Day Six: In Which the Boys Are Underwhelmed by the Charters of Freedom

Today I discovered that, while to me we are leaving DC with barely a teenytiny scratch on the surface of the many wonders that are here to behold, the boys have a limit when it comes to awe-inspiring relics and historical artifacts. This morning, we started with the National Archives, a place that makes me geek out like you have no freaking idea. Their slogan should be, "Come for the Constitution, Stay For the Wicked Fascinating Exhibits." It's a bait-and-switch of the best kind. There is always something amazing on display once you've paid your respects to the Charters of Freedom, as they're called. I was for the second time in twelve hours unable to instill in the dudes an appropriate level of wonderment at something of this nature. I could not help but feel a bit worried about the Declaration of Independence, which looks to my unschooled eye to be in rough shape (as one might expect). I now have something else to wake up in the middle of the night concerned about. "Argh! The writing on the Declaration of Independence is getting less legible by the minute!" What the boys really dug was the exhibit that enabled them to edit together their own snippets of D-Day footage into personalized short films. Constitution, Schmonstitution.

My strategy throughout our stay in D.C., souvenir-wise, has been to defer spending money by telling the boys that on our last day here, we would return to the place where the thing they wanted most was located and, within reason, buy it. So despite the fact that the gift shop was the first place they wanted to go in every museum, we managed to spend ZERO DOLLARS on gimcracks until today, when Osk decided we needed to return to Air and Space in order to get a remote-controlled airplane. I managed to haggle him down to a $12 model plane and Ike to a $10 set of toy helicopters and am feeling like I got off cheap in that regard. We bought ice cream treats, pictured above. The red-white-and-blue frozen pop Ike is enjoying is no longer called a "Bomb Pop" as it was in my youth, because post-9/11 we do not refer to frozen desserts as "bombs," especially in our Nation's Capital. It is now a "Patriotic Rocket Pop," which to me is like the "Freedom Fries" of kids' ice cream.

On the way back to Eileen's, I dragged the kids through the West Wing of the National Gallery (the old stuff) and into the East Wing, hoping to captivate the boys with some modern art. You can see above that they were utterly nonplussed by Richard Serra. More entertaining was the lunch we had at a downtown McD's, where the street theater was nonstop and CRAZY. The establishment in which we dined required one to BUY A TOKEN to use the bathroom (because of vandalism, according to the signs) and had a strict condiment-handout policy keyed to the size of the meal ordered (one sauce for six McNuggets or fewer, two sauces for ten or more). Do people try to cadge free BBQ sauces and attempt to subsist thereon?

Not pictured: the return trip to retrieve Aunt Eileen's quilt. Pictured: Oscar diligently assembling his model airplane and then engaging in "creative play" with same. Sound effects: "Whoooosshhhhhhhhhhhh pow pow pow Whoooossshshshhhhhh!" etcetera. Dude loves his airplane. Swim. Dinner. Off for gelato (another treat I've been saving until the end). In the morning, we depart for Myrtle Beach, SC where we will engage in Ike's new favorite pastime: chillaxing.