Happy Birthday, America!

Wow! That's all we can say. There are a whole lotta people who come to Washington, DC to celebrate Independence Day! Duh. Right? Still kind of surprising and overwhelming for us.

Since we were so tired when we went to bed last night, we decided not to set our alarm this morning and sleep a little extra. We ended up not sleeping too late, but it still felt good. We worked on the blog for yesterday while our oatmeal bars were baking and then we all got ready to head into the subway station. I keep forgetting to mention that we have used a dog walker's services for Heidi this week each day that we have gone into the city. She comes at whatever time we ask her to. We were so nervous about what Heidi would do because we've never had a stranger come into the trailer before, but evidently Heidi's nose for treats and her urge to go outside convinced her quickly that this lady was to be trusted and they apparently had a great time together and according to the notes she peed one long pee and pooped. And she's a sweet dog. (LOL) We had to call the dog walker and see if she could come later in the day today since we weren't getting out as early as we'd thought when we set up the appointment.

My thoughts were that if we shifted our plans to head into the city around noon, we'd squeeze as many Smithsonian museums in as we could before they close. We'd then take a break and find someplace to eat dinner and then hop on a subway and head over to the Arlington area and watch the fireworks from there once it got dark. Then, walk to the nearest subway station and ride the 30-45 minutes back to the Yukon and then drive the 15 minutes back to the trailer, arriving around 11 pm. THAT was my loose plan in my head. I know, not too realistic.

We did get downtown around noon and thankfully when we emerged from the subway station closest to the Museum of Natural History, the skies were clear. Unfortunately this also means it was very hot and humid. We were supposed to go to the museum while "everyone" else in the city was watching the parade downtown. One problem- The parade route is between us and the museum. We watched a few things go by including a school group with a HUGE flag, a marching band, The Lone Ranger on horseback and Tonto walking alongside, a float and a huge Tweety. We waited for a break in the parade when the police would allow people to cross in the crosswalk. It was packed! As we were walking, I was reaching out to grab Spencer and Skylar's hands so there was no chance of losing them and a police officer scolded me saying we were going to have to move faster than that. There was really no where to go fast to as there were people about 10 inches in front of me already! Oh well.

We got through security and into the Museum of Natural History without too much trouble though. We walked in kind of expecting it to look just like Night at the Museum and it didn't, so Sky was pretty disappointed. We did however find the Dum Dum guy. We got up to the information desk and requested a map, which their new policy, implemented today, is a suggested donation of $1.

Hey, Dum Dum! We want Gum Gum!

With as many people as there were lined up outside on the parade route it was hard to believe just how full the museum was. Once the parade was over, I think everyone within a couple of blocks of there came on in. The exhibits were grouped around themes like Ocean Floor, Mammals, Award Winning Photography, Bones, Gems, Insects, etc. It was difficult to maneuver and even more difficult to read the information on many of the displays. We also had a hard time staying together and ended up using our phones to text and find each other again which seemed like it worked pretty well.
Here are some highlights:

Angler Fishes - left is a real preserved (but tiny) specimen. Above
is full size skeleton.

Prehistoric shark 

Spencer stalking a stalking panther

Irish Elk, a giant extinct deer, skeleton

Now that's a totem

Leatherback turtle

Swordfish

In the bones exhibit, there were several mummies on display and some examples of bone injury. There was a big part of the exhibit devoted to forensic science and archaeology and how recently they discovered strong evidence for cannibalism at Jamestown. They did some facial construction on one skeleton and name the young lady Jane. They can tell a lot based on what they find and can sometimes even get an idea of the identity of remains even more than 400 years later when they put all the evidence together.

This scientist and dedicated teacher wanted to be on display after he died so he is at the museum with the skeleton of his beloved Irish wolfhound.

In the insect display area, I got this creepy wolf spider's picture.

A tiny sample of the crowd surrounding a small display

The Hope Diamond - seen by over 100 million people since it was donated to the museum in 1958.
Largest known, rare dark-blue diamond.

Bryn snapped this picture of me looking at the largest known aquamarine gem. (10,363 carats)

We finally stumbled out of the natural history museum and found a bench to sit on and ate our snacks. The humidity outside was really energy sapping so we didn't stay long there, but decided to head down to the Air and Space Museum. It seemed even more crowded so we really only spent a couple of hours there and I'm not sure we got much out of it. I think we started to actually feel a little panic at the number of people and the lack of "breathing" space. A couple of times, I had lost Brock and texted to find him and the last time, his answer was that he and the boys were outside sitting under a tree. Bryn and I joined them in quick order.

Future astronaut?

Bri learning about air pressure

Sky sat in the cockpit of this little Cessna and watched the tail and ailerons move as he moved the controls.

Sky and Bryn had a successful mission as Flight Directors.

Lunar Landing Module

Space Lab. You could go into it and look around, but there were
probably 100 people ahead of us in line so we passed.

The only hot air balloon basket that Bryn will ever step into. ;o)

Looks like a UFO, but its a Lockheed Martin/Boeing spy plane.

It seemed like the consensus was that we were all ready to head back to the trailer. We started walking toward the subway terminal. The terminal and the ride were actually quite peaceful. Once you get on the train and feel the air conditioning and it wasn't crowded at all. It certainly felt like the best choice for us to not try to stick to my "loose ideas" for the day. It seemed to only take about 20 minutes and we were climbing back into the Yukon and driving towards Cherry Hill. 

We decided to stop into a Redbox and get a family movie. We also picked up Lincoln for after the little boys go to bed. The machine was at a 7-Eleven and we decided that Slurpees sounded good so we loaded up on those. Brighton had seen a window sign that when you bought one large Slurpee, a second was $1. I thought that was great, but it turned out to be only good on Saturday and Sunday. (Missed the fine print.) The Slurpees did however hit the spot for our hot and thirsty clan.

Once we got back to the rv park, I started getting the dinner fixings together and the kids headed to the playground with Brad and Kristi for a short catch up play session.

We started our movie, Oz the Great and Powerful, after dinner. About two-thirds of the way through we started hearing booms and paused the movie and looked out our back window and we could see some fireworks being set off from right inside our trailer. We watched from inside and then went out and stood on the picnic table and watched for a few minutes before being reminded that it was really hot and muggy. ;o) We came back inside and watched the rest of the movie. Our "surround sound" was especially good tonight as when fireworks were being detonated onscreen the booms were shaking our trailer from the outside as well.

The little boys started getting ready for bed and Brock and I knew that there was no way we could stay up to watch Lincoln tonight. Looks like that one might be a two-day rental for us.

It wasn't a spectacular blowout party time Independence Day for the McFarlanes, but it was a good day and I'm going to sleep very thankful for the freedom we have in this country. I'm grateful that I was blessed to be born where and when I was.