A Trip Downtown on September 11th

Since Ben needed to go into work downtown today for a few hours, I decided to ride along and take Paul to see an exhibit at the National Building Museum, "LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition," which featured 15 buildings from around the world made entirely from LEGO bricks by architect Adam Reed Tucker.

It was pretty cool to see them. But what was especially fun was to build with LEGOs in the adjacent lab.

Don't you think you just have to have one of these neat tables? I love the trough in the back for holding all the LEGO pieces.


Those brown and black things coming out of Paul's structure are stairs. I thought it was neat how he used them to make his tower look like it was flying.


Later we met Ben for lunch and had milkshakes at Ted's Bulletin up on Capitol Hill.

It was a great day.

While we were walking around Capitol Hill, though, I remembered being on the Hill nine years ago, during the terrorist attack. That day was also spectacularly beautiful, with sunny blue skies and a perfect warm temperature.

I told Paul about how we didn't really know what was happening on that chaotic day, how scary it was to realize that the country was under attack, how confusing it was not knowing if another plane was heading towards the White House or the Capitol, and how, when the Library of Congress finally decided we should close up for the day, I walked up to the Capitol just to see for myself that it was really still there.

I'll never forget how unreal all the death and destruction and hatred seemed as I walked in peace and beauty on the Hill that afternoon.