Day 7: More Museums and Fargo Friends

We've been in DC long enough where we're starting to figure things out. Sort of.

We can navigate the Metro with a fair level of competence. We have learned that nobody eats dinner before 7, and the liquor stores close at 10. We might try to navigate our way back to the house without GPS, with mixed results.

This morning, Evie wanted to revisit the Air and Space Museum, so she could show her brother the spaceships. He complied.

We took the Metro -Felix's favorite ride - to get pizza and milkshakes from a contestant we'd watched on Top Chef.

The legs in the above photo might imply we're eating pizza at a not-quite-family-friendly establishment; actually, Evie was photobombed by a Jimi Hendrix concert poster.

After lunch, Evie and I ventured to the National Gallery of Art. She has been wanting to go there for weeks, and she wants to be an artist when she grows up.

She was a good sport, even though she was tired. She patiently sat through a slightly bizarre film on Russian ballet.

She paused at some of the paintings, making thoughtful observations like "Up close, you can see the colors, but far away it looks like a regular picture."

But soon, she grew tired and homesick.

She asked to go home to Minnesota. She said she was having trouble remembering the feel of her cat's fur and the sound of the neighbor boys' voices. She misses the boys most of all.

Like Evie, I was good friends with my childhood neighbors. Jai, my next-door neighbor, and I played horses in her playroom and explored the woods behind my house and rode our bikes in the cul-de-sac. She now lives in Washington, DC. Tonight, we had dinner with her and her husband.

They are fun, kind, wonderful people.

I love when life puts wonderful people right next to me. It seems to be happening a lot lately.

We had 5 years of life to catch up on since our last visit, while simultaneously entertaining two little kids through a four-course dinner at a classy Italian restaurant. How did we pull it off?

Gelato:

And a little bit of outright silliness:

I've noticed something, thanks to this trip of reunions.

You can get older, you can establish a career, you can stop playing in the woods, you can move halfway across the country... But a happy childhood doesn't have to end, as long as you remember how it felt to be that kid. And, if you forget, the important people can remind you.