Tuesday in Washington started out not to be that great a day, as a matter of fact. We had tickets to an early time to tour Fords Theater, but ran into by far the worst traffic we encountered on the entire trip as we were driving into the city, so we missed our appointment. Then we headed to the Archives, where we thought we could take a quick tour before we were scheduled to meet with our representative Mick Mulvaney at his office building, and tour the Capitol, and sit in on a session in Congress – but the line was way, WAY too long for us to do that. So we just had a quick lunch on the steps of the National Archives, & headed back towards the Capitol. As we were arriving back down in the metro station, Mallory stopped to read the quote that was on the wall there. If you know me at all, you know that was something I was thrilled to see – a grandchild who likes to read a sign :-).
Our tour of the Capitol was conducted by one of the interns in Representative Mulvaney’s office. What a great experience it was. She really seemed to do everything she could to show us things she thought the girls especially would love. For instance, there are four enormous paintings of scenes from American history in the rotunda of the Capitol, & she made sure the girls saw this one of Pocahontas being baptized. I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t my favorite, but the girls really seemed to like it, & she got them right over in front of it to see it.
After our tour Lindee had gotten us passes to sit in on a session of the House of Representatives, which Mallory, especially, absolutely loved. When we left there we had a fun visit on the office steps with Representative Steve Womack from Arkansas, & then headed over to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to spend the rest of the day. There were some great exhibits, but one of our favorites was Gems and Minerals. This is Mallory is front of one of the enormous aquamarines they had on display – her birthstone. Another good, good day.