Last year when Ollie was in eighth grade they announced that there would be a trip to Washington D.C. for the eighth grade class and that their parents were welcome to come as chaperones. Well, my husband was tickled pink! He was so excited to go; he was making plans within seconds of hearing about the trip. Shortly thereafter, they sent notice that the trip had been cancelled because not enough students and parents had signed up. I think my husband took the news harder than Oliver! So, we decided that we would take a family trip to Washington D.C. instead. That way all of the kids and both of us could go at the same time. We would be able to see what we wanted when we wanted and not be limited to the school’s itinerary. And this is our year! We are busy researching and making plans and we are all pretty excited about it. The scariest part is that we will be driving-it is about a 10-11 hour drive there-with 4 kids! Our plan is to hit all of the major monuments, the Smithsonian, the zoo, Sprinkles or DC Cupcakes, Arlington Cemetery, possibly visit the White House (we requested tickets, but haven’t heard back yet), admire the beautiful cherry trees and visit the National Arboretum. We will arrive on a Wednesday night and leave on the following Sunday morning. Hopefully we’ll be able to visit everything we want to during that time without having to rush. And, this will be a great chance for me to work on my goal of taking more pictures…
Have any of you taken a family vacation to Washington D.C.? Is there anything we should make sure to see or do while we are there? Do you have any unique, inspired ideas for surviving the drive down and back?
Musings 
I lived by DC for a year back in high school. You are very ambitious to try and fit in everything in a short trip 🙂 That being said, a lot of stuff is fairly boring (like the white house tour– you don’t get to see very many rooms) and some is totally awesome but depressing (the holocaust museum).
Some favorites I highly recommend (that are all on the Mall, so you can maybe do them all in a day if you really wanted) are: The Natural History Museum, Air and Space, and the National Gallery. There are also lots of monuments there and you can find quite a bevvy of cheap souvenir vendors all over that area. Also, the National Zoo is fairly neat, and pretty much everything is on the Metro lines so you shouldn’t have to drive much while you are there (which is great because they have some AWFUL traffic). If you do feel like driving into VA for a day though, you should check out Mount Vernon and George Washington’s house and stuff. My mom used to work there, it’s pretty neat.
Thanks, Kari and Cheryl!! We do want to go to VA now…Gregg is pretty excited about George Washington’s house!! I’m sure we’ll spend at least two full days just on the mall alone, then hopefully head over there..
If you recall, we went a few years ago at the end of March during the Cherry Festival. I cannot count how many museums we ended up going to. Really enjoyed all of them; each one was uniquely interesting. However, Marco & I would recommend staying in nearby Arlington. George Washington’s house was pretty neat to see.
Can’t wait!