Continued from DC Day 2 Part 2.

Couple of pictures from last night. I realized that the TV stand is a smaller, and white, version of a bookshelf that I used to have.

Seriously have never heard so many sirens nonstop in my life. This place is just crawling with police and sirens.

Our last full day here in DC. It’s a beautiful cloudless…and hot day. We’ve been going and going and going, so today we will take it slower to rest up some.

We were happy to find out that there’s a washer and dryer in our place. Today will be laundry day. I think if we do laundry today, we should all have packed just enough clothes to where we won’t need to do laundry until Austin…maybe.

Got ready and then time for some coffee at the adjacent city block. The kids usually wake up at around 6ish, and they’ll get on their ipads and watch videos until RL and I get up at around 8ish. We’ve learned to tell the kids that they can’t play video games together on their ipads in the morning, but only watch videos. When they play games together, they get overtly excited, start yelling, and get into fights with each other.

Not really anywhere to sit here, it’s more of a to go place.

We took our pastries and coffee back to our apartment to eat. That’s our one event for this morning. Said it was gonna be a slow morning.

The original plan was for us to park 3 days here at the garage below our apartment. Then the day we take the train to DC, we’ll drive the car to the Union Station parking garage and park there for the duration that we are in NYC. Well, I didn’t really want to deal with packing up the car, moving to find another garage/spot, so I asked if I could just extend my parking here past the current 3 days when I’m renting the apartment. Apparently, it turns out you can, and at $16 a day, it’s cheaper than parking at Union Station. Sounds like a no brainer. So, here I am putting a new parking permit on my car dash.

While down here, I took this photo to show how low some of the signs are in this garage. It’s scary driving my giant tall car in here.

Slow lazy morning also means I get to work on my blog, eat breakfast, drink coffee, and stare at this cool view. NIce.

The kids are also taking it extra easy today, extra screen time.

Haha, great bathroom sign!

Lunch will also be super easy. Literally right across the street from our apartment. We are just taking the path of least resistance this morning.

The restaurant was giant, and mostly empty during lunch. I wonder if it actually gets filled up regularly?

And of course, someone needs to go poopoo as we were about to eat.

Served family style. We only ordered 1 appetizer and 2 mains, and we’ve still WAAAYY over ordered.

Yeah, that’s the whole tray that we are taking back to our apartment for leftover. Do we think we’ll eat it….most likely not. But it’s nice to have in case one of us gets hungry at night.

Lazy slow morning with extra screen time doesn’t mean the kids were behaving better.

I took this photo of Zane the spanking spatula with the kids to remind myself that it was a difficult trip with the kids constantly getting in trouble. It’s also a reminder for them, and for myself that apparently threatening to spank them might as well be worthless. Just look at the smiles on their faces while I’m threatening them with Zane.

Slept in this morning, lazy breakfast and lazy lunch, then napped, and now we are going somewhere, but mostly because we made reservations for a timed entry days ago.

Washington DC in the summer is no fun. Super hot and super humid.

Falun Gong, maybe some sort of lobbying event at DC?

The kids complained on this walk a lot. It’s hot, it’s sunny, and it’s hot. I told them that the sooner they stop messing around and take a good photo, the sooner we can keep on walking. It only worked a little.

Lots of food trucks all around the mall.

The Air and Space Museum. I didn’t realize these were metal sails that move with the wind.

I’m so thankful the line isn’t all the way out here in the heat. The entrance is way back at middle of the photograph.

It’s really hot.

Air conditioning is amazing.

Astronauts wore cool suits much like for racing. Interesting to find that out.

The very first plane to take flight.

Surprised to see the kids engaged. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that PL asked this lady a million questions.

Every time I see this display, I’m always amazed at how little bikes have changed in the past 100 plus years.

I’ve always liked these bird wing inspired gliders.

The kids were super excited about the escalators. Seriously, probably their favorite part of the whole museum.

waited in a long line to take…

…this photo in this very tiny space…cool.

ADHD.

I don’t know about your house window, but ain’t no house window that thick.

Undersea fiber cables.

It’s weird to think kids will sit and watch almost all videos.

Didn’t get to see this plane this time. Half of the museum is under renovation so it was closed. That works for us, less overwhelming for the kids.

The clouds came out and it’s helping with the heat. Now we’ll take this hot, but slightly less hot walk back to our apartment area for dinner.

PL took this photo, but she had blocked out the Capitol.

I helped her sight it in. Little KL is being restrained by CL because he keeps on pushing PL around to where she can’t take a photo. It takes a village.

ADHD.

Cool, now we can see the Capitol. Next time, make us look skinner.

Falun Gong people still out here in full force.

Went to a tea store in search of a mug for CL. Didn’t find a suitable cup, but I did find this one single black tile. Was it on purpose?

Me pretending to all of a sudden lose all energy while walking in the middle of the cross walk as the time counted down (there were no cars around). Little KL panics and tries to drag me across to safety.

We all had a good laugh.

If we had a hard time feeding the kids tapas yesterday, then maybe it’ll go better if we ate tapas again tonight?

Interesting restroom decor.

Even more interesting restroom decor. You can look at these people while you poop.

The men and women restrooms were linked with the wall being open at top and bottom.

RL and her nice artsy shot.

Immediately, we like the food better here than the tapas place last night.

And actually, the kids did do a better job eating the tapas today. We wanted tapas again tonight because it’s hard to find good tapas in Austin so we are trying to take advantage while we are in DC.

Yum. Ever since Spain, I’ve become an anchovy fan. This is one dish I never thought I’d enjoy before Spain. Anchovies with heirloom tomatoes. So yummy and I still can’t believe I really love this.

Some sort of deconstructed olive. It had olive concentrate/oil inside some sort of membrane. The membrane would burst inside your mouth and there would be this extreme olive flavor. RL loves olives and she said this one was waaaay to intense and that she’ll stick to real olives please and thank you.

We dared the kids to try it and PL, much to our surprise, volunteered. Go girl. She hesitated quite a bit at first, then I told her I’d get her extra sprinkles on ice cream if we get some and she immediately ate it. She didn’t like it at all, but I don’t blame her. I had one and the olive flavor was very overpowering.

Washing it all down with water.

CL also wants sprinkles on her ice cream.

Hesitates. She did eat it and didn’t like it either. We are proud of them for trying something new though.

Still disgusted by that little deconstructed olive.

Octopus fan. I would have never guessed.

When we arrived it was empty and when we left when it was completely full. Great dinner. Wish I could get tapas easily in Austin.

The tapas restaurant is literally at the first floor right below our apartment. Nice.

As promised, ice cream. Well, gelatos.

Though, not as promised, no sprinkles since they didn’t have any here. They were able to get two scoops each though!

Little KL has been practicing winking. lol.

We are leaving tomorrow morning on a train. Got a couple giant bags of extra clothes, snacks and etc. that we can’t carry with us to NYC. We’ll keep these locked away in the car while we are in NYC.

While putting the extra luggage in the car, I noticed that the cracks have lengthened extensively. I expected them to grow over time, but did not expect them to grow so much while parked without being moved in a garage.

To be continued at NYC Day 1 Part 1.