DC part deux

The voters have spoken.

I feel like my entire house is packed. It's like we've moved. I finally located the cable for the camera, though, so this edition of My Life will be illustrated!

When I had recovered from the zoo, and BJ had returned from his conference, it was time to meet Andrew for dinner. Andrew works for the State Department. He could tell us what he does, but then he'd have to kill us. We had a great time at the Old Ebbitt Grill, which is apparently where important people like Andrew go for hamburgers. I made the mistake of ordering pasta. I've noticed something about pasta... Its quality is inversely proportional to its cost. In other words, the more expensive it is, the more it tastes like Chef Boyardee. Oh well. The hummus appetizer was really good, and the company was outstanding, so I didn't care.

Andrew walked back to our hotel with us, and we stopped along the way to get ice cream. MG was absolutely terrible. She was overtired and sick to death of being out of her routine, but she fell asleep in the stroller, so I couldn't get too mad. There was some excitement outside of our hotel. Apparently a homeless person had been harassing a woman, so the doorman called the police. They were racing around, up and down the street looking for him. An ambulance and a fire truck were also there, but I'm not sure why. No one was hurt or on fire. Anyway, it was exciting. We stood outside and watched the action, long enough to figure out what was going on. I wasn't going to go upstairs if the hotel was on fire, right?

When we finally made it to our room, we basically passed out from exhaustion and slept late the next day. Since we still had soles on our shoes, we decided to walk some more. We took the metro to Capital South, and then walked from there, past the Capital (singing "I'm just a bill, yes I'm only a bill...") and understanding why they call it Capital HILL.

I tried to get MG to take a nap on the lawn, but she was having none of it. We ate lunch at the cafeteria at the House Office Building, which was fun. More baby kissers. Then we walked to the Air and Space Museum. BJ was like a kid in a candy store. It was very cool to see MG getting excited over the stuff that BJ gets excited over. They are two peas in a pod.

MG got pretty fussy after about half of the A&S Museum, so I took the girls to McDonald's and let BJ finish looking at all the stuff. Turns out that we started on the wrong side - we started with Air, and should've started with Space. Oops. While we were wandering around waiting for him, a huge storm blew up and threatened to send us straight to Kansas.

Well, this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but it took a million years to get both the kids to sleep, and it didn't happen. Sorry.

Where was I? Oh, so the storm blew up and we managed to get back to the metro station before we got completely soaked. And all these jerks who could totally have walked the extra 50 feet to the escalator were crowding into the elevator that we legitimately needed (because of the stroller) and I had to bite my tongue... But anyway...

As I was standing there waiting to buy our Metro tickets, Bill and Sharon called to change our meeting place because of the storm - their timing couldn't have been better! So we went the other way, and ended up at Red Hot and Blues which was a lot of fun. We were able to take our time catching up, as MG fell asleep in the stroller (small wonder, she skipped her nap entirely).

We collapsed, again, when we got back to the hotel. All of this recreation is exhausting.

On Saturday we had breakfast with my cousin Brian. We tried not to take up his whole day, because who wants to hang out with their old cousin and her smelly kids when there is a whole world of summer college fun waiting? He was very gracious about spending a few hours of his Saturday with us old farts, though, and it was really nice to catch up with him and hear some of his stories about college.

After breakfast, BJ and the girls and I got the car and headed down to the other half of the Mall, where the WWII memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument are. We parked in that area (since we'd checked out of the hotel by this time), and wandered. Sweet Lord it was hot. I am not even joking when I say that I bought a pair of pants when we got back that was a size smaller than usual, because I lost so much water weight from sweating. It was just ridiculous. We saw a lot of stuff, and then hopped on a bus and rode over to Arlington National Cemetery (I know we know of someone who is buried there - help me remember who. I think it's someone's dad, but heck if I can remember whose dad it is!)

We toured Arlington on the bus, then came back over to D.C. and rode the bus a few more stops before realizing that we were going to get stuck if we rode any farther from our car, as they were closing at 5 pm and throwing everyone off the bus wherever they happened to be. So, we got off of the bus (which sucked, because the tour guide on that one was really good) and walked back to our car. Then we drove to the National Cathedral, just in time for it to close. We'll have to keep that on the list for next time.

After leaving the National Cathedral, we hit the road and drove straight through to home. Ugh. We left at 5 pm and got home at 6 am. BJ and I took turns sleeping, so we wouldn't have to stop. It was a long haul, but we made it.

Now we're recovering. I should probably go get dressed and do something productive today. Poor BJ is coming down with a cold. And MG has figured out how to open all doors, so I need to go get some babyproofing gear. Either that, or a bit of electric fence. That would work.