I’m tired of living so close to awesome things and not taking advantage. I live a mere 60 miles outside of DC and I never go!

Why?

‘Cause I’m too busy? I don’t want to deal with traffic? I have no money?

Blah blah blah.

I’ve decided it’s time to start DOING things. So I packed up the kids Tuesday morning and we headed out for a DC Daycation.

What do you need to pack for a daycation?

Well, snacks of course!

Go ahead, laugh at us, but by the time we came home it was all gone except for the apricots. And honestly, I forgot they were in the bag.

I decided to drive to the Metro Station in Greenbelt, MD. It’s super easy to get to and just about a 45 minute drive from the house (without traffic of course.)

The kids (well, kid, the other one is fairly oblivious) were ecstatic to take a train. We rarely travel by train because the mass transit in the Baltimore area kind of sucks. At least in our neck of the woods.

Here’s the boys waiting.

The 7 year old paced back and forth on the platform saying, “I’m waiting for the train. I’m waiting for the train.” in a funny voice.

Of Course the 1 year old thought it was the funniest thing on the planet.

The train ride was fun.

It’s only about a 20 minutes to the heart of the city.

On our way to the Smithsonian we stopped at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden.

This was more fun than I expected! I showed Ryan how to read the plates that held the artist names, date and materials used and he was really interested in them all.

We talked about how we thought they made them and how he’d like to climb on some. Mostly though, his goofy personality came though and we just had fun walking and talking.

Of course we have to visit the pond in the middle and make a few wishes too.

I shouldn’t tell you but he wished for a Nintendo DS and also wished on behalf of Evan.
Evan’s wish? To talk. –he cracks me up!
Mine? Well, if I tell you it won’t come true. You know that. ;)

We headed to the National Museum of Natural History.

I didn’t look up to see what exhibits they had. It didn’t really matter so I’d rather be surprised. Well, surprised we were when we saw this!

Titanboa! oh, and I told you. Goofball.

Of course there were bones.

And bugs.

And gems.

We walked around all morning but it started to get crowded and Evan started to get ornery. I thought the cafeteria would be less insane a couple of hours after lunch, I was wrong. So we headed outside and hit up a vendor.

Why are street hot dogs so darn good?! I wasn’t going to have one until I took a bite of his. YUMMY!

At this point the museum started to get really crowded so we decided to take a walk and come back to finish the exhibits later in the day.

The 3 of us were ready for some outside time anyway.

Our goal was the Lincoln Memorial.

Goofball and I had fun along the way.

It was quite a walk but we forged a head despite the “my feet hurt” complaints.

Besides being a goofball my son is following in his Father’s and Grandfather’s footsteps. Every puddle he passed he’d joke,
“Look! The Reflection Pool. Can we go now?”

It makes me laugh just thinking about it now. I love seeing his humor come of age.

We talked a little about World War 2 at the Memorial and actually saw some veterans there.

On our walk Evan realized he could see me through the window in the carriage if he laid down.

This was not helping his on-the-go nap situation. The kid was SO TIRED yet wouldn’t fall asleep.

We made it!

He REALLY likes to mimic statues. lol

My favorite shot of the day.

On the walk back we split a frozen lemonade again from a vender.

I love the city. :)

Then FINALLY!

He fell asleep.

We headed back to the Smithsonian, checked out the rest of the exhibits and squished a penny of course!

I decided not to rush out of the city. There’s no reason to hurry up and sit in traffic. So we leisurely walked around looking for a place to eat dinner. That’s when it started raining on us!

We saw some familiar places to eat (an Austin Grill, McDonald’s) but I wanted to try something different. Recently, my husband has been on a California Roll kick and his son is following suite. We settled on Sushi!

Sushi Go Round & Tapas on 7th Street in Chinatown.

I have to admit it felt weird going in with two young kids but the staff was friendly and I knew they’d both eat edamame at the very least.

I’m doing my best to raise adventurous eaters and Ryan was game for trying the seaweed salad after some coaxing.

He didn’t like it but the baby had a few bites!

Ryan did end up eating an entire order of California Rolls and tried a piece of the funky roll I ordered, but said it was too spicy.

Evan tried a cucumber roll and the seaweed salad but stuck mostly to the tofu in my miso soup and the edamame.

After dinner we headed back to the metro station, hopped on the train, and then drove home. It was a long day. We were gone from 9:30AM until 9PM and I enjoyed every minute! Sure there were a few hairy moments with a fussy toddler and I had to tell the 7 year old to settle down about 25 times, but it was all worth it. At one point, in the middle of the day, Ryan turned to me and said,

“This is way more fun than I thought it would be!”
“Why didn’t you think it would be fun?” I replied.
“I didn’t know there was going to be so many cool things!” He said.

I smiled and thought to myself, there really are a lot of cool things. It’s time to make the effort and experience them.