Smithsonian

This is the last post of our trip back east in October. We spent a couple days at the Smithsonian, mostly in the American History museum, and a little at the Natural History museum. The favorite exhibit, which we weren't allowed to take pictures of, was the Star Spangled Banner: the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 and inspired the national anthem. It's nicely laid out in its own exhibit in a low-light setting where no photography is permitted. We ended up walking through it 6 or 7 times because the girls kept wanting to go back and see it again. 

Aside from that we saw a whole bunch of other cool stuff, some of which is shown below, selected in no particular order of interest or importance. Some of the first exhibits we saw were Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and Kermit the Frog.

They had a sunstone from the original Nauvoo temple.

Weeks later when we were back home Celia started asking in-depth questions about the sunstone at dinner. The conversation went something like this:
Celia: "Why did the museum have a sunstone from the temple?"
Us: "Well, the temple fell down, but someone saved a sunstone."
Celia: "Why did the temple fall down?"
Us: "Well, some bad people lit the temple on fire, and then a tornado knocked the rest of it down"
Celia: "Why did they only take one sunstone?"
Us: "Maybe the other ones got broken, or maybe there are other ones in other museums."
Celia: "What other museums?"
Us: "I don't know, the Church has museums, maybe they have one."
Celia: "Did they choose the one that was the least broken to show in the museum?"
Us: "I don't know, maybe."
Celia: "Did they all get broken except the one in the museum?"
Us: "No, I think there are some other ones."
Celia: "Then why does the museum only have one?"
Us: "Maybe the people who took the stone to give it to the museum could only take one."
Celia: "Why could they only take one?"
Us: "Maybe because stones are really heavy and hard to move."
Celia: "Well, why didn't the people die when they got the sunstones?"
At this point we were quite confused and didn't know what she was talking about. After a few more minutes of back-and-forth questions we realized that she thought the people who took the sunstone were at the temple when it fell down and so they would have been killed when the temple stones fell on them. We explained that they would have gone later, after all the stones had fallen down, to get the sunstone, after which we decided we were all done talking about sunstones and laid the subject of sunstones to rest.

Back at the museum, Sabrina got to be the president.

Celia and Marel got to wait with a jolly man at a mockup train depot.

At the Natural History museum the girls wanted a picture with the T-rex fossils. Apparently so did this dorky guy.

They also wanted a picture with a woolly mammoth, accompanied by cousin Jack.

They also liked the prehistoric moose.

Celia thought the meteorites were really cool and she wanted her picture taken with all of them.

As we were leaving the Smithsonian we realized it was the last day we were going to spend in downtown Washington and we also realized we hadn't yet taken any pictures of us by the capitol building, so we ran out on the lawn of the National Mall and took a few quick family photos with the capitol in the background. We didn't really want to go any closer to it since it had already been a long day of walking and the metro station was in the other direction, plus it was windy and cold. But all things considered we had a good trip.