Independence Day....DC style.......

One of the requests that my mom wanted to do while she was out here was to spend the 4th of July in DC.I heard many, many, many nightmares, I mean stories about DC and the 4th of July, but the one story I kept hearing over and over again, "You got to go at least once in your lifetime!"  This is my once!
The first dilemma we faced was whether to drive or take the metro.  After many discussions, we decided to take the metro which meant we had to carry our stuff everywhere.  It went pretty smoothly.  We arrived in plenty of time to squeeze into a spot to watch the parade.

My kids and Sammi and Gabe watching the parade

 The parade was awesome! 

 The colonial band was my favorite to watch.

Truth be told, we didn't stay to watch the rest of the parade.  I don't know about you, but I don't know how many school bands I can watch during this hot day! Plus, my kids were disappointed no one was throwing candy to them.  Come on, parade=candy!

We left to find a museum to cool ourselves in and we took the family to the National American History Museum.

Afterwards, we started walking through the mall and the Folk Festival was there.

 We stopped at this tent to watch this group sing.  They were from Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.

 After enjoying our mini concert, we continued walking towards the capital.  My mom says she watches this concert on PBS every year and she was so excited to finally see it live!

 But, we didn't arrive early enough.  Apparently, three hours is not early enough and we weren't able to get in.  So we sat in front of the Capital hoping to hear the music and watch the fireworks.

But, we couldn't so luckily we brought games for the kids to play with while Roger went to find us something to eat!  Four hours is a long time to entertain the kids while we waited for the fireworks.  Caleb didn't make it any easier since he constantly wanted to use the nasty port-a-pottys!  One use and I refused to drink the rest of the night!

During our wait, the cannons behind us went off! Scared all of us, but the kids thought that was pretty cool to sit by!  No pictures of the fireworks since they didn't turn out well, but they were enjoyable to see.  After they were done, we packed up and walked quickly to the nearest metro.  Every parent had two children they were responsible for.  I carried the stroller, no elevators for us and I told each of the kids if they didn't make it on the metro with us to make sure they knew the Vienna/Fairfax was our stop! :)  That put a scared face on Emma.  She didn't let go of me the whole time! Luckily, we were able to get on together, find seats to sit on and enjoyed the rest of the ride to our car. We made it safely home and it took us two hours to get home which I was very happy about!  I did hear it can take longer!! 
It was a wonderful experience and I'm glad that we went, but I'm looking forward to next year being a bit more relaxed!!