a birthdate

Robbie's birthday was pretty low-key. We wanted to do something nearby and something Robbie hasn't done before, so I took him to the National Gallery of Art down on the Mall. I'm actually more familiar with the museum's East Wing (modern and contemporary art) so we spent some time in the West Wing (13th c. to 19th c. art) checking out the old stuff. It's a gorgeous building and I hadn't been down there in a while. It feels like a European museum, which is kind of fun. We checked our bags and pretended we were tourists and enjoyed darting around the exhibits and stroking our chins knowingly about the art we really didn't know much about (like Paul from Midnight in Paris). We probably only saw like 10% of the building in the end. But we saw "Watson and the Shark," which was probably the most important item on our agenda.

It was really hot outside so we found a cool, shady spot for a picnic, where we partook of the fruity loaf that once was a sad cake. We also had to defend our spot from a squirrel invasion—the squirrels on the Mall LOVE people because there are so many people trying to feed them and hold them (seriously, it's weird, it's like they've never seen squirrels before), and this particular squirrel was freaking me out because it was practically sitting on our blanket. We made it out unscathed in the end and we didn't share a single morsel of the fruity loaf with him. Maybe next time, squirrel.