An Attempt To Tour DC With 7 Kids In a Day

Riding the DC Metro.......oh my!

My husband often accuses me of trying to "bite off more than I can chew" and I'm not talking about when I'm eating....haha. We were returning from a week long camp vacation with family in Penn and had an extra day to kill on the way back home.  I thought, "how fun to take the kids to DC and do a little touring on the way home!"  Forget that the kids were all exhausted from camp, our budget was pretty spent, our double stroller was in the dumpster at the said camp and 3 of the children probably wouldn't even remember the "touring of national monuments."  
Well, I should of known the little trip was not going to go too well when our hotel ended up being in a rather "sketchy" area of the city.  There was no place remotely near to buy a new stroller and we had no baby backpacks or slings with us either.  We slept pretty good anyway (the desk clerk put us on a quiet floor, she said) and we headed out in the morning hoping to find someplace that rented strollers.  We walked to the Metro. It then took about 20 minutes, with the help of an attendant, to figure it all out and buy our slew of tickets.  We had to switch trains and I basically "freaked out" with my little ones even remotely near the train track.  It was so scary!  I guess I'm not used to their speed and the openness of the tracks.  I felt like I was on top of a super high building with little children, my little children, running all around!
So, we finally made it to the Mall in front of the capital and headed over to the the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, which had said online that they rented strollers. Well, just to let you know, they don't anymore!  Boy were Patrick and Matthew getting heavy..........30 pound heavy!  And it was way to crowded to just let them walk.  The Museum was nice, but again too crowded for me and I was scared I would loose someone ( let me take the time to say that strollers are a wonderful invention!  Not just for holding children but holding "stuff" and for other children to hold on to so you know exactly where they are). We realize about 20 minutes into the museum that Patrick had a very stinky, leaky diaper.  I had to totally change him, but had no extra outfit (of all times!), just an extra sweatshirt.  So now Patrick was running around the Smithsonian with just a diaper on and a sweatshirt. We finally gave up on the museum and headed outside.  It was now raining and we had no umbrella......I know, I know we just really are not prepared, at least not this trip anyway.  We take a few pics, have a snack and then Matthew throws-up all over Christian!  We all kind of freaked! We go into another Smithsonian building that has a gift shop and a cafe. We have to buy new shirts for Christian and Matthew, and then manage to have a nice little lunch.  We come out and it's still raining, so at this point I just want to go back to the hotel and get our stuff and head home.  The train ride is stressful, even worse than before, and longer.  We get our stuff from the hotel that they had put in storage because we had missed check-out time.  Our ride home was uneventful, thank the Lord but we later realized that we had had some things stolen from our suitcases!  All in all, not a trip I want to make again.  We will definitely prepare better in advance : /

The only descent pic we got : )