General Washington

On our recent trip to the DC area, one of our many busy days was spent at Mount Vernon. I could write a whole post about how great that long day was. I would mostly talk about the beautiful gardens and orchards which have been recreated after archeological digs to discover exactly where Washington had planted his plants and trees in his experimental gardens. Or I might write about the master blacksmith who actually works there on the property, in the original blacksmith shop, creating hinges and tools for the historical restoration that is in progress. But, maybe I'll save that post for another day. What I really loved was how much my boys were taken in with the history at Mount Vernon. They both have been completely captivated by the story of George Washington: the boy, the soldier, the general, the president, the farmer and the hero. They both had some spending money to use at various gift shops during the week. It had been given them by their great grandma when we arrived at her house. My oldest was spending his in little chunks everywhere. My youngest is more deliberate and had been carefully waiting for the perfect purchase. At Mount Vernon, that little guy decided it was definitely time to spend his. He departed from the Lady Washington Shop with a hat and a gun just like General Washington. The photo above is of him in the gardens at the estate. He's been speaking of himself in the third person, "General Washington needs to do this, General Washington doesn't like that . . . " ever since.

And today, I'm afraid that perhaps some other part of Washington has rubbed off on my little imp. Around 4 PM he emerged from the playroom to find me working on the laptop in the living room. He looked at me very seriously.

"Mommy, I will not tell a lie," he said.

"OK." I responded.

"I will not tell a lie. I broke the DVD player. I really did. Come see what I did."

I followed him back to inspect the scene of the crime.

He's right. He broke it. So, we may now be living more and more like General Washington. The digital switch already left this non-cable family with no channels at all (we're not so conveniently geographically located for the digital converter box to work well). So, we were already mourning the loss of PBS. And now, I guess, our beloved movies can't be watched on the TV either. Maybe we really will just move to Mount Vernon. I think I could deal with it.