Out and about in October

We had a couple of good little trips out and about last month.  Every time we go into the city the girls go with their scooters that Mina bought them so that they can make it around easily and in style :)

 

The first trip of the month was to the Air and Space Museum. Although it was a Sunday afternoon in early October (aka not a time I thought there would be a lot of tourists) it was still really crowded. Despite the throngs of people it was still fun and the girls spent time in the kids area doing experiments and getting into planes.  We watched a demo on the space station (which was perhaps more interesting for me than them, despite the fact it was geared to kids....)

 Izzy really liked the replica of the hubble telescope...

And Evie was most excited about the Apollo 11 lander. There was so much to see we didn't even make it to the Air part.... this time around it was all about Space.

Then the next weekend we made a trek out to the Lincoln Memorial, with a scooter by the White House on the way.

 And a visit to the WWII memorial, which Patrick and I realized we had never gone to before.  I'm afraid we didn't take any pictures of the actual memorial, aside from one of us in front of the column for Arizona...

 

Part of the reason we went out to the Lincoln Memorial was because Evie was studying the Civil War in class and writing a historical fiction story as part of her assignment. So while we were at the memorial she spent some time reading Lincoln's speeches and taking notes, I don't know, however, if any of the material made it into her final story :)

 

The next week Patrick was back in Tucson and the girls were out of school for a day so they came into the city with me and then spent the day at the Alliance Francais. In order to motivate them out of the house early I restorted to a tried and true tactic... the promise of donuts:

Luckliy for me there was a Krispy Kreme right off the Dupont Circle metro stop! Then on Saturday we all drove up to Baltimore to pick Patrick up from the airport and then decided to go to the harbor for dinner, seeing how we were already mostly there.

 

Having had a busy few weeks of commuting back and forth from Tucson Patrick decided to take it easy one Friday and came to visit me for lunch downtown... We went to the USDA farmers market for lunch (one of the last ones of the year) and then he went off to the National Gallery of Art for a bit.

Throughout October we have been excited to see the leaves start to change color... this is a shot from when I walked Evie to school before her big field trip to the Smithsonian Chesapeake Discovery Center. She had a ton of fun in the tidal pools and came home and informed us that she wanted to be a biochemist who studies the ocean because "they just couldn't answer all my questions."

Finally, keeping with our memorial theme, two weekends ago we went to the Jefferson Memorial, which Patrick was pretty sure he had never made it to before. We almost didn't make it ourselves because it was sooo windy and cold. Afterward we uber'ed to waterfront and met a friend of mine from high school who was visiting and another who recently moved to town for a late lunch/early dinner.

Then that night back at home we walked through the annual Garrett Park "spooky woods", which was a lot of fun.  I for one was glad to have a Halloween analog here to our Tucson favorite of Valley of the Moon.  For the spooky woods the local high school students decorate a short trail that everyone then walks (or in Genevieve's case runs) through.