Lessons learned.

Brought to you by Jolly Rancher. The girls had the worlds grossest snow cones on Monday. The items in question came out of a food truck parked at the National Museum of American History. And they were stale, tasted like chemicals, and hard as ... ice. I suppose I ought to have known that a pre-packaged snow cone would be yucko.





Actually, Q5 enjoyed hers. She ate every last drop (that she didn't drip on the wall). C6 got sick of hers about half-way through and I obligingly threw it out for her.

If you are looking in the background thinking that isn't The National Museum of American History you are right. It is Natural History. We left the National Museum of American History after visiting the Invention at Play exhibit, where they twirled whirlygigs and C6 sailboarded.





(Q5 wasn't tall enough)




We also visited the Spark!Lab, where they played with those electronics SnapBoards to make a musical doorbell and other things.





We also visited the America on the Move exhibit, the First Ladies at the Smithsonian exhibit, and the On the Water: Stories from Maritime America exhibit.

I had figued they'd be tired after all that, so in order to get them back to the Metro without any problems I suggested that we stop and get icecream after the museum. It was a positively received and generaly acceptable idea.

I was hoping to find a vendor selling Dove bars or Magnum bars, but they were probably all on the Mall side of the museum, and we were on the Constitution Ave side of the museum. So food truck it was.

And they zoomed in on the snow cones. I didn't fight it, I thought it would be nice and quench their thirst and not be bad. Wrong, wrong. They hasn't even made a dent by the time we'd gotten from one museum to the next. When we reached the National Museum of Natural History I asked if they wanted to go in, and they both said yes, and C6 requested that we go see the "you know what" to which I said "No" figuring she meant the gift shop ("because, mumma, it doesn't hurt just to look") but she actually meant the Rocks and Minerals exhibit, including the Hope Diamond.

Oh, sure. So we sat on the wall and they ate their ice balls (notice how virtually NONE of the snow cone is gone? That is after a 5 minute walk).




After the sticky ice was all gone we went in, Q5 was getting tired, so we blazed through rocks and minerals, hit the Hope Diamond, and left the building.

On the way to the Metro we stopped to check out Q5's feet, as she'd complained about he feet hurting. She'd gotten blisters on each heel. I blamed it on her not wearing socks, which really it was, but I realized later that it could also be exacerbated by the fact that she was wearing a size 9 sneaker when she has size 11 feet.

I suppose that the fact that feet continue to grow ought to have been obvious. I came home and went through Q5's pile of shoes. After we get rid of the summer sandles and flip-flops she'll be down to three pairs, including two pairs of school shoes and one pair of hand-me-down (from C6) sneakers. Got to go shopping!