The Exciting Adventures of Flat Tucker!

I was so excited when I saw a post in the seller forums on Teacher Pay Teachers from Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie's Danielle Sanders asking for volunteers to participate in her class Flat Stanley project. My father had taken Flat Joey, Flat Ally, and Flat Sam on vacations with him for all three of my kids when they were in first grade and had such fun, so with an upcoming Washington DC trip on my agenda I jumped at the chance to sign up!

A couple weeks ago Flat Tucker arrived at my house in Omaha. I prepared Flat Tucker for his upcoming travels by laminating to keep him fresh and dry! Don't want him looking shabby in the nation's capital!

The trip to DC is for my 8th grade son, Joey, and myself. Joey is studying American History this year in school so I decided to take him on a mother/son field trip! Mix some learning in with some bonding! Honestly I love to travel so I'll do just about anything to come up with an excuse to take a trip! At first Joey was a little apprehensive about bringing Flat Tucker along on our vacation because that might not be so "cool" for a teenager you know! I convinced him it would be fun and I promised I wouldn't tag the pictures on Facebook!

Today the big day finally arrived. We were up and ready for the airport at 5 AM! The flight from Omaha to Ronald Reagan National Airport with a stop in St. Louis went smoothly and we even arrived a little early!

Got our luggage and found the Metro for Flat Tucker's first subway ride! Headed for the Hilton Garden Inn only blocks from the White House!

After getting settled we walked over to check out the White House. Joey and I have been here before, exactly 14 years ago. Joey was only 4 months old so he doesn't remember a thing! His impression of the White House was the same as mine was the first time; it's much smaller than you expect it to be, but cool nonetheless! Flat Tucker was pretty impressed too!

Some cute college girls offered to take our picture when they saw the Flat Stanley project! Joey decided it wasn't so uncool when it attracted cute college girls!

It was a beautiful day so we walked from the White House to the Smithsonian's American History Museum. There were saw Dorothy's Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz, Miss Piggy, many things that belonged to different presidents and first ladies, and much, much more. The picture of Flat Tucker and Miss Piggy didn't turn out well due to the dim lighting.

After touring the museum we had our first mishap! The subway station we planned to use was closed so we had to take another and in the confusion we got on the train going the wrong direction! Fortunately we weren't on a time crunch and had time to get off and re-board going the right direction! Needless to say we got a good lesson on subway riding and got to experience lots of it!

After finally arriving at Union Station we ate a quick dinner and then found the spot to board our trolley for the Monuments by Moonlight tour with our driver, Mr. History! Mr. History knew it all! He even knew trivia about the states that everyone was from on the tour! We drove by the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court Building, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Monument, Arlington Cemetery, the White House, and we stopped and got out at the Iwo Jima Memorial, the MLK Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial.

The tour got over about 11, even though that was only 10 Omaha time we were all pretty tired so we took the subway (no wrong way this time!) and headed back to the hotel. Need to get rested to walk around the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms tomorrow, the Ford's Theater, and maybe a bit of the Air and Space Museum!

Continue Reading: Day 2 of the Exciting Adventures of Flat Tucker