Seeing Things

Up bright and early, banana/PB wraps in hand, to pick up everyone at the hotel to convoy up to DC for a guided tour of the Pentagon. It was shorter than I'd hoped, as we didn't get anywhere near my office, but I guess reg'lar folk don't need to be hanging out with the 4-stars. Still, the folks seemed to enjoy the trivia and history of the building. The kids did relatively well, especially once Mommy busted out the lollipops.

We then took a gander over at the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, a simple, serene park along the side of the building that got hit, before agreeing on a light Mexican lunch that made us all go "Ba-ja."

Ainsley took the kids home to perhaps nap, while the rest of us got past the bad directions from the Metro employee to eventually find the Newseum, the new media-centric six-floor glass-enclosed museum in some prime real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol. Interesting history of the US media, TV, journalists, newspapers. The mangled radio tower from the World Trade Center sits on one side, while hundreds of video screens of all sizes tell different stories (or today's news). Finished off with a "4-D" movie, basically your standard (but cool) 3-D movie with shaking seats and wind effects. PG-13, what with the 'rats' crawling around your legs.

Little did we know that two different Metro trains were crashing into each other in the northeast part of town, our Blue Line train took us back to our cars so we could go pick up the refreshed lot to hit my favorite jaunt, the Japanese Steak House, where the chef didn't just make a volcano, but an inverted one, too, sticking on top of it, to make it look like a train! How cool! Erin, don't you think?
Okay, she didn't like the fire exploding in her face. But still.
And Ryan was an untraumatized trooper trying to catch pieces of shrimp in his mouth while the guy shot it off his spatula, hitting him smack in the eyeball the first three times. Better than Aunt Patty, whose misplaced maw forced a rebound into her glass of water.