I started the day with a bubble bath, and then we were off to The Hamilton for brunch. They seated us in a booth with doors. DOORS. The booth had doors. I suppose when you ask the concierge at the fancy schmancy hotel where a good place to eat is, you are going to be sent to fancy schmancy restaurants where the booths have doors. Surprisingly, the meal didn’t cost all that much more than a chain, but it was sooo much better. Sometimes I find myself day dreaming about that french toast with the lake of buttery syrup on top. (And yes, we did close the doors.)

Our first museum of the day was the Museum of American History, or as Anya called it, “The Place with the Ruby Red Slippers.” Half of the museum is under construction, and I was worried the slippers wouldn’t be on exhibit. We wandered around in war exhibits for a loooong time. I think one floor was all war. My favorite part of the war floor was all the clothing exhibits. This surprised me a bit ’cause I’m not a clothes person, but the embroidery and other detail work really caught my attention.

Finally we found what we’d been looking for…the slippers! YAY! Anya was being a goober, though, and I think I bribed her with two pounds of twizzlers to get her to pose for this photo.

In the same area, I also found my favorite part of the non-war floor: Kermit!

For some reason on this day we had trouble keeping together as a group, and so while I analyzed Julia Child’s kitchen, the kid and the dude went off somewhere else. I’m not sure where. I finished and hit the gift store, where the other two later joined me. The entire time we were in DC, we only bought two souvenirs: a ruby slipper magnet and a paddle ball thingy for the kid. How we managed to escape without any t-shirts or post cards or ball caps or stuffed animals or whatever, I’m not sure.

Back to the hotel for a nap, and then we were off to the second museum of the day. First, though, we had to stop at the carousel, on which Anya “wheeee’d” for the entire ride.

Then we were on to a sculpture museum, which also had non-sculpture stuff. Most of the stuff inside was that crazy modern art where you paint a canvas blue and say VOILA. Still it was fun, and we all agreed that the coolest things were the snake made of backpacks winding around the ceiling of one floor and these great zodiac statues outside.

We had dinner reservations, and so we had to practically run allllllll the way across town to get to the Old Ebbitt Grill on time. When we arrived the place was packed, but we were shown right to our table. Yay for reservations! [I’d like to take a moment here to talk about fabric. In particular I’d like to talk about how vinyl-like fabrics (that is to say smooth fabrics) really are key to successful seating in booths. When booth benches are upholstered in, say, fuzzy velvet-like fabrics, the ability to scoot across the seat vanishes.] Anya says this place has the best mac and cheese EVER, and although I wasn’t too keen on my dinner, the dessert was awesome. I really should have listened to the waiter when I ordered my entree because he was right on with dessert. Oh well.

We all rolled back to the hotel, stopping briefly for the required tourist shot outside the White House.

Back at the hotel, Andy and Anya took bubble baths, I did some crewel work, and then we all crashed.

To be continued….

One great thing about Anya’s school is that we get lots of breaks. We are now finishing up a week-long mid-winter break, and although I am most definitely glad to return to our regularly scheduled program, I am also most definitely glad to have had the time off to explore new places with my family.

A few months ago, Anya’s teacher sent home a dinosaur book in Anya’s homework bag. In the book, the main character goes to a super cool museum jam packed with dinosaur fossils. Andy and I wondered if the book was based on a real place, and if it was could we go there?? Turns out the museum is real and it is in New York City. We pondered for a while how we could make that trip happen, but we decided it wasn’t doable right now. However, there are these pretty cool museums in this little town nearby called Washington, D.C.

When I realized that mid-winter break was coming up, I suggested to Andy that we maybe go to DC. He jumped on the idea, and the next thing I knew, he’d reserved a hotel and figured out which bus (YES BUS) we’d take to get there. I’m not sure which excited Anya more: the idea of going to DC or the idea of riding a bus for a long trip. I know what did not excite me: waking up at 1:30 am to drive to town to sit in the cold and wait for the bus to show up.

Buses are nice. Why don’t more people travel by bus? (Maybe that waking up at 1:30 am?) I get that it’s not the best thing if you’ve got a baby or a gaggle of kids or if you are on crutches or if you have a ton of money and can fly everywhere or if you need to pee every hour. It is so nice, though, to sit back and chill and let someone else do the driving. On the way there, we all three slept. On the way back, we played cards together. All the passengers were quiet and respectful and the bathroom didn’t stink and there was wifi. Megabus, you have my vote.

We arrived in DC around 7:30 am. Yay! Rush hour! The bus dropped us off at Union Station, and we had to get on the metro subway thingy to get to the hotel. There are LOTS of escalators involved with the subway. Escalators are scary. On the first one we encountered, Anya freaked out a bit. Andy went first, and Anya was supposed to go second, with me following behind. She stepped on and I stepped on and she stepped back off and then there Andy and I were going down the escalator with Anya at the top holding up traffic. (Did I mention it was rush hour?) I was turned around calling up to Anya trying to get her to step on, and the next thing I know THUNK. My shoe caught at the bottom where the escalator swallows the belt to send it back up and around. The good thing is that (unlike my in life-long fears of being eaten by an escalator) I wasn’t sucked into the escalator’s teeth. The bad thing is that (did I mention it was rush hour) my foot stopped the escalator. [Interesting Note: When we were leaving DC a few days later, that escalator still was not working. Oops.]

We emerged from the subway and after getting lost a few times and asking a hot dog vendor for directions, we made it to our hotel. They let us stash our bags there even though we couldn’t check in yet, and after Anya changed out of her pajamas we headed into the big city. The first museum on our list was, of course, the Museum of Natural History (aka The Dinosaur Museum). Turns out it didn’t open for a while, so we had breakfast in a food court at the old post office building and then headed back.

Pretty much the moment we cleared security at the museum, Anya took off skipping and squealing, “OOOO! LOOK AT THAT LOOK AT THAT LOOK AT THAT!” We saw sea creatures and mammals and mummies and gems and orchids

and REAL LIVE SCIENTISTS working with fossils in the fossil lab and baby butterflies and meteorites and a movie about our ancestors where we got to sit with one of our relatives

and of course we also saw dinosaurs. (No, this photo is not of a dinosaur, but it is a really old critter!)

Somewhere around the gems and mummies, we all started to crash. Luckily we were able to check into our hotel early. It was a super fancy hotel that Andy got some good deal on, and I think they maybe thought we were super fancy, too. But we aren’t. I felt a little out of place when the tall dude with the fancy coat and top hat opened the doors for us with a “Bonjour!” And then there were the super posh flower arrangements in the lobby. And the real live painting hanging over the bed in our room.

And the bathroom with a shower AND a tub AND a hairdryer in its own little cloth bag.

And then later? Some fancy-dressed dude brought us a little dessert plate because Andy’s good deal involved some sort of membership in a super-schmancy platinum diadem club or something.

The view from our windows was fascinating. I could watch folks working in the offices in the buildings across the street, and I could see people coming and going at the hotel entrance, and I could watch all the cars as evening rush hour came and went. After napping and munching and napping and looking out the windows and taking baths and napping, we went out in search of nail clippers, bubble bath, and soda. All three were conveniently found at a nearby CVS, which was on the other side of a small park with a neat monument and ducks and rats.

To be continued…

I hope I didn’t build up the anticipation too much with my last post. We didn’t actually do a huge redesign of Anya’s room in an HGTV sort of way. We didn’t repaint, we didn’t add accessories, we didn’t build a bookcase out of recycled soda bottles. Mostly? We moved stuff around.

Since I forgot to take a before picture of the room, those of you who haven’t seen her room will probably just say, “Ah. Okay.” There are probably only a very select few of you out there who have seen her room in all it’s “how do you get from the door to the bed” glory. For those of you who haven’t, I’ll lead you through a little visualization activity. Ready?

Close your eyes. Imagine a really messy kid room with all that junk from the previous photo (where it’s on the floor) on the floor of that kid’s room. [Hey, how are you reading this if your eyes are closed?] Add in a laundry basket of dress-up clothes, three armfuls of regular clothes (dirty, clean, who knows?),and a wheel barrow of stuffed animals. Got it? Good. You can open your eyes now.

So, without further ado, here is the Cleanly Swept (yes, we did actually sweep it) room of Anya:

Look! Floor! In fact, there is so much floor now, we really ought to get a rug. The truly magical part is that her room still looks like this.