Things I learned on our trip to Washington D.C.

• A road trip in a new van is awesome.

• The Duggars must have super-human parent powers. They have almost five times as many kids as we do, and they don't seem stressed out at all when they go on their big-city field trips.

• Once kids (read: Brooke) find all the items from the "Battle of the Smithsonian" movie, they're done.

• Despite the huge (and by huge, I mean HUGE) crowds, you can still find a nice British lady who offers to take a family picture that has no extra people in it.

• The National Gallery of Art is a great place to get in trouble, be it standing too close to a painting, or bouncing on the moving sidewalk from the west building to the east.
  
• When you have to stand way far back in order to get the entire Capitol Building in the picture, you can't really tell that not all children are looking at the camera.
• If you decide to cool off in a fountain near the capitol, a policeman on a bike will tell you to get out.
• Andrew was really looking forward to seeing the Supreme Court Building. (Apparently it came up in class.)
• It stinks when you have to stand on the Metro after a loooooong day of walking.
  
• I would not make a good paparazo. Especially when the object of desire is this: (Remember those crowds I talked about? Out of control in the Museum of Natural History.)

• Yes. She's still there.

• When kids take over the camera, they tell the true story...that even parents need to rest after all that walking.

• This was as close as we were going to get to the south side of the White House.

• All those crowds were worth it to see the cherry blossoms.

• Meerkats, otters, prairie dogs, and even giant pandas are funny.

• Cleveland has a pretty darn awesome zoo.

• There's a National Postal Museum. Go figure.

• Watching General Conference at the Washington D.C. temple on Easter is pretty cool.

• Sometimes when you pick a pizza place randomly from the GPS recommendations, it's some of the best pizza you've ever had.

• Things Andrew wants to be buried with: Nother one bainty, Footprint, his basketball hoop and basketball. Arlington National Cemetery provokes interesting discussions.

• This thing is enormous.

• When you're feet are killing you, when you don't think you can go another step, when you just want to stop but you have so much farther to go, the thing that makes the journey easier is doing it together.