In November of 2015, I conned my family into visiting Washington DC.  Under the guise of wanting to take the children to learn about our country and touring the many museums, I talked them into going there for one specific reason.  Panda bears.

Yes, panda bears.  Because why else would anyone want to go to such a beautiful and historic city?  I had never seen one in real life.  How does someone grow to be 31 years old and NEVER see a panda??!?!  It’s shameful, really.  And the national zoo had them.  And a new baby one too!  Be still my panda-loving heart!

This would be our first real trip in our RV.  We had taken it out to Zac’s parent’s campground twice but those were short distance and short time frames.  And Zac was nervous.  I kept trying to make conversation with him on the six-hour drive there only be met by cold, stony silence.  I guess driving a 35 foot monster can be stressful the first time you take it out of the state.

Being the good mother I am, I brought a few books from the library about the many historical sites of our nation’s capital.  I had envisioned us sitting at the table engrossed by the wonders of all the city had to offer.  I think one book got opened once, glanced at, and put aside.  Nailed it!

Finally, we arrived at our campsite!  At a balmy 40 degrees, it was the perfect weather for the kids to play on the playground!  Thirty minutes and six snot-cicles later, we were all settled in.

The next day was the big day!  The national Zoo to see those pandas.  As soon as we entered the zoo, we made a bee line for the squishy oreo bear. And so had everyone else in the greater DC area.  It was packed. Did I mention that we went to DC over Thanksgiving?  ‘Go over Thanksgiving!’ we thought.  ‘It’ll be dead.  No one will be out.’ we thought.  We thought wrong.

Apparently I am not the only person who has waited 30+ years to see a panda.  The panda habitat was really nice and we saw four or five pandas.  Four or five FULL GROWN pandas!  The baby wasn’t even a part of the habitat yet.  But fear not!  They had a large screen giving you a live feed of what baby panda was doing while warmly nestled inside.  Just as good as seeing it in person.  Or not at all.  Whatever.  Potato, potato.  Wow, that phrase really doesn’t translate well into text… Anyway, I still enjoyed seeing them and I can’t wait to see some again someday.

Needing to live up to my promise to give the kids some educating history, we stayed a few more days instead of leaving immediately after seeing the ever important panda bears.  Among or endeavors were: the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum, the Spy Museum (which our children thought was terrifying-FYI) and the National Archives.

When we were telling the kids that we were going to DC, we told them that they would get to see the Declaration of Independence.  They looked up with awe-struck wonder and said, “What’s the Declaration of Independence?”.  A major palm-to-forehead epic parenting fail.  So we decided that we must educate them about our nation’s most important document.  Four dollars later on our Apple TV, National Treasure was rented.  Boom.  Problem solved.  Since you can’t take pictures inside of the archives, here is this life-like drawing I made.  I know, I missed my calling as an artist.  It’s a real shame.

It was pretty blustery for the majority of our trip, but the forecast gave us one decent day to work with.  We took that opportunity to see the outdoor monuments and memorials.  It turned out to be a gorgeous day!  Highlight of that day was reading the Gettysburg address with Caydence and explaining to her what it all meant.  Lowlight… trying to explain the Vietnam conflict to a 5 year old.  You try to do it people!  It ain’t easy!  We got a lot of really delightful pictures out of that day.  Here are a few:

 

I believe that I mentioned that we spent Thanksgiving in DC.  We have friends that are more like family that live nearby, so we intruded on their first Thanksgiving in their new home!  It wasn’t intrusive AT ALL.  We were so grateful to be able to spend some time with them. And, last but not least. If you want a delicious turkey sandwich recipe, here is one that we really enjoyed while touring our nation’s beautiful capital, Washington, DC.