DC: The 4th of July or Georgia Saves the Day

My biggest regret of this trip is that I didn't take more pictures with my cousins. We spent the morning and afternoon of the 4th of July hanging out and eating incredibly good BBQ chicken on patriotic paper plates. I really am so grateful to my Aunt Lori and Uncle Mike who let us use their home as a base!

We decided that, in order to "beat" traffic, we would stay the night of the 4th in a hotel in DC. This means we took the metro from our hotel to downtown, and on our way saw a million interesting things. I had to tell Scott to stop taking pictures of every old building.

To escape kill time before the fireworks (and to escape the heat) we explored the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. It was interesting that we ended up spending 2 hours on the first floor alone! They had every kind of animal posed in crazy realistic positions. For some reason, Georgie was all about this terrifying hippo...

 Mummies, and dinosaurs- I mean it was crazy. We loved it. But alas, the museum had to close so we went and staked out our fireworks spot:

 Not too shabby eh? And we didn't even have to fight for it!

The fireworks were crazy. CRAZY! The whole time, I was sure it was a finale. They went on for what felt like forever too! And don't ask me how, but Miss G slept through the entire show. I woke her up to try and take a picture but she just pointed at the fireworks, smiled and then promptly went back to sleep.

So that's all the pictures, but the real story of the day comes AFTER the fireworks.
We decided to take a metro closer to where we were sitting since we didn't think we would be able to find the metro station we had originally gotten off at. Pretty much everyone who was in DC also wanted to get on the metro at the same station. It was INSANE how crowded it was. Like, strangers stomach pressed against my back, shoulder to shoulder INSANE. And Georgia decided to wake up for that.
While we're waiting in this mob with all our crap (including a huge stroller), Georgia starts loving life. We are all sweating like crazy, and a sticky Georgia realizes she has a close-up-and-personal audience. She starts smiling and laughing and clapping and blowing kisses to everyone who looks her way. I heard one teenage boy say:
"The only reason I'm not pushin' is because of her!"
Everyone was incredibly kind to us and loved watching Georgie.
Once we got to the metro platform, we had pretty much no idea what train to get on and the place was so crowded that we couldn't see a map. We used some basic logic and somehow got on a train.
The wrong train.
So off we got and then had to wait for the right train- except every single one was PACKED.
We start getting real nervous because our hotel shuttle stops running at 11pm.
And Georgia? Blowing kisses. Cracking up. Grabbing and people's glasses like she's known them all for years. Lovin' life.
We finally cram onto a train and make it to where we need to meet our shuttle. We are 15 minutes too late. So we trek to a nearby hotel to call OUR hotel and beg for someone to come pick us up.
A lady from the front desk drives our hotel shuttle to come get us, and while we are showering her with thank you's she says:
"I'm only here because of that baby right there!"
Apparently, she had remembered Georgia and wanted to spend extra time with her because she thought she was that cute.
Yeah.
We get back to the hotel about midnight, and front desk lady asks if it's alright if she carries Georgie to the elevator. Of course we agreed, and right as the elevator doors open- what does Georgia do? Gives her a kiss. This lady BEAMED.
It was ridiculous. Georgie girl melted about a million hearts that night.

I can honestly say that I do not think we would have made it back to the hotel in the amount of time we did if it were not for our stinkin' adorable and goodhearted kid. She really did save the day.