James and I love traveling and have seen lots of truly amazing sites. When I heard that the space shuttle Discovery would be doing a fly-0ver of DC before retiring to the Smithsonian, I knew we wanted to take the kids to see it; after all, James and I grew up during the space shuttles' glory years; who knows when the kids might have another opportunity to witness the US space program!
We pulled them out of school an hour early on Monday and headed to northern VA to meet Yeoanny and Angie and their kids for dinner. Then we were up and out early on Tuesday to make our way to the downtown mall.
Just off the metro; not nearly excited (yet) as we are!
James, checking "the Twitter" to find out the ETA; the kids waiting patiently. They actually did, too. We brought a football to throw while we waited. They also kept busy by pointing to nearly every plane that took off from National Airport and shouting, "Is that it?" (Probably much to the irritation of the spectators around us!)
Here it comes! We were expecting it to come in more over the Lincoln Memorial or from National, but it was a different angle. (Exactly where the kids told me to watch and I told them it wouldn't be!)
The flyover lasted almost 45 minutes, and we were really in the perfect location to watch several passes by the Lincoln Memorial, Capitol, White House, and Washington Monument. Apparently, it also made a pass over Arlington Cemetary (where 5 astronauts are buried) before landing at Dulles.
It quickly become one of those times where you KNOW you're taking WAY too many pictures, but you can't stop yourself. This is only a very small sample of what we came home with!
This is the closest picture we got. We had some camera envy of the fancy devices others' had, but even in this picture you can see how well-traveled Discovery is.
From the Washington Post: “She’s old and venerable and has lots of quirks,” said former shuttle astronaut Piers Sellers, who flew on Discovery in 2006. “We had sheets of paper that said, ‘When this alarm goes off, ignore it.’ Or, ‘this fuel gauge doesn’t work.’ She just does that. She had a lot of little quirks, but her heart was solid.”
In the end: happy kids! I think we were successful in sharing with them some of the magic of NASA and the space program.
Brady wasn't sure about playing baseball this year, and I think he doesn't love it all the time. (Practices can get pretty boring!) He has been playing really well the last few games though, and has a HUGE grin on his face when he gets a good hit!
