DC Day 10--The White House & Supreme Court

Wednesday June 29th

We got to see the White House, and not just driving by, we got to tour the inside.  We had reservations and I guess I "fat fingered" the information for me because I got to"get out of the line" and wait in a special place for them to verify I really was me.  I think it was my birth date, but it all worked out.

We actually had to park really far away this day and we were worried about being there on time so Stephen dropped us off and we waited and prayed that he'd get back in time.  He literally got there at the very last second.  I was stressing out but am so glad he got there.  

As it turned out it really didn't matter much because we got in line, and then the line stopped.  People who had been cleared ahead of us had to come back.  We wondered what was going on.  But then a few helicopters flew in.  One landed.  A few minutes later that chopper took off and the other two choppers came out of no-where to flank the chopper that was on the ground.  So we assume President Obama had to go somewhere.  Kind of exciting.  Wish we would have gotten a better photo but through the trees it was hard.

As we proceeded down the check points Sam had a hilarious question which he got up the courage to pose to one of the agents.  "If you're supposed to be the SECRET service, why does your uniform say it?"  The agent smiled and chuckled and told him it was a good question!

Then following a picnic lunch we went on a very very special tour of the Supreme Court Building.  Two branches of our government in the same day!   A very close friend to the Howe's is a secretary to one of the Supreme Court Justices so she was able to arrange us a private tour to see

parts of this building that most people don't get to see.  We got to go into the court room see the chairs, pretend like we are talking at the podium, see the "HIGHEST Court in the Land" which is really the basketball court directly above the court room, some beautiful conference rooms and gardens.  Our children peppered this sweet docent with questions and she answered every single one and made each of our children feel like their question was the most intelligent one she'd heard all day.

And we weren't done.  After the boys had seen the one Air and Space Museum, they wanted to see the other one.  

Sam was amazing.  We walked in and he was identifying some of these planes and knew their significance.  

Sam has had a fascination with the Wright Brothers for a long time.  He's read lots of books and it was totally a highlight for him to see "The Wright Flyer" the original one and see the wonderful display they had there.  So happy to have done this for him!

Want to know who else was excited to see something there?  Stephen!  See the round clear ball on the underbelly of this plane?  He worked on developing it!

Then, because we hadn't seen enough stuff, and also because we were DONE with DC and wanted to start heading home, we went back to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  We saw a lot of stuff, at this point I think most things were running together but we walked through it.  Something that caught my attention was this portion of the twin towers that were taken down on 9-11....somber somber.