Air and Space Museum

We're so lucky to live 15 minutes from one of the absolute best museums ever - the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  We've been there many times through the years, but each time we see something new.  And as the boys get older, they appreciate it more as well. 

This past Sunday we needed to get out of the house for a few hours, and it was too chilly to be outside for long.  So we headed to Udvar and with great timing, stumbled upon a free guided tour with the most amazing tour guide.  I don't remember his last name, but Steve was his first name and he was so full of information and fascinating stories, he held our attention for almost two full hours. Great guy!  The museum has tons of docents who volunteer their time touring people around, many of them are veterans and have served in the military themselves.

We  hadn't seen the Space Shuttle Discovery since it arrived on top of an airplane this past spring.  Logan and I were lucky that day in April to be driving near the museum and saw the amazing sight of Discovery attached to the top of an airplane as it was flown into the Udvar Hazy museum for retirement.  You just can't believe how massive it is in person, and its just amazing it was attached to top of an airplane...how heavy that must have been!  You can see how they attached it here.

 

 

We brought along Midnight, the 1st grade mascot from Logan's class.  Logan kept a journal all weekend to share with his class about all the adventures we had with Midnight last weekend.

 

 

 

These are so big, I bet an Andrew and a half could stand up inside them.

 

 

 

Udvar Hazy also houses the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used to drop the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

 

 

Also, since the museum sits adjacent to Dulles Airport, you can ride the elevator up and get a 360 degree view of the planes taking off and landing.  Midnight thought it was cool too.

 

 

off the beaten path in DC

Friday of Spring Break, the morning after circus, we talked about what to do over breakfast. We decided after some relaxing time at home, we'd head into DC to see some museums.  My friend Dan does freelance work for the Smithsonian and helped put together an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art all about the history of video games.  The exhibit is called "The Art of Video Games" and runs through September 2012.   I highly recommend it for all ages for anyone interested in the the progression of video games through time, and how much of a role they've played in our culture.

The museum contains some incredible pieces including the presidential portraits, and over 7,000 artists are represented in their awesome collection.  We didn't get to see it all, hard to entertain a 5 1/2 year old for long in there.  But the video game exhibit is another story...its a completely interactive multimedia experience and they were mesmerized.  We knew we also wanted to visit another museum after lunch so we took in a bit of the presidential portraits and then moved along to the video game exhibit so we could spend some time looking at old Mario Bros., Pacman and Atari game systems.

Remember these?  Space Invaders!  They have every video gaming system ever made on display there. Remember Commodore 64? Sega?  Ha!

Next, it was time for lunch.  As much I wanted to eat Mongolian BBQ in Chinatown...

...We played it more safe for our picky eaters and headed to one of the best pizza spots in DC (which happens to be next to Chinatown).  Matchbox.  Mmmmm.

With bellies full of pizza, we then headed to the Mall to see if we could luck out and get front row parking for the Museum of Natural History.  Ummmmmm, nope.  There must have been a BAZILLION  people with the same idea, and on a beautiful spring break day, of course the main museum strip in DC was going to be packed.  So we headed towards Union Station to visit a lesser known, off the beaten path museum, the Postal Museum.  Still part of the Smithsonian, its a small gem of a museum, extremely kid-friendly and less visited.  It turned out to be a huge hit!   We got great parking, they happened to have a very interesting exhibit about the Titanic and Hindenburg disasters (there thru Jan 2014), and our boys had a great time learning about the history of mail.  Its way more interesting than it sounds!

spring break trip

We've been enjoying a week of no school, no schedules and lots of fun activities.  I'll just share some highlight photos below of our trip to Dad and Bobbie's on the shore of SE Virginia, which is how we started off our spring break for the first four days.

Logan and Maya

it was chilly on the boat

We took the boys to Jamestown Settlement..

We also visited Nauticus in Norfolk... a cool museum about all things maritime, military and such.  We got to tour the battleship US Wisconsin, super cool!

crime and punishment

Yesterday, we ventured into DC to check out a new-ish museum we had never been to before - The National Museum of Crime and Punishment.  I've always had a minor obsession with serial killers and mass murderers.  I don't know why, but I've enjoyed reading about true crimes for as long as I can remember.  I think it stems from just trying to understand what goes on in peoples' heads that can make them flip out to that extent.  And the boys love anything having to do with weapons. 

We read that the museum is kid-friendly, with lots of interactive exhibits from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the bottom level of the museum is also the studio for America's Most Wanted.  We thought if perhaps we came across something too scary at the museum, we'd just turn their attention to the next exhibit.   But it wasn't too scary at all.  On the contrary, it was such an interesting place!  The boys really enjoyed all the weapons, and learning which presidents have been assasinated.  The lie detector was a bit hit too.   We spent quite a while reading about the history of crime and criminals from medieval times, to current.

Our first stop was to grab some lunch, and we did so at a pizza joint near the museum called Pi.  It was tasty, and a really cool space.  Best of all, the boys were on their absolute best behavior all day, which just makes for an awesome time together.

Then, it was onto the museum..  I couldn't use my flash inside the museum so some of these are a bit dark. They have tons and tons of archived documents throughout the place, so they keep the lights dim.

Right away, I knew we were going to see lots of cool things. Especially when the infamous Ted Bundy's VW was in the lobby.

We read about the Pirates of Ocracoke Island, NC.  We'll be going to that island this summer when we go to the beach.

They had an old Western shootin' gallery, which the boys always love..

The car used in Bonnie and Clyde



 some of the actual guns used in Scarface and the Godfather movies

I had forgotten about the D.B. Cooper hijacking of 1971.  They never found any trace of him or his parachute after he jumped out the plane.

They had tons of artifacts from infamous serial killers, including John Wayne Gacy's creepy clown make up kit:

and David Berkowitz "Son of Sam" (a creep birthday card he sent to someone):

They had a police line up you could stand in and pretend someone was trying to identify you, Andrew and I enjoyed that one.  And the boys loved the lie detector.  I'm not sure Dylan passed?...

A prison cell, complete with hole dug out of the wall to crawl thru to the other side, which Andrew did.

A wall of the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

Police Motorcyle and car simulators

One of our favorite parts was the shooting range.   There was a guy working the computer and he had different scenarios to pull up on the screen, i.e. carjackings, robberies, etc.  When it was your turn, you got to shoot at the perpatrator.  Then he'd tell you how many times you fired your weapon and how many hits.

The boys both did great, but when Andrew and I got up there, I missed every single shot.  We were too busy laughing that if anyone ever breaks into our house, they better watch out for Logan, who had the best aim of all.

A totally cool museum, with so much to see and do.  It way exceeded my expectations and I'd love to go back sometime, when some of the temporary exhibits change.  Its right  next to the Verizon Center, and half a block from the Spy Museum as well, so you could really hit a couple of other places and make a whole day of it.