{9/11: Exhibit}

As most people are aware, the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 is coming up on Sunday.  We have been watching programs on television about 9/11 and really for the first time talking to our kids about what happened that day.  Ayden and Meysa are, I think, finally old enough to understand what happened.  As a family we have watched on the Discovery Channel a really neat program about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and what is going into rebuilding the lives of the people so affected by the events of 9/11.  (I would highly recommend people watching it, it is a series of episodes -http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/the-rising/).  Ayden especially has been interested about what happened and why.  He was just a few months old when it happened so of course he doesn't remember it, but he will ask Ryan and I to tell him about what we remember.  Lucky for us there is an exhibit in the Museum of American History that has artifacts that have been recovered and also donated to the Smithsonian Museum to be on display for the week leading up to the anniversary.  They will then be sent to New York to be part of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.  We took the kids down to the National Mall on Monday and we stood in line for an hour and a half to see the exhibit.  There were artifacts from the crash site in Pennsylvania that were being seen for the first time ever.  What was neat about the exhibit was that the pieces on display were not behind glass, they were on the table (of course we couldn't touch them) right in front of us.  For me it made them more tangible and real.  They also each had a story to tell, who they belonged to, how they were recovered. (you can go to smithsonianchannel.com/stories to view the videos they have made about each artifact and the story it tells)  As we waited in line to go through the exhibit I talked to the kids about what they were going to see, and that we needed to be reverent while walking through.  Meysa looked at me funny when I used the word "reverent" because that is usually used when we are talking about church and religious settings.  But I wanted the kids to be aware and respect what these pieces of history represented.  Lives lost, acts of heroism shown, America coming together when everything was falling apart.  The kids were wonderful, even little Wyatt.  You could feel the reverence in the room from everyone and it was a neat experience for our family to be there and yes it was worth the time spent in line waiting to see it.  Ryan wanted me to take pictures, but I wanted to experience it without the lens in my way.  Ayden and Meysa had their cameras out and were snapping photos so we have some from the day.  We also saw some of the other exhibits in the museum that day.  The girls loved the collection of the First Ladies dresses.  I think Meysa took about a hundred pictures in just that room alone.  We also saw the transportation exhibit which the boys loved.  After we were done we headed out to the Mall and ate our lunch and enjoyed being together as a family!!  I thought it was a perfect way to spend the holiday!!