Day 27

I woke up with the sunrise to be sure not to miss Grammie leaving. It was a nice little sunrise on the top floor of the apartment over the roof tops.

Once Grammie was ready and struggling to get her suitcase closed, I woke up the girls as she protested. They sleepily came up the stairs to give hugs and just a minute later Brayden slunk in too. I had to get one more picture and Brayden suggested I use the timer and get one for everyone. I wasn't expecting a picture with my bedhead, just theirs!

Once we walked her out for final hugs I started up and down the stairs for our packing process. While I do enjoy having the cargo space of a minivan for a short time, I still don't enjoy packing!  We tried to eat all the leftover breakfast food from the fridge and I cooked up some pancakes for quick reheating in the excessive temps we were having.

The day before at Constitution Hall the kids mentioned wanting to go to a hands-on elections exhibit they had that I decided not to buy tickets for. They weren't open until noon so we had a snack and learned more about the Underground Railroad at the visitors center until it was time. I wasn't sure they would let me buy these add-on tickets only, but it turns out he let us in for free! Since it was just opening everyone buying tickets was heading to the live show so we had the "Headed to the White House" exhibit to ourselves for awhile.






They were to learn about the election process and first up was campaign speeches. The read from a teleprompter a speech they selected from either Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy. They were all pretty convincing!

They decorated campaign buttons and learned about debates. Then I gave them a topic and they debated! They were not very convincing at all. When asked how they would pay for different programs, two of them were hopeful that donations from taxpayers could cover billions of dollars. If only we could solve our country's problems that easily!







They worked on campaign commercials and emailed them to themselves. They weren't thrilled I made them only do positive ads.











Next they shook hands with a lot of people and pretended to kiss a baby. What fun training for politics!

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you, three presidents of the United States!






Ryan had to stop back by to play the politics game again. I'm not sure who won as I was booking a hotel at the time. Temperatures were only to get down to 90 for the night so I was not thrilled about sleeping in the tent for three days. I got us a place pretty close to where we would have been staying so we could still do the same activities but sleep in the cool. I'm all for camping in a tent, but not when I can't sleep!


We made a quick stop at Walmart for photos for journals and made our way to the hotel. The kids were super excited to swim in a pool in the 115 degree day.  Luckily I had remembered from a deep sleep at 2am that the swimming bag was in my getting-fixed-car at the dealership so we could grab it before we left town.

The pool was refreshing and even a little too cold for me! While the kids goofed around I was on the phone a good portion of the time because there was a glitch that was making a reservation in my name at the hotel every 30 minutes. By the time we got it fixed I had 12 rooms reserved in my name!


Once we got back to the room we at sandwiches, relaxed watching Olympics and I planned our next two days. We were all pretty sleepy and the alarm clock just happened to be an hour fast so I tricked talked the kids into going to bed at 9:30 (really 8:30) and we were all snoring within seconds.