Blowing Off Work

The kids had today off, so I decided to bail on going in to work and stay home and hang out with them. We stole a page from Barry's handbook and went down to the Museum of Natural History. Although to be honest, I think the kids enjoyed the ride on the Metro more than they enjoyed the Museum itself. I honestly considered just using Barry's Elephant picture here since my shot got killed by the flash.



The trip really did highlight the differences between Quinn and Catherine. Quinn was zipping around as fast as he could, going from one exhibit to another. Catherine on the other hand would sit and absorb information about each exhibit and ask Ginger all kinds of questions. Luckily Nana was with us to keep an eye on Quinn, and I was often positioned between both groups trying to keep an eye on both. We started off at the dinosaurs, because that's where Quinn wanted to start. Then we hit the Ice Age stuff (I was actually pleasantly surprised when we got there and it wasn't sponsored by "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown"). Since we didn't get to the museum until noon, by the time we finished getting through the Ice Age exhibit both the kids were pretty hungry. So we hit the cafe downstairs (Ginger had actually packed some food for Catherine, but it was raining out so we weren't able to picnic outside). The cafe was a madhouse. It was just crazy. After wandering around for a bit I was finally able to snag us a table. I felt kind of bad since I know other people were waiting longer than we were and some of them never got a table, but the feeling quickly passed. And there was a huge 'line' for the food. It's all cafeteria style, but people wait in this really long line to get the food. I got lucky because of where we entered the cafe I went into the food area from the registers, and was able to get a tray, snag some food, and get back to the table in under 10 minutes. I got the chicken tenders / fries for Quinn, but he didn't eat any of the chicken and just ate the fries. I also got the Crab Chowder soup for myself (which I wasn't expecting to be any good, but it was surprisingly mediocre to not bad) and Ginger had a slice of pizza. After a long lunch and everyone making a trip to the restroom, we were ready to hit the exhibits again.

We headed upstairs to bug exhibit (we got there by going through the "Yes Global Warming is Real and We're Soooo Screwed Exhibit"). The kids were only mildly interested in most of the bug exhibits. There was one thing that captured their attention though. The ant exhibit. That's right, here we are the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, with information on all kinds of Dinosaur bones, Ice Age stuff, Geology, Animals and Reptiles. And what's the one exhibit both the kids can't take their eyes off? The ants. Because there's something you can't see everyday. By this time it was pretty late and the kids were showing signs of being really tired. So after seeing a few of the bug exhibits, one of which was actually sponsored by Orkin (I kid you not), we were ready to head home.



As we were heading back to the Metro, I let Quinn use my camera to take the picture above of the Washington Monument. I decided to get a shot of the Monument also.

And as I leave, let me just thank whoever came up with the idea for the Metro parking garages not taking cash. Apparently now the Metro parking only take these new smart cards. Parking costs $3.75 for the day. But get this, you can't buy a card for $3.75, nope, the lowest amount you can get put onto a card is $10. That's gotta be a nice revenue generator. Kudos to the guy who thought that one up.