"George Washington CD"

On March 29th, Swarr Family, Inc. took a little trip. Now if you ask anyone of the adults that went on this trip (and I use that term loosely), we'd say that we went to Washington DC. However, if you were to ask the youngest of our clan where we went, he would tell you we went to George Washington CD...

It was a nice, low budget, weekend trip that I had planned a few weeks ago. It ended up being a good little getaway. We drove down Saturday morning and dumped our bags at our hotel, then we took the Metro to The National Zoo. That night we ended up searching for a place to eat and we ended up at The Elephant and Barrel. I must say that Maribeth and I (and Declan) had a fantastic meal. I say this truthfully: This was one of the best meals that I had in years. Fish and Chips (mine had salt and vinegar), steak crostini and a Guinness.

Day 2 took us to the National Mall. We went to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum and then to the World War II Monument and on the way back to the car, we swung by the Washington Memorial (I might add that for some reason, Declan think that George Washington died in it...).

So now that you got the short and sweet, here are the pictures. Enjoy!

Here's little man on the Metro. He was trying to take it all in.

After a little walk , we arrived at the National Zoo...we never saw a Sloth Bear though...
Awesome cheetahs. Their area was right next to the zebra cages...

peeking Gazelle...

The ever so boring Emu
This is a wolf...not a fox. And its pee is stinky
hungry hungry panda
and after it eats, of course
WE FOUND UNCLE GABE ON A PIECE OF TRASH!!!
sleepy pygmy hippo
The world's largest rodent species. Here you go mom. A Capybara.
a normal size hippo...these things are huuuge! ...and lazy.
A wild horse that only Maribeth can say the name of.
Ask Declan to stand like a meerkat the next time you see him. It's cute. Cuter than this thing anyway.weird monkey.
Self explanatory. click the arrow in the middle if you don't get it.



Rikki Tikki Tavi...er, um. I mean...a mongoose.
Gorilla...and that's a tree trunk next to it, not a giant stone boob.Tiger #1. Sorta scary.
Tiger #2...SUPER SCARY!!
Mommy and Mr. McGoofysmile.
Daddy and Mr. McNotpayattention.
This was cool. They tied 1/2 a head of lettuce to a hunk of driftwood and dropped it in...eat up, guys.
close up.
He didn't move at all. Declan didn't believe me that it was real...even when it did open its eye.Relaxing with some toons after a long day at the Zoo.

Day number 2 takes us to the Smithsonian (here's the castle).
...and here's the Natural History Museum.

After the long track across the mall and up the steps with a stroller (only to find we can't take our drinks inside), Declan and I "cheers" to a good time.

The elephant.
If you look hard, you can see the T-Rex skeleton.
A Pterodactyl. Declan even knows what it's called. Good job, buddy.
Monkey skeleton. pretty cool, eh? Yeah? well...scroll down.
These next 3 pics are ancient sloths. They are about 8-10 feet tall (or more when standing upright) ...awesome!

Mr. Sabretooth.
Giant not-so-woolly-anymore, woolly mammoth.
Ok...minus my brother, this caveman family actually looks just like my family in the 1980s...armpit hair and all.
He's NEVER gonna eat again.Ok then it was off to the Word War II memorial. Absolutely breathtaking. There were three 'towers' like this which represented the 3 major theaters of the war.
Each of the smaller towers represented the 50 states.


Each of these stars represent 100 Americans who died in World War II. In case you can't count them all, there are 4,048 stars.
On the way to the Washington Monument, Declan fed this duck pretzels. Yay!
Then it was on to the Washington Monument...
And the biggest Declan in the world!