Ford's Theater

One of our culminating events for our History studies this year was a trip to Ford's Theater.  The Park Service does a great job of presenting the history of this building and the story of Lincoln's assassination.  The Ranger who gave the talk to start the tour did a good job getting the kids to participate and think about how the events of that night might have looked, sounded, and felt like.  The museum itself is really well done also with captivating audio.  There was a lot of seemingly tangential information that just helped create a more full understanding of the time and circumstances around the assassination and its aftermath.  I had never really thought too much about the conspirators before, other than Booth himself.  It was really interesting to have a more detailed look at all of them and their motives.

After we were all museum zone-blazed and getting hungry, we all went to a Chinese restaurant that Bridget's family recommended.  It was very authentic, and we all ate family style.  We all even had green tea.  It was a routy table, but we had a good time and the food was awesome!

Everyone liked watching the chef make dumplings in the window.  They weren't so keen on the ducks hung up waiting to be cooked though.

After eating we all went back for the museum across the street from Ford's Theater.  Again, very well done museum with very interesting displays and just enough interactive stuff to keep the kids interested.  The huge stack of books is a sculpture representing all the books (this probably doesn't even truly count them "all.") written about Abraham Lincoln.

I had promised my girls that if we could we'd go to the National Zoo and see the half we didn't get to see the last time we went.  This is a neat zoo.  It's very wooded, and involved a lot of walking between exhibits.  But it has a lot of very interesting animals that I've never seen anywhere else.  This was the first place I've seen a Maned Wolf and some other birds and small mammals. that I can't think of their names at the moment.  It was pretty cool though.

They have this kinda weird pizza playground too.  For some reason, we were the only people over there so the girls had it to themselves.  And a group was having an event nearby so we were hearing cool 90s music played by a band.  So I got to chill and reminiscence while the girls pretended to navigate a pizza ocean on topping buoys.