No school, the Pentagon, and an award!

Tom was scheduled to receive an award at work (the Meritorious Service Medal) and we had decided we would ALL go, which meant taking Owen out of school. Since Tom knew he’d get the rest of the day off, we decided to make a special day of it and do something really worthwhile of missing school—take the kids to Baltimore to the National Aquarium!

A family selfie before we headed out:

Thank heavens for the HOV express lane—this was the standstill traffic on the way into DC (well worth the few bucks it cost us):

Then we had about a 3/4 mile walk in to the Pentagon from the parking lot. Yeesh—Tom has to do that twice a day. Tom was obviously already cleared, but the rest of us had to go through a metal detector and get wanded. Then once we were inside the Pentagon, we had to walk clear to the other side. With my horrid sense of direction, there’s absolutely NO way I would not get lost if I was on my own.

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. 🙂 There were lots of wide open hallways and empty corridors with nondescript doors and exiting one ring to cross a “street” to get to the next ring. And while logically I know the Pentagon is HUGE, it didn’t seem as huge as I thought it would (if that makes sense).

And then we were in his office. No windows in the whole thing, of course, and a tiny cubicle:

Before the award ceremony we had a brief meeting with Tom’s commanding general (the Senior Communications Officer of the entire Marine Corps) where he met me and the kids and had a few get-to-know-each-other minutes. Owen was really great with him and shook his hand and answered questions.

Then it was off to the conference room to wait. The kids had fun checking out the big room and seeing themselves on the big TV:

And as more and more people filed into the room, Owen got more and more shy and hid behind me the entire time. Katie was shy, too, but at least sat quietly in a chair.

A coworker of Tom’s offered to take pictures so I wouldn’t have to worry about it so that was nice (even though I hated to give up control).

The general welcomed everyone and jokingly asked what time people were thinking of leaving and there was a pregnant pause while no one said anything so I piped up “9:07” (implying we’d be leaving as soon as the award ceremony was over) and everyone laughed and the general said Tom was welcome to leave and go celebrate and everyone else was to leave at noon. 🙂

The kids with free reign to run through the halls on the way back to daddy’s office:

The view as we are leaving Tom’s ring and heading directly across the courtyard to the other side to exit the building and head to the parking lot (this is where it seems much smaller than I thought it would be):

Letting Owen ride the escalators on our way out (since he loves them so much):

Then Tom gave us a mini tour of the food court area, some of the shops on that level, and we stopped at the chocolatier for some yummy treats! Then it was the long trek back to the car!

Then it was an hour’s drive to Baltimore for the next part of our adventure…