My fellow blogger Cristina of Home Spun Juggling is hosting the upcoming carnival of home schooling. I have decided to submit today's DC journal entry to the carnival. I do this for 2 reasons: 1) The entire DC excursion was like a home school field trip on steroids. 2) when I read this journal entry to Amy shortly after I wrote it she said that it sounded like I was making a blog post.
Day 5
My parents may have the right idea: Take 1 kid on a vacation at a time.
Of course, they didn't get or implement that idea until they were grandparents. What they do is take 1 grandkid at a time to Orlando for a week, usually the spring or summer before their 10th birthday. This is because at Disney 10 and over pay the adult rates. (What do you think I made up fun on a budget?)
When I was a young warthog, they did not have that idea and took all 5 of us kids for 2-3 weeks of vacation each summer. This may be why they came up with the 1 grandkid at a time scenario.
I mention this because today only 1 of my 3 kids behaved well.
It was a day where many things went wrong:
Our alarm clock said it was 15 minutes earlier than it actually was, so we left late. Then we went on parts if a military base, civilians are not meant to go. The signs about being allowed to use deadly force should have been a clue!
After that we took the wrong train. It went to the right place but since we missed the last commuter train we had to pay 200% more than we had intended.
Well we got to where we were going without further incident. The Smithsonian is awesome, but it can be very overwhelming. This may have been why we only had 1 kid behaving.
Amy was awesome. She knew when they need a break for lunch and also when to call it a day. Here are a few hints I learned from our initial foray into capitol land for any prospective DC goers out there:
- Packing a lunch is a good idea. Because of our alarm clock synchronization problem, we did not. This means we spent $38.00 for 5 people (2 kids shared a meal) at the food court. Yikes-O-Rama!
- You can bring library books into the library of congress without triggering security. Taking them back out is another matter entirely!
- There are many people begging nearby the exhibits. One time I gave loose change. Twice I offered food. One time they refused it and 1 time they took it.
- There is sometimes an up side of having your 3 children shouting "Let's go to Quantico! Let's go to Quantico!" over and over again when you are boarding a train with 50 commuters. The benefit is if the train you were boarding was not headed to Quantico. We got off and annoyed a new set of commuters.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE CARNIVAL!
Next Time: DC Trip Day 6
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