4th of July in Washington D.C.

When we knew we were going to be living on the East Coast for the summer, the first trip we planned was to go to Washington DC for the 4th of July.  It seemed like such a cool idea.  What could be more patriotic than that, right?

It was really awesome, but we had to battle the crowds and the heat - high 90's and 500% humidity the whole time we were there.

We drove in Saturday morning and, of course, our GPS tells us to drive through downtown to get to our hotel.  I though NYC was scary to drive through, but its NOTHING compared to DC.  So, as we were taking a diagonal off a 5-point intersection, a cop pulled us over.  I quickly entered spaz-mode, but Jeff kept his cool.  The officer asked us if we knew why we were being pulled over and Jeff said it probably had something to do with how he made the turn onto the diagonal street.  The officer told him, "No.  What color was the light?"  And Jeff told him it was yellow.  "Exactly," said the officer, "its illegal to drive through yellow lights in DC."  What?!?  What kind of crazy law is that?  Why not just have green and red lights then!  What's the point of the yellow light???  Well, the officer didn't give us a ticket, and I guess it was good to know that law...we never would have guessed otherwise.

The first thing we did was take a walk around the Tidal Pool to see some of the monuments.  It was also the last walk we took because it was so HOT!  We visited the Jefferson Monument.  I've heard from other family members that we are related to Thomas Jefferson, but I don't really know the details.  So here we are.

I'd never been to the FDR Memorial, which is really cool.  Here are a couple pictures of Lily there.  Of course her hair has that just-out-of-the-car look and she's wearing her favorite Princess and the Frog outfit.

We finished the day by visiting the American History Museum.  It had a lot of neat artifacts, like a Kermit the Frog puppet, Dorothy's ruby slippers, and Michelle Obama's Inauguration gown.  Here's Lily with Dumbo, from the ride at Disneyland, and me in front of Julia Child's kitchen.