Our early days in the District

Two fun facts: DC is often called "The District," and the DC-Maryland-Virginia area is referred to as the DMV.

Thankfully, my mom was able to drive up to DC with us and help us get settled over the first few days. The house we're renting is furnished, so we didn't need to do in serious settling, but we did need to get the kitchen up and running, put away clothes and toys, etc. And, most importantly, I wanted to get some lay-of-the-land scouting done while we had a 1:1 adult to kid ratio. Life is so much easier that way.

I had decided that I wanted for us to do a trolley tour of the city so that we could get a "bird's eye view," of sorts (bird's eye...ground level...same-same). Mom treated all of us to a trolley day, which was quite the novelty for the littles (I mean, the windows had no glass, so what more could a kid want?), and it was extremely helpful for me to have a better mental picture of where we are living. I've visited DC a few times during my life, but coming as a tourist for a concentrated amount of time is a really different experience than living somewhere for a longer stretch. 

First family shot in front of our house in the District

Our metro stop

Trolley-ing

The general plan for the trolley tour was to ride around for much of the circuit and to get out at the Lincoln Memorial, given Claire's fascination with it. She learned about it in Kindergarten and was VERY excited to see it in person. There were about 17 or so stops on the tour, and the Lincoln Memorial was about 13 stops in, so we figured we'd get to see the majority of the big ticket items from the trolley, walk around one of the things that would mostly interest the children, and if we weren't able to finish the tour, we wouldn't miss too much. That's pretty much exactly how things went down. Trolley tours are hop-on, hop-off, so we could have continued throughout the day, but with lunch and nap schedules, we ended up wrapping things up around lunch.

I couldn't pick my favorite shot of the Capitol. Please enjoy the plethora of pictures.

The Supreme Court

The Library of Congress

Jefferson Memorial...under construction, er, cleaning

The girls regularly call the Washington Monument "The Pointy." Also, this is the Tidal Basin, and you can see the Washington Monument on the left and the Jefferson Memorial on the right.

And then we finally got off the trolley (and just in time, it seems, as the excitement of the trolley was beginning to wear off) to go see Mr. Lincoln.

I love this shot. 

It was a gorgeous day for tourist-ing, and we really did have a nice morning. We had a long walk back to our place, which the girls weren't crazy about. They have subsequently learned that there's a lot of walking when you live in a big city. Bless them.

Our house is about a mile from the National Zoo, and I knew that I was planning to use trips to the zoo as a part of Claire's science curriculum. In addition to the trolley tour, I wanted to do a dry run of the zoo with Brad to get an idea of what it would look like to take the girls by myself. This ended up being a great idea, because, while you can get there on public transit with children, nothing about it is very easy or convenient. Brad and I learned that taking the bus (which drops you at the front entrance) wouldn't work for me, because to ride the bus with a stroller, you have to have an umbrella stroller that folds up while you're riding. We don't have a stroller that small, as we brought double strollers so that we can push Lily, too, when her legs get tired. We also learned that taking the metro is a bad plan for going with kids because it's a half mile walk from either of the nearest metros. And that's BEFORE you walk all over the zoo...and then have to walk back to the metro. Oh, and driving and parking is $25 each time. We learned so much on that recon mission. Spoiler: we ended up buying a membership so we could have parking. More on that later.

Mom snapped this shot of Brad and me before we headed to the zoo. It's a favorite of mine.

We literally did all of the trolley tour and the zoo run-through (plus a return trip to the zoo immediately after with mom and the girls in tow), as well as church, Target run, and Greek restaurant scouting within the first 48 hours. It was an exhausting and yet extremely fun opening weekend.