Thursday, March 21, 2019

Okay. Lots of rain today. That was definitely the part that made the day very interesting. Earlier in the week we learned that there would be a 90-100% chance of rain from 3am this morning until about 4am tomorrow morning. So, about $100 in an emergency umbrellas purchase at Target last night and we are lured into thinking that it’ll be a great day for sightseeing. Let’s go!

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We only have one scheduled tour today at The White House set up for us by Congressman Trey Hollingsworth’s office. After a fight with DC traffic we make it to our parking garage at about 10:00, leaving us roughly an hour to spare before heading to The White House to check in.

We decided to take in the National Gallery of Art. Later in the day we returned for more of a tour since we really only spent about 45 minutes here. I’ll write about the gallery later in this post.

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From the gallery, we walked about a half hour west toward The White House (in a down pour, mind you). Once we got to the check in we got another little surprise. They would not let me in with my small backpack or our stroller (very similar to our FBI Building visit). What to do this time?

We walked across the street to The W Hotel and asked to check them? Please? Nope. So we walked half a block south, emptied my backpack into Sonya’s purse, and covertly stashed them on the side of one of the hotel doors. If someone wanted to steal a very used stroller and stupid little backpack then we would cross that bridge when we came to it.

Let’s go check in. Nope. Sonya can’t come in with her purse. 😵 So Zach and Eli volunteer to take one for the team, babysit Vivian, and watch Sonya’s ISIS purse. Rules are rules. 4 out of 7 of us get the tour. Bummer.

The White House tour was pretty cool but shorter than we thought it would be. The artwork and decor was amazing. Very cool to see The People’s House.

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After the tour it was off to pick up the stroller and backpack, and go meet up with Zach, Eli, and Vivian. Still raining. Hard. They were waiting for us a few blocks away at a pizza place. Great time for lunch.

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By this time the feet were starting to hurt. They’re starting to hurt earlier and earlier in the day. But we press on. We decide to make the trek back east to The Botanical Gardens. In the rain. Lots of it. It was certainly a challenge to hold umbrellas and push Vivian’s stroller.

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The United States Botanical Gardens was one of the more unique exhibits that we’d seen so far. It exhibited plants from several different climates from around the world. I don’t know much about plants. But it was very pretty. This was probably Vivian’s favorite part so far. She loved touching the different plants and seeing which ones were soft and which ones were prickly.

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To cap off the day we headed back to The National Gallery of Art to continue our visit there. Still raining. At least it was a short walk.

Seth was not fully engaged, mentally, this morning and left without his a jacket. So I let him borrow mine for the rest of the day. Savannah thought she’d get in on that so, two peas in a pod, they shared a “get-along jacket”. Too cute, those two.

As far as art goes I’m not much of an expert. But I can say that the galleries were amazing, with a collection of art from several different time periods, spanning centuries, from all over the world. Time well spent.

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We decided to surrender to our aching feet at about 4:00 and call it a day. A short 10-minute walk back to the parking garage felt like much longer in the rain. But it was very entertaining in the end.

We had a quick stop at Starbucks to warm up and (kinda) dry up with coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. The drive home was just under an hour in solid traffic. Can’t imagine doing that every day. Dinner at Wendy’s. And chilling out around the TV for the night.