A very American Fourth

   During the previous Fourth of July weekend, my brother and his family were visiting. We tried our best to check off all the boxes in a typical DC summer weekend.

   First, we went to a picnic. There are no pictures of this, but I was particularly please that the hosts invited many vegetarians because that made the potluck extra delicious for me. I am now inspired to try making my own grilled paneer. I can also recommend taking mint limeade (no recipe required: mint, sugar, lime juice, water and ice) to a picnic in 90F-degree weather. I can guarantee that you will be the most popular attendee.

   Then we hit the beach. I miss the white sand of the Miami beaches, but these beaches made up for their lack of tropical-ness with their abundance of cute children to whom I am related.

   We splurged for day passes on the metro ($14 a person adds up pretty quickly). Metro trains pretty much count as an amusement park ride for the under-8 crowd, so this was worth it.

    We stopped for pictures outside the White House. There are always a million protests taking place near the White House. Some are for well known-causes (for/against abortion, Egypt) and other protesters just seem to be there for the long term with more general goals, like peace. In any case, it always provides me with a strong sense of place to be surrounded by all these politically-active people.

   We ended by going to the zoo. A word to the wise - if you think the weather is too hot to go to the zoo, it is. Not only were we miserable, the animals were all hiding in cool, shady places. So we braved the heat and humidity to look at a lot of rocks. Said my brother: "If you just pretend it's an arboretum, it's a nice place to be."