from somewhere in my imagination

American History + Natural History in DC

It would be easy to spend a week in DC at the Smithsonian museums and you still wouldn't come close to seeing everything properly.  The museum in Adelaide is a favourite place for us to visit, the kids ask to go often.  Not surprisingly they loved visiting the Smithsonians.

All of our kids (including J) seem to have a love of learning and this has been very evident in all of our museum visits, they aren't content just to cruise past and see things they love reading, asking questions and interacting with the exhibits whenever possible (and they have incorporated plenty of interaction into many of the Smithsonian displays).  This is something that could be quite frustrating at times but I felt overwhelmingly proud of them really.

Consequently we had no chance of seeing everything at each museum, we just didn't have the time so we decided to allocate 2-3 hours at each of the museums we were visiting, this better suited their attention span too.

We visited the Museum of American History in the morning then enjoyed some lunch and followed it with an afternoon visit to the Museum of Natural History.

Lining the entrance hall of the American History museum is the most awesome display of items from American Popular culture...from an original barbie doll to an original hoover, bats, balls and gloves and a leech jar to a stethoscope.  It kept us interested for ages before we moved on to the 'America on th move' exhibition.

This exhibition details the history of people movement in America, from the first passenger trains

to the great age of train travel

to the first cross country car trip, complete with goggles for the dog because there was no windscreen!

How the introduction of school buses in the 1940's (from memory) completely changed the way that children were schooled.

Through displays about route 66, trade, caravanning and subways.

To the introduction of personal cars

To them becoming commonplace and ultimately affecting the way people lived because personal transportation allowed the cities to spread out and the beginning of the 'burbs in the 1950's.

Finishing with the great age of car travel, truck transportation and how the US is now, ultimately, facing something of a crisis in balancing it's road network and enabling effective traffic movement with the urban sprawl and invidual desire for space.

Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn bridge and I have no doubt that this is far from busy

It was fascinating.  There were so many connections made that I had never realised.  Totally impressive and so well presented so that it was interesting for all ages.

Next we headed to the other wing of the ground floor which was a haven for invention and discovery.

We did lots of fun experimenting play between the two displays, we all had a ball trying out different activities.

We built block towers on a wonky table (loved how this activity made me think outside the box, looking forward to getting the wooden blocks out again when we get home)

made pinwheels spin

Designed robots (to cook dinner - Charlotte - and clean her room - Lil)

  And created electrical circuits....to name a few of the activities we did!

By this stage the majority of our self-allocated 2 hours was mostly used up so we headed upstairs to learn more about the history of the Star Spangled Banner (both the flag and the national anthem).  It is a fantastic display...and after 7 baseball games I know the words to the song quite well!

Last up we headed in different directions....Steven to the Presidents hall (which Charlotte desparately wanted to stop and look properly at as we raced through looking for Steven)...the girls and I headed to the 1939 Pop Culture exhibit...complete with Dorothy's ruby slippers.

Next stop was lunch...and I warn you it's expensive in the Smithsonian cafes...but the food at American History is tasty...and then we headed on to the Museum of Natural History.

We started in the Ocean Wonders Hall.  There were plenty of fascinating things to learn and creatures to see. 

They have an enormous tropical fish tank that I am sure we would have all happily spent the rest of the day watching.  One of the kids' favourite thing at the Adelaide museum is the giant squid so I'm not surprised it was difficult to move them on from this enormous exhibit, they wanted to explore every corner.

 

There are plenty of marine fossils too...S and J were pretty impressed with this ammonite cast (I think I caught J licking it...hope that isn't a sign of geologist tendancies!).  There were lots of different trilobite fossils and we spent a few moments seeing of the kids could think where they have seen something similar and living (that would be the very prehistoric looking shield shrimp in our Lake Mary).

We moved on from there to the Dinosaurs.

The display is pretty impressive but dinosaurs is one area where the Museum of Natural History in NYC blows the Smithsonian away (mind you probably the only area).

So cool to see a Rex...the dino's in our museum are pretty boring by comparison...it was pretty amazing to see all the 'well known' dino's I grew up learning about!

 
The wooly mammoths are particularly cool...tusks all curly, joined the hurly burly...

After we finished with the prehistoric guys we finished off our visit by checking out the gem display ... the hope diamond is truly magnificent

..and it only represents a small portion of the serioulsy fabulous gem display.

Everything we saw and learnt between these two museums has been one of the highlights of our trip for me!

It's our last night in NYC tonight...we took a nightime visit to the top of the Empire State Building.  I feel sad to be leaning NYC.  I'm not quite ready yet.  I just want to spend more time exploring and absorbing everything that t has to offer.

Hope that you are havin a great weekend wherever you are in the world!

Tatum xx

 

Who are you and what did you do with my babies? - Small Style 13

I had something else entirely in mind for small style this week until I started looking through my photos from the week and it really struck me how much Sebastian and Jasmine have grown up over the last month.

Sebastian has gone from looking like a new to kindy four year old boy to a little guy who is now half way to five and looking more and more like a ready for school boy everyday.  He has learned so much this year and his appetite for gaining more knowledge has expanded unbelieveably.  I suspect he is growing too because he keeps tripping over himself :)

Steven picked out this shirt for him from Old Navy.

It dawned on me yesterday how appropriate it is, it just needs an extra line at the bottom saying 'it was J'.  He blames EVERYTHING on her, even if she was in the other room and nowhere near the scene of the crime.  Although the other day he did blame a fart on Steven without missing a beat (although the offending noise/smell had clearly come from him).  Love how there are so many fun T's around for boys that often speak volumes about their personalities (especially when they choose them themselves).

He's wearing his polka shorts that I nabbed for $20...love the combination of tweed and grey jersey.  We have fallen for Old Navy a bit, there will definitely be a big stock up in California somewhere next week before we head home!

J has changed an awful lot too, but that hasn't taken me quite so by surprise as the changes in Sebastian.  Being around all of us full time for the best part of 6 weeks I expected to see Jasmine have a huge increase in speech and vocabulary.

but she too is looking a whole world more grown up than when we left.  She is this crazy, wild, independent spirit (kind of like her hair I guess).  She has especially loved all the museums we have visited and has even started asking questions and wanting to stop and look at everything in detail (much like everyone else). 

She has definite likes and dislikes and she knows what she wants.  She has fallen for Mickey...if any of my US readers can help me out with where I might be able to find some Mickey knickers I would be most appreciative...she refuses to wear any of the pooh bear nappies we have left from Australia and will only wear Mickey ones (prefers the Mickey and Minnie actually if you don't mind) so I figure some Mickey knickers will be helpful with toilet training when we get home :)

We hung out in Sheep Meadow, Central Park for about 30 (fairly) blissful minutes on Tuesday afternoon and she took great joy in running around and being free (and pulling up grass).

She is wearing one of my most favourite things that she owns, a Sandi Henderson Saturday Market skirt that I finished making earlier in the year.  These skirts can be a bit laborious to sew but the end result is totally worth it (Lil has a matching one, I'm not into matching outfits on my kids but I love the primary colours of this fabric range).

Perhaps next week I'll remember what I had in mind for this week.  I love playing along with Morgan each week.  I love being more creative with what they are wearning and it is a good reminder to have some fun taking photos of them each week.  Looking forward to having more time to see what everyone else is posting when I get home from our travels next month!

Tatum xx

 

One Night in Baltimore

Like Altoona, Baltimore was a slightly random, baseball inspired stop on our tour.

We left DC bound for Dulles and the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Centre.  Steven was like a kid in a candy store, I'll share more details in a full post about the Air & Space museums.  But any museum that includes a real deal space shuttle

and blackbird (you might recognise the plane and the hangar from Transformers 2, I watched the video on how they made that part of the movie about 5 times totally fascinated)

it's enough to get any boy excited :)

From there it was onward to Baltimore, a relatively short trip...about 100kms.

First stop before finding our accomadation was a Charm City Cakes drive by.  I love the show and couldn't resist checking out the building in real life.

Unfortunately I didn't bump into Chef Duff and (not surprisingly) you are only allowed in by appointment.

But it was still fun to cruise past, peer in the (very tinted) windows and see the building and plethora of delivery vans.

Next stop was our hotel.  It was our first hotel where we had to have 2 rooms, thankfully we managed to get them on the same floor.  Woody returned the Toyota Sierra that had kept us company for the past week and we headed out for dinner before the ball game.

We found the harbour nearby and I finally came to understand the great attraction some people have with crab.  The crab cake was seriously AWESOME and the ribs were pretty darn good too (although I'm not convinced they don't use Nigella Lawson's recipe from Nigella Bites, or perhaps she nicked it from them?).

After our delicious dinner we followed plenty of other people in pinstipes to Oriole Stadium at Camden Yards. 

We had awesome field level seats....and then it started to rain.

The start of the game was postponed but finally got a start...Steven had a mental list of the specifics he wanted to see...CC Sabathia on the mound was one of those things and we got that ticked off.

Unfortunately it rained on and off during the game so we retreated to a higher level under cover for a few innings in the middle but luckily it cleared up completely for the last few innings. 

With the Yankees up by loads the orioles fans started leaving early so Steven and Sebastian headed down closer to the fence for the last innings to see the Yankees finish up the Orioles 13-2.

Then it was home to bed before facing the 320km drive into New York City the next morning.