Snowday and the Smithsonian (one of many)

I know I haven't written yet this year, and I've been meaning to for about a month, but it is only February. There was no work yesterday and today because of snow! How cool is that? That never happened in Utah. I cleaned our home yesterday, so I will use part of my free time today to update my blog!

At the beginning of January, Kelly and I decided to go to one of the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. I didn't know this before moving to Baltimore, but there is not "The Smithsonian Institution" there are actually a whole bunch of museums about different things! (I guess I probably would have learned that eventually from Night at the Museum 2.) We went to the National Museum of American History and saw a lot of cool stuff!

Kelly was excited from the start, because right in first room there stood C-3P0. It was the actual costume worn by Anthony Daniels in Return of the Jedi. American History at its finest!

Mostly we saw a bunch of oddsy-endsy kind of things:
A Stradivarius Quartet

Apolo Anton Ohno's skates that he wore in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City

Kermit the Frog

Dorothy's Ruby Slippers
We also went to a cool exhibit about Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln's famous stovepipe hat. Last time worn: when he went to see a show at Ford's Theatre April 14, 1865.

A blurry picture of one of his suits

I can't remember if this was a lifemask made of Lincoln shortly before his death, or if it's his deathmask.


We saw some other exhibits too, that I don't have pictures of. We saw Julia Child's kitchen, but there were so many people, I couldn't get a decent picture. It probably got really popular after Julie & Julia came out. We also saw the gunboat they pulled out of the Chesapeake Bay that was sunk during the Revolutionary War. It was called The Philadelphia, and was sunk in 1776. It was found in 1935 upright with the top of its mast just 10 inches below the surface of the water. They raised the whole thing and now it's sitting in the Smithsonian.

There was a presidents exhibit we went to, as well as the Bradford Dollhouse. That was hard to get close enough just to look at it properly. All I wanted to do was stand on the step and stare at the miniature rooms. It was really cool.

My favorite part was the America at War exhibit. It had an part for every war from the Revolution to the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, I spent the most time in WW2.
Some cool things we saw:
Some of George Washington's clothes

Cornwallis' sword that he turned over to George Washington

George Washington's sword

Some nifty stuff from Okinawa


All in all, we had a really fun time, and I should have taken a lot more pictures than I did. We didn't even get to all of the exhibits in that museum because it was so big. Next time we go, we're going to see the original Star Spangled Banner-- the flag Francis Scott Key was actually seeing when he wrote the national anthem.

If the snow would ever let up, we might actually get back to D.C. before March. I don't mind driving in the snow, and it's really not that much, but it's like everyone's IQ significantly drops when they see snow around here! Oh well, I'm enjoying blogging in my pajamas at 3PM. It's supposed to snow another 10-20 inches today and into tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully we'll have another snow day tomorrow!