Today in honor of July 4th and since we have a possible government shutdown looming I took the children on a little tour of the capitol. It is quite near our house and often coming home at night the children will point it out. In my work as a writer for Hmong Times I spend a fair amount of time at the capitol and I have been known to take the children with me on assignment. But I didn’t realize that they were fascinated with the building. When they found out today’s work would take me near the capitol they really wanted to go inside.

They were craning their heads to see everything.
 

And there is a lot to see at the capitol.

The day turned into an impromptu history and civics lesson. We went to the Senate and I pointed out our Senator and talked a bit about elections. We looked at the statues and commemorations and I explained a bit about the Civil War.

They wanted to know the name of each of the statues and what the men did. Two said, “I sure am learning a lot, I like it!”

I explained that this is the “people’s house.” And that we should feel comfortable coming here (I am still working on that one). Let’s see how often they ask to go now.