Day 37

Today began a little differently than every other because we had a birthday to celebrate! We've missed bunches of summer birthdays of friends and family, but always have been home for Brayden's big day. Since we schedule our trip so late this year he had it on the road this time. We started out the morning with his breakfast choice - donuts, fruit, and yogurt. He was pleasantly awoken by his sisters and sung to by all of us. We didn't have candles so he blew out our fingers with mine counting for ten years and each of the girl's counting for one year.








We made it into the city to try to finish seeing the exhibits of the American History museum and possibly move on to something else. Boy were we wrong! The invention stations were open this day so we spent the better part of the first two hours solving the world's problems. They invented tools to scoop plastic out of the ocean, energy efficient houses, and learned how to optimize solar panels for the most energy.

   

After we examined the mansion of a dollhouse, we headed to the Food exhibit. The kids didn't want to spend too much time here as there were a ton of facts to absorb, but they did enjoy seeing Julia Child's full kitchen all set up.  I was fascinated by the graph of the rise in snack food since the 1970s. Weird to think people actually used to eat real food!!

By far their favorite section of the museum this day was the transportation wing. There were trains, cars, buses, subways, tractor trailers and so much more. This was possibly the spot that I was able to read the most as the kids had a blast "riding" on the subway over and over. As if we hadn't already done that all summer!!

I

 thought of my friend Lydia as I listened to the interviews from "Car Talk" as I was standing next to the cars they were calling in about. For those of you that have had the unfortunate experience of getting microwave popcorn kernels in your air vents, rest assured they will not pop when you turn the heat on.

The last wing we visited contained the American Stories exhibits. We saw the lunch counter from the 1960  sit-in in Greensboro.

We saw a pair of Dorothy's shoes and Muhammad Ali's gloves. And so so much more!

    

We even saw some things from Breaking Bad, a show Dave and I are currently still trying to finish!

After a visit to the gift shop we were almost on our way out of the museum when I remembered the entire reason I wanted to go there - the Star Spangled Banner exhibit! Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures, but what we saw was awesome. In very low light mounted in front of us was the flag Francis Scott Key was looking at when he wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" during the Battle of Ft. McHenry. There were many holes and souvenir cuts from the flag, but it was very inspiring to stand in front of it.  Across from it there was a blown up image of the flag on a screen you could drag around with your hand and learn more about its construction and history.  

Now that we all felt very patriotic, we decided to go outside and
play on the National Mall grass. We couldn't stand it very long with the heat, but we did have a fun time while it lasted.  Once we were all sweaty, Ryan reminded me for the 47th time we needed to go back to Gordon Biersch to get Brayden some birthday cake since it was his actual birthday.

When we got back to the campground we played a little camp ball until I couldn't stand the thought of bare feet and ticks anymore.  We had a new audience this time - a large family of deer.

Ryan couldn't wait to get home to test out her new robot that could walk up glass. He needs a little motivation sometimes, but for the most part it was a good purchase. 

Once we'd finished dinner we read a few chapters and said goodnight. We had yet another busy day tomorrow!