Self Portrait of me at the postal museum today

The real history of Good Mail

Ok, so if after reading my crazy pink blog you are not sold on visiting D.C. with your family after hearing about being able to:

• roll Easter Eggs on the White House lawn while dancing 3 feet from Hannah Montana and waving to the first lady from the balcony for free
  
• the cheapest ribbon you will ever find at the ribbon outlet
• being on the same grounds as George Washington at Mt. Vernon
• Ben's Chili bowl
• seeing the Hope diamond at the Natural History Musem (read on for my good mail giveaway)
• trick or treating at the Air and Space Museum

Then today is your day to plan a trip to Washington D.C.!

Today Jeff and the two littles and I went to The Smithsonian National Postal Museum. It has just gone to the top of my favorite Smithsonian Museums. (Jill you are going to go crazy!) I have wanted to go since our first visit to Union Station when we first moved here. It is right across the street from Union Station.
It is one of the most interactive museums for kids. Annie Kate was in school and I can not wait to take her back. They had small magnifying glasses to look up close at stamp collections. These stamps were amazing.

this was one room where the wall just had at least a hundred of doors that slid out full of stamps from all over the world. They were beautiful.this was a panel from Russia.

Currently there is an exhibit there (it will be gone by the end of the summer - don't miss if if you are close!) that talks about the artwork that gets chosen for stamps. They had about 50 stamps that showed the original artwork that was painted for stamps over the years. It was wonderful. I took this picture for my friend Emily G. as I thought she would appreciate the stamp made of Emily Dickinson. This is the print.

This is the 8 cent stamp that came out the year her and I were both born.

There was a stamp store where you could buy retired stamps at face value. I was going crazy asking the lady how many I could buy, what ones she had in etc. I was just excited buying the stamps as I was buying ribbon by the bolt for $5.00. I thought this lamp was cool that was covered with stamps galore - Jill you should do something like this with all your good mail stamps.
I bought the Happy Birthday Stamps (inspired by Liz who had them all over my birthday package) and some of the Olivia and children books stamps. Even though they are $.39 cent stamps I buy the Tiffany lamp one cent stamps because I like the look of them better than the two cent stamps -
Pony Express exhibit.
The pony express was only running for 19 1/2 months. It was not until today that Jeff informed me that his great, great, great relative was a pony Express rider. I googled him and he came up all over the place and have been reading about him all night. I married into a family of Good Mail originators - who knew?
They had awesome old mailboxes all over the museum.
They had two awesome interactive exhibits.One was where you could punch in someones address and it would print their name on a souvenir postcardwe only did one, but next time I am bringing my good mail list with me. Caroline loved it. So one of my blog readers is getting a post card soon.
then the other awesome part of the museum was learning how custom mail is sent out. You punch in your name, the screen takes a photo of you and gives you a plastic credit card. You take the card through the museum and at the end it prints you a letter and envelope and shoots out of a machine for you to take home as a souvenir. It is awesome!

The girls were hungry and our time became quit limited once Caroline started checking out as we walked through the many stamp collections. I thought about Jill the whole time, the Queen of good mail. Did you know my friend Jill has compiled a list of 100 bloggers address to encourage good mail, she knows all their birthdays and reminds everyone of their special day (birthday post coming soon, i promise)
So I only had 30 seconds in the gift shop to get something for the Good Mail Queen. I can't show the item here as it would ruin her surprise. We ran across the street to Union Station to get some lunch. I was thrilled to add another photo to my "me in D.C." gallery. You can't tell by the photo but the arches as you walk in are eye catching. The amazing thing about Union Station is it has some of the busiest people in the world along side some who have nothing to do. There are men running around in suits everywhere as there are men asking for change. It seems like such an extreme. I watched two men in suits going down to the metro who looked like the veins were going to pop out of their head with stress and excitement. They could have come out of the Capitol trying to get a new law in motion. So many people around there with so many stories to tell.

This was a quote on the wall at the museum

"The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities."

So how could I write about the good mail mecca and not do a good mail giveway.
So without googling the Hope Diamond that sits in the Natural History Museum down the street from the postal museum

how many carats is the Hope Diamond?

The closest guess (by Friday morning) will get 26.2 yards of luscious ribbon.

hey if you spent the time to read this long post you might as well get the chance to win something as well as learn something!

also if you have a minute take a gander at the new exhibit coming up this summer and these stamps...