Greetings from the National Mall

It's just going to be several days of quickies, I'm afraid! Tonight we are home after a very lovely day downtown -- weather not too warm and drizzle that held off till we were driving away, lots of family at lots of different National Mall sights. We all started at the National Museum of the American Indian, which is adjacent to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (where there were alpacas in the Peru displays), then my immediate family walked to the US Botanic Garden with my nieces Maddy and Noelle while the younger boys and their parents went to the National Air & Space Museum, where we met them after seeing the flowers and frogs.

Then half the group went to see the D-Day IMAX, which my family had already seen, so we went with the nieces to the National Gallery of Art for lunch in the cafeteria and some browsing in the galleries and gift shop. Eventually we returned to the Native American museum, where Paul's parents were relaxing while both his brothers, Jon's wife Brooke, and the four under-12 nephews walked to the Lincoln Memorial at the other end of the Mall. We all met up to drive to College Park, where we met Dave's late wife Molly's lifelong best friend, Alice, and her husband and son, and we all went to Azteca for a very fun big group dinner.














Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans!