We've lived here for 8 July's and never braved going all the way downtown for the nation's capital's fireworks. This year, Ashley happens to be here for the holiday and needed to get her national parks passport stamped downtown. So how about we all go downtown together and stay for the fireworks. Is this a wise idea?
Getting downtown on this day is not typical. You can't drive - most of the roads are closed, including the bridges to get there. So it's metro only - FOR EVERYONE. We left around 2 pm - we got home 10 hours, 2 potty accidents, 22 passport stamps, 1 picnic, 1 heart attack, 2 rainstorms, 1 lost purse, and 4 sleeping-children-on-the-train later.
Mel's accident was the funniest (always better to assume these things are funny - alter the perspective as much as possible). We were about 15 feet away from the port-a-potty, and walking towards it. Chad thinks she took a look at them and didn't want anything to do with them. But I think it was how you need to go so much more once you actually SEE the bathroom. Anyhow, picture wet footprints as we're walking across the pavement.
Ashley has a national parks passport book that you take to national parks and monuments where you can stamp them for free. And on the Mall, there's one visitor's center that hold all the stamps for that area. All 22 of them. So Ashley, whose family is very diligent about searching out stamps, filled up several pages in her passport.
Then we plopped our stuff down on the grass with a blanket to save a spot for the fireworks. Chad, Ashley, K&T went off to buy souvenirs. Pretty soon it started raining. EV was sitting in the double stroller with Jeffrey, holding the umbrella over the 2 of them. Mel and I huddled under a water-proof-on-one-side blanket. And it really rained. For over 30 minutes. I was getting pretty ache-y under that blanket and tried calling some people to find out if by looking at the weather online, they could see if there was going to be too much rain for us to stay. Michael (poor guy) was available and said it didn't look like much rain.
After this first rain, we enjoyed an hour or so of nice weather, only now everything was wet. It was during this lull I had my heart attack. Kayleigh decided to walk off with Ashley. Only she didn't decide to mention it to anyone. The place was so incredibly packed with people and I went a bit nuts. I'm all in favor of putting micro chips in children and keeping track of them with a GPS system. I hear you can do this with pets. So if you see my kids wearing pet collars in the future, that's why.
The second rain was shorter. This time, everyone but Chad and I huddled under the umbrella. The 2 of us stood there getting soaked. Kinda romantic, only not so much. We talked again about leaving, but by this time it was too late to get home for anyone else's fireworks. And it sounded like the kids were keen to see some fireworks - somewhere (there are oodles of places shooting off fireworks).
But when they finally came, the fireworks were phenomenal. They shoot them off by the reflecting pool, in front of the Lincoln Monument. There's so many trees all over there - they must be constantly rushing around putting out mini fires. You could sometimes see sparks landing and causing some trouble. The guns that shoot them off are visible around the pool and are going off like crazy. And there was music during the show.
Chad was full of great ideas, including how to get back on the metro. It's famous for being super crowded getting home from the fireworks. Which only makes sense. EVERYONE has to ride it to get out of DC. So the metro stops are going to be horribly crowded, trying to get on a train. So Chad decides we should walk down to a further away stop to get on. This proved to be genius. We get on a nearly empty train. Only, at the entrance we realize that Ashley has left her purse by a bench we'd had to stop at to feed the baby. That bench was a very long ways away. She had her camera, passport, etc in it. But no money - that was in her pocket. So we all got on the metro. Chad and Ashley rode it to the next stop, got off there, and ran back to the bench to look for the purse. Luckily, the bench was in a sorta secluded spot and the purse was left in a not-so-visible spot. Still, when they got there, it wasn't there. But then a stranger walked up with it. That part was mysterious. He sorta walked out of the shadows, then walked back into the shadows. Still, a miraculous recovery, I say.
The rest of us, me and 5 kids (pushing a double jog-stroller), rode the train back to our car. Jeffrey and Mel both fell asleep in the stroller. I draped a thin blanket over it and they never saw the hordes of people crammed in all around them. EV tipped over on my lap and fell asleep. Thomas took over Kayleigh's spot and scrunched up on the seat, falling asleep. When we got on the train, it was nearly empty. The next stop filled up all the seats. And the next stop filled up all the isles and door areas. People were packed in all around us. Getting on with a stroller with all those people would have been next to impossible, and no way we would have gotten a seat, much less space to tip over and sleep. So props to Chad for coming up with this plan. He also pointed out that bringing the umbrella was also his idea, only he intended it to keep out of the sun, not rain.
We met up at the car in the parking garage. Somehow, Chad and Ashley were only about 10 minutes behind us. They'd run a lot of the way. Chad reported that the lines at the other stations were indeed long. In fact, so long that they had to leave and go to another station to get on a train. It would've taken at least an hour just to get on a train.
We sang Happy Birthday to Kayleigh in the car, just after we pulled out of the parking garage - it has just become the next day (midnight). And K&T had a swim meet the next morning. (Which will explain why Thomas accidentally swam the free style instead of breaststroke in his relay. Oops.)
