Adventures, adventures

What an adventurous two days!

Braden counted on his hand, and in the last 36 hours, he has been on the following modes of transportation:
1) our truck
2) a bus--his first (really?)
3) an airplane--his first
4) two of Granddaddy's cars
5) a DC Metro train--his first
6) a National Zoo stroller

We've seen some pretty cool things. We flew into Washington DC National airport right over the Potomac River--we could see the Pentagon out of our window. Once we were in Granddaddy's Element and driving to his house in Falls Church, we could see the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial.

This morning we slept late and took our time getting ready (we are on vacation after all!). Kyle, the boys, my dad, and I took the Metro to the National Zoo. This involved changing trains from the orange line to the red line, and all of that was perfectly okay with Braden. He LOVED the trains. He took really funny pictures with his camera: the hexagonal tiles on the floor, the red lights along the edge of the platform, strangers on the train, etc.

We had a long walk to the zoo (the boys were great!) where rented a double stroller (the boys were not so great!). The National Zoo is wonderful, mostly because it is FREE (it is a Smithsonian institution) and visitors can get pretty close the animals. We visited the pandas first, then the elephants, the baby gorilla, the orangatans, the lion and lioness, the tiger, and the alligator. My favorite? Hard to tell: I love, love, love elephants and the baby (several years old now?) was very playful and cute. The baby gorilla was about the cutest thing I've ever seen. It was smooshing its face up against the glass and making funny faces, just like my boys do in the shower! The pandas are just plain awesome. Huge, majestical, and so, so pretty.

Garrett fell asleep on the long walk back to the Metro and I carried his sweaty little body all the way home. He slept all the way through the train transfer and woke up just as we were getting off at the West Falls Church station.

True to their personality, Braden told me his favorite part of the day was the trains, and Garrett just told me that he forgot to feed the pigs (what???).

Oh! And we talked to a very nice Washington DC police officer who was riding a Segway. He was more than happy to show it off and tell us all about it.

More on the plane ride later--tomorrow, maybe? It looks like rain and will probably be an inside day.