Washington D.C. Day Three

Day Three: Me and Dreyton and the trucker hats!

Our first stop of day three was the Arlington National Cemetary. We were able to see tombstones of several of the men and women in the United States Armed Forces who died fighting for our country. We were able to see the grave site of John F. Kennedy and his wife. Below is a picture of the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. This tomb is guarded twenty four hours a day.

Here is a picture of the Washington National Cathedral. It is the sixth largest church in the world and second largest in the United States. It is very beautiful inside and out. We stopped at the World War II Memorial, and Dreyton wanted his picture taken next to two of the states he has lived in.

This is the gold star wall. Each family member was given a blue flag if they had a family member serving in the armed forces. When someone died, the family received a gold flag. Each star represents 1000 soldiers who died during World War II. Over 400,000 servicemen died.

Dreyton and his buddies at the Memorial.

Dreyton very happy to be standing next to the Missouri pillar.

We were able to go to tour the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the National Archives (which contain the orginal Constitution and Declaration of Independence.


This picture was taken at the American History Museum. This is a stone wheel.

Our last day: We woke up at 4:45 a.m. and departed at 6:00a.m. We arrived into Gainesville at 9:30p.m. It was a very long drive, but I had a great time with Dreyton. I told Donovan he could go with Jasmine if she chooses to go in a few years. We'll see if he is "man enough" to do it! :)

Washington D.C. Day 2

Here we go! My day started at 5:45A.M. As chaperones we had to get ourselves ready and then knock all the doors to get the kids up. We had to be to breakfast by 6:45 and on the buses at 7:30. This picture is me trying to take a picture of myself with the trucker hat. It may just be a little more sporty on my head than on Dreyton's??Our first stop was Mt. Vernon. It must have been on ALL the tour buses itineray that day because there were bus load after bus load of people there at the same time we visited. Mt. Vernon is where George Washington and his family lived. This is a picture of his home. We were able to walk around the grounds and see his tombstone, the farming grounds and the museum.

This is the other side of George Washington's home.

Our second stop was visiting the Air and Space Museum. McDonald's is located inside the museum, so this was where the kids had lunch. I think they were more excited to eat lunch at McDonalds then tour the museum. How can the scientific discoveries of aviation compete with a Big Mac and fries?

We only had an hour and a half to tour the Air and Space museum before we had to load up on the bus. Here we are outside of the museum waiting for the bus. It was a day FULL of orange.

Our next stop was an outside visit to the White House. Unfortunately, it took a long time to drive to the White House due to several roads being blocked that day because of the shooting that occured at the Holocaust Museum. An 80-year-old white supremist walked in the museum and shot a black security guard. The sad thing is that the white supremist had already served time for another crime. It's unfortunate that the security guard died and the old man lived (he was shot twice by other guards and taken to the hospital). The museum has only been open for seven weeks. We had the option to tour the museum on Tuesday, but our principal decided to not visit this museum. She felt like the museum would be too deep for the fifth graders. I know other groups were supposed to tour the Museum on Wednesday (the day the shooting took place), but the museum closed. On Wednesday, Donovan called me on my cell phone and asked where I was. I told him we were trying to find our way to the white house. The streets had been blocked due to a shooting. He was calling to tell me that he had read about the shooting online, and he was making sure we were ok.

We made it to the White House. Here is a group picture of the kids. The public has not been able to tour this inside of the White House for several years, but we did see protesters on the outside.
Next stop: Ford Theatre. This is the theatre were President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Boothe. The picture below is were Lincoln was sitting at the time of the play.

Next stop: Dinner at the Great American Buffet. It was pretty good buffet food. The waitresses kept refilling the kids drinks. As a chaperone, I had to make sure the kids didn't have coffee for breakfast, and we had to make sure the kids ate something besides dessert for dinner. I know I lived quite a sheltered childhood, but I can't believe parents let their elementary age children drink coffee. Aren't children already hyper enough? Isn't adding caffeine like throwing gas on a fire? Anywho...

We left dinner and went to the Metro Station. The children were so excited to ride the subway. Most of the children have never seen a subway. There was a small problem with the ride on the subway. Since the children drank so much for dinner, they had to pee REALLY BAD. Who would want to use the bathroom in the subway? When we exited the subway we could not find the bathrooms anywhere. These kids had to pee so bad I thought we were going to have a few accidents. We finally did make it to the bus, and several kids were lined up to use the bathoorm on the bus. The flusher broke, so I decided I could wait!!

After dinner, we were able to visit several war memorials. This is a picture of the Korean Memorial.

This is the Lincoln Memorial.

This is a picture of the Washington Monument. We didn't get tickets to go to the top, but we saw the outside. This monument stands 555 feet tall.

These are the three soilders representing the Vietnam Memorial.

This is The Wall that lists all of the soldiers who fought and died in the Vietnam War.

We didn't get back to the hotel until 9:30pm. I climbed into bed at 11:00, but I couldn't fall asleep. I really wanted to be asleep after a long day of walking and childhood antics.

Day 3 will be forthcoming...

Washington D.C. Day One

Each year the Alachua County Sheriff's Dept. takes all of the fifth grade safety patrol students to Washington D.C. Each school needs chaperones, so I went as one of the "lucky" chaperones. The buses departed at 12:00 A.M. and drove all night and all day to Washington D.C. It took the buses fifteen hours to reach D.C. That was definitely one of the LONGEST nights of my life (and I have had more than my share of long nights in my 29 years here on Earth). First of all I don't sleep well sitting up, second, I don't sleep while moving, and third, the kids were not so quiet (as you could imagine an excited group of 11 year-olds cooped up in a bus together all night).

Once we arrived in D.C., the whole event was quite fast-paced with a tremendous amount of walking. Then again, these kids today needed that kind of exercise! It was great to be able to go with a tour guide. I have been to Washington D.C. a couple of times before, but I learned a lot more about the memorials, buildings and our history. This is the Jefferson Memorial below. The President of the United States can look out the window from the white house and see this memorial. Some view to behold as he enjoys his morning hot chocolate, I'm sure. Below is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. FDR is sitting in a wheelchair that he made from a kitchen chair. I had these three boys in my group (Shane M., Shane D., and Dreyton...Isn't it a good thing we didn't name our second son Shane? How confusing would THAT have been?!)

This is another statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He did not want people to know he could not walk. As most of you are aware he contacted polio at the age of 39. He could not walk for one year and still had an extremely hard time walking after that.

I took a picture of Dreyton riding on the tour bus to and from our destionations. Can you feel the enthusiasm he exuded on this beautiful morning after a "perfect" night's rest?

This is Dreyton on top standing outside of the Newseum. It overlooks Pennsylvania Ave. It is a fairly new museum displaying how the media have captured the news over the years.

The boys are waiting for the rest of the group. My group tended to be a little "rambuctious and eager" as they ran ahead of the pack (and the analogy to a group of animals was quite appropriate at times).

This picture was taken right after a group picture was taken of all twelve schools that left from Alachua County. Dreyton was able to visit with his friend Landon (a friend from our Gainesville ward from church).

I'm only posting this picture so you all can see how hidious these hats were. We all had to wear these hats each time we got off the bus. Each school had a different colored hat and each school wore the exact same shirt. These were our trucker hats. I don't like hats! They make my head hot and itchy. The hat was obviously too big for my head. Maybe someone with a big head can find a use for it....hmmmmm, Father's Day is coming up. Shhhh. Don't tell Donovan what he will be getting! It will be a surprise, and besides he loves hats anyways. :)

Other events that were not captured on film include the following: walking tour of Captiol Hill and a tour of the Buearu of Printing and Engraving which was where they make money (da bling bling). We saw a glass box containing $1 million dollars of $10 bills....and mini-me was sitting outside of it salivating at the mouth while Austin Powers ran around the place.

Days 2 and 3 of this fantastilicious trip will be forthcoming in the next blogs. Stay tuned!

How old are we??

Last night we were watching the Princess Bride on TV. Donovan and I told Jasmine it was time to go to bed. She wanted us to record the rest of the movie, but we were going to be switching channels. Our DVR doesn't allow us to record one event and watch another. She said, "Well, don't we have this movie?" I said, "No we don't". Jasmine said, "You know on those square things that you put in the square machine." Donovan and I looked at each other unsure of what she meant, and then began laughing as we realized she didn't even know what to call a VHS tape and VCR. She has grown up in the dvd era. She doesn't even know what a VCR even is. I guess Donovan and I are getting REALLY old. At least we have one another to get gray and wrinkley together. :)