Sculpture garden on the way. I made it a rule throughout our road trip travels to take a moment whenever possible to engage with anything we happened to be passing by.
We paused in a shady, peaceful side garden for a quick picnic lunch, and then we headed to our first museum: The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History!
We had timed this trip to Washington D.C. because early September was supposed to be the "off season"--perfect for avoiding crowds! And sure enough, we never saw crowds anywhere we went in D.C. (except on the Metro at rush hour). This moment, when I could stand and photograph the Hope Diamond at my leisure without interruption, was when it really hit me how awesome it is to be in these museums and monuments without crowds.
Look, a timeline! (Yes, I took pictures of timelines at museums all over the country. I save them for my kids, because part of their homeschool learning is weekly entries in their timeline books. But I love me a good timeline, because I don't feel like I ever learned in school how different things in history fit together, and timelines help make connections.)
So much pretty.
So much fascinating. How these things are formed. How the museum got them to this display without breakage!
Topaz--my birthstone and favorite gem,
Ooooooohhhhhhhh!
Homeschool mom loves when we get to unexpectedly revisit things we've already seen, to build upon the learning!
GEEK OUT!
How could a day get better than this? With more free museum, that's how! On to the American History museum!
Keeping It Real Confession: it was so interesting that after the emotional high earlier that morning at the National Archives that I would hit a physical low here at the Natural History museum. I developed a migraine while we were there, and it seriously hampered my enjoyment. But still--it was all fine. Because I had that moment of realizing whatever happened in DC from then on would be Great and Good Enough, it didn't bother me that I had a headache. No FOMO. I had ibuprofen on hand, and plenty of drinking fountains around me. When my head hurt too much to look at things, I had a cool and relatively quiet seat on a marble bench there in the main hall (sure, there was museum crowd noise all around me, but there were no shrieking school groups, and in that big space sound rises, drifts, and echoes to make a kind of soothing tide). The kids went off in pairs to explore together and I could close my eyes and just rest my painful head. They would check back in with me periodically, so I knew all was well and where everyone was. (This too made me happy, because they got to see things that interested them, and each kid walked away with a different experience at the museum--which also means they have some excellent photos I didn't get, like of the skeletons. Sloth skeleton! Sea turtle skeleton! Llama skeleton! Even through a migraine, very cool. But I didn't linger to take photos.)
And then, the migraine was over. And I was fully capable of leading my kids through the rest of the day's adventures. And this too was God's provision--not just this day, but on the entire road trip, because this amazingly brief migraine was the only moment of illness I had on the entire road trip to date. Not just D.C., but every adventure from June through October! None of us got seriously ill or wounded--sure, we had a few mild sore throats and minor injuries, but nothing that would keep us from enjoying every moment of our road trip adventures. And that is something to be truly Thankful for.
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