Sorry Kids, Your Mom Is A Nerd...and a bonus

I took the girls to the first ever National Science and Engineering Expo. The words are a link to the festival website. It was soooo cool, and really great to get to be a part of something that (at least in my opinion) is really important. There were literally a hundred thousand people there, and over 1500 booths, demonstrations and stage shows. The biggest area was on the National Mall and I'm telling you there were 500 booths - it sounds crazy, but that might be a low number. We spent a couple of hours there and due to the crowds and Bree being a monkey, we got to about 15 booths....that was ONE PERCENT! So amazing.
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So we drove up to Alexandria where we could park for free and take the Metro in. I knew parking would be next to impossible in the city, plus the girls were super excited to get to ride the train. This is going to sound crazy to you city people, but this was literally the 2nd time in my entire life that I've navigated a public transportation system by myself. =) I was extra happy when I discovered that the Federal Triangle is pretty close to anywhere I wanted to go and it's a direct shot from Alex. Yay!

This photo gives you a tiny idea...but you have to use your imagination. Each of those tents was a string of about 15-30 booths arranged in 'neighborhoods' of like-sciences. Some of the categories we saw were robotics, health science, a whole section for girls (yay!), chemistry, etc. There was an entire row of booths showing the physics of music and then across the way I actually heard a booth volunteer explaining to a ten year old that "you can't stop the laser, you just stop the PARTICLES in the laser"... I don't know what she was talking about but when we passed again five minutes later, she was having the kid explain whatever they had been discussing back to her in his own words. I wanted to hug her. =)

In the girl section. Carly got to drive a motorized water robot. She was pretty good!

Then we made a car. It has a tiny design flaw (namely that the paperclips don't really allow so much for axle movement...) but it was totally fun. It reminded me of Odyssey of the Mind.

When we'd (they'd) had as much as we could take, we walked down to the Starbucks for a snack. Scones and chocky milk revived my little scientists and they enjoyed watching the enormous pigeons get blown around in the wind. Bree was in different clothes because she had an accident all over me...I wish I'd brought my own change of clothes, but I just settled for being grateful I have on dark colors and it could have been much worse.

Carly had a sleepover last night and came home in this Chiefs jersey - Sophia's dad who happens to be a Chiefs fan thought it was so funny, and Carly refused to take it off so she got to wear it. She got about 7 hours of sleep, so she was a litttttle punchy. Still such a good girl - and this is a cute photo even though she's got halfway-crazy eyes. =)

Hahahaha okay, so sibling rivalry. I'd heard it was inevitable...but no one ever told me it could be so stinking funny!