing to find--what is hanging from the ceiling of the WWII room? It was a jeep.
In the Prisoner of War tunnel we found the poem a soldier wrote about his porcelain cup. Then we went to the second floor to find who's speed skates were there, why the Dave Jar is important, we saw the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner, and we learned what happened at the Greensboro lunch counter. We asked for more and more questions to find the answers to and had a great time exploring the museum this way.
Time for lunch and Grandpa had to put more money in the parking meter, so we skipped, hopped, jumped, balanced on the cement fence, and jumped across the space between each pillar all the way to 7th Street where the car was parked.
We ate our picnic lunch while Grandpa told us more stories and a man came up to us and told us that his grandpa had taken him to Washington DC on a trip just like this and it is one of his favorite memories. That made grandpa feel really good.
After lunch we walked back down to the museum because our prize for finishing the treasure hunt was a simulator ride. We chose the "Superstition" Ride.. On the way out of the museum we stopped to pay homage to the 1965 baby blue Ford Mustang, similar to Grandpa's beauty. His was even better though because it was a convertible.
We got home before the traffic and played and watched some tv. GG made tacos for dinner and thank goodness she made double what she had planned to make because the gang was ravenous and ate everything again. They asked for tacos again next week, so it must have been good. I will have to double my purchases to feed these hungry boys. Tomorrow is pizza night and I am going to go to the store and buy two more pizzas to go with the two I already have because I am pretty sure that two jumbos are not enough. We have wiped out several packs of cookies and two boxes of brownies and a gallon of ice cream so far. Fruit is going more slowly. I am out of practice planning meals for 4 hungry boys.
We all had a good sleep and the boys slept until 7am, a good solid 10 hours. GG had clean clothes out of the dryer and complimented Aidan for having a pair of underpants in the wash. Everyone else is on their 3rd day on one pair, so GG demanded 4 pair of undies in the wash tonight.
After breakfast the boys played in the back yard for awhile and then watched some TV. Then it was time to make sandwiches for lunch and we were off to the Capitol Mall. When we got to the Capitol building there was a big crowd of people on the steps and someone was giving a speech about protecting our families and children from people who agree with same sex marriage. We discussed some of our fundamental human rights, such as freedom of religion, equal rights and separation of church and state. GG and Grandpa tend to stop us all and pontificate from time to time. We were tired of being cramped up in the car, so we decided to walk from the Capitol Building along the National Mall, and down past the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. As usual, it was hot and muggy, and rain was predicted. But there was cloud cover, so we were not as hot as Ryan and Isabella were when they did this walk.
ABBC ran along, jumped over the chain fences, rolled and wrestled, and generally used up a lot of energy as we made our way along the paths. Finally we made it to the Washington Monument, but we couldn't go in because when GG tried to make reservations it was all booked through August. The boys did roll down the hill in front of the monument though, to commemorate the historic Myrah/Westrook visit of yore.
We stopped at the WWII memorial and examined the huge columns with the name of each state and territory carved on them. And then we walked alongside the Reflection Pond and reflected upon Martin Luther King and his historic speech. When he made this speech in 1963 there were so many people on the Mall to hear him they were standing all along the park in the pond, solid humanity all the way up to the Washington Memorial.
At the Lincoln Memorial the boys ran up the steps, counting 99 to the top. There they admired the majestic statue of Abraham Lincoln and read the text of two of his famous speeches. In the basement of the memorial we found marble tablets with many important quotes from Abraham Lincoln. One of the most important is that if a promise is made, the promise must be kept. He was referring to the Declaration of Independence promise that "All men are created equal." Another one I liked was that he stated "I would not be a slave, therefore, I will not make any man a slave."
Leaving the Lincoln Memorial we walked over to the Vietnam War Memorial. It is sobering to look at the thousands of names etched in the wall, and realize that many of those names were young boys, 18, 19, 20, who had moms and dads, brothers and sisters, wives and children. They never got to live their lives and the people who loved them are still sad today. We were very polite and reverent as we walked along, reading name after name. We looked in the directory but there were no Myrahs. We found 5 Westbrooks.
We ate lunch in the park and played volley-water-bottle. At 3pm we decided to save the American History Museum for another day and headed home before another rush hour.
We had barbequed chicken with rice-a-roni and salad for dinner. Everybody was so hungry there was not a scrap left over. Compliments were heard on the chicken, and even the salad, but the big hit was the rice-a-roni. The boys had 4 and 5 helpings.
Showers and bed by 9pm, but they all made telephone calls home at 9 and stayed up until GG scolded them off and turned off the lights.
Aidan, Bryce, Brendan and Chayton arrived at GG and Grandpa's house with their bags packed and ready to go. This is the summer of the big adventure to Washington, DC.
We arrived in plenty of time to catch our Virgin America flight at 2:45pm. It was a nonstop, which made the time seem much shorter. While we were waiting to board some of the boys bought huge jawbreakers and licked them throughout the flight. On board, we watched some TV on our seatback screens, but there were not nearly as many movies available as there were in the past. Most of the movies were pay. The safety presentation was fun to watch, though. It was a rap song and dance explaining how to buckle your seatbelt, where to find the emergency exits, how to blow up your life vest, etc.
We arrived at the Dulles airport, full of energy and raring to go, even though it was 11pm and hot and steamy. Robert, the brother of our home exchanger, met us and drove us to Alexandria to our new home. Grandpa rented a car because it would have been too crowded for all of us to fit in the home exchange car.
Our house is very large, two stories plus a basement. Brendan and Chayton shared a room and Bryce and Aidan shared the other one. By the time we all got to bed it was 1am.
The next morning we got up by 8am, which is 5am our body time. The first thing Bryce thought to do was to call his mom, who groaned and said, "Bryce! It is 5am!" Poor Yvonne. Grandma went grocery shopping and Grandpa fixed us scrambled eggs for breakfast while we waited for her to come home.
We packed our lunches and then we went to the airport to take Grandpa's rental car back. While we were there we visited the extension of the Air and Space Museum, which is at the Dulles Airport. What a collection! They have a Blackbird stealth plane, the space shuttle, Discovery, the world's smallest flying manned airplane, a Sikorsky helicopter, the Enola Gay, and a whole bunch more. The boys thought about going on a flight simulator, but after learning
that it was $7 each, they decided to pass. But, Aidan could not pass up the $45 Thunder Ball and Brendan bought a model airplane.
By the time we left the airport it was 4pm, and that was a big mistake. The rush hour traffic was already bad and Grandpa had to concentrate very hard to follow Maggie's (GPS) instructions and take the right roads. ABBC (shortcut for the 4 boys) had to try to be quiet so he could think and hear the instructions. Finally Grandpa got tired of the traffic and he turned into the neighborhood streets and got us home and out of all of the cars.
ABBC explored the back yard, where they found a cool creek to dam up and a rope swing, and they played out there until the mosquitoes started to bite.
We had hamburgers for dinner and then watched some tv before GG made us take showers, put all of our dirty clothes in the laundry basket and go to bed. Bryce again called mommy and the jig was almost up when she told him she was just home from work. It was 9pm here and I didn't want them to know that it was only 6pm in San Jose. They all fell asleep right away. They were tired.
Yesterday was so cool. We got to see hundreds of "not"
You can
also see dinosaur bone layouts of a body and a giant elephant. Then we had
lunch, went back to the museum and explored for another 2 hours. We then left
the museum and went back to the house. We went on the the swing and played in
the creek. Then we watched TV for a while. When an episode was over, I went to
go on the swing and saw a turtle.
I quickly ran up got Chayton, Bryce and
Brendan. They all ran down , decided to keep him and named him Mr.Turtle. We
put it down the water slide and bring him to a plastic container. Then we had a
dinner of frozen pizza, had Jello for desert, took showers and went to bed. 
