Twilight Tattoo

Tonight we got to experience a rare treat! We got to see a military tattoo! Specifically the Twilight Tattoo. It was my 2nd after The Royal Edinburg Military Tattoo and Jacob's first. We were running a little late and parked further away than I had anticipated so we missed not only the pre show but also the first few minutes. When we were walking up a nice young soldier in his dress blues approached us and offered to help me carry our chairs since I "had my hands full." It was an honor to be served in that way and made us feel well taken care of. He warned us that we probably wouldn't be able to find a place to sit but we did manage to squeeze our chairs in beside the reserved seating and had a pretty good view considering we were late.

First of all the backdrop for the tattoo is gorgeous. It was also free for us to park (a little ways off) and free to attend! So basically it was AWESOME. The sound system and pageantry were all spot on (which says a lot coming from a theatre major). There was however lots of artillery and small arms demonstrations several of which were aimed toward the audience so giving Caleb a heads up would have been wise on our part.

During the show it wasn't a problem but after the show Caleb had zero interest in approaching anyone who was holding a weapon... Hard to blame him.

Luckily we found a lovely soldier who was passing out buttons. This was an awesome score for a four year old. We called it his treasure and he kept asking me to put it on his shirt for him.

Then we walked over to see the artillery where we unfortunately discovered that they were sorta pointed in the direction of the Washington Monument. This did Caleb in because he's been asking us to take him to see it for weeks. He was SURE they had been and would continue to shoot at it.

So we got to go talk to the fine men working the big guns and Jacob helped them explain to Caleb that they weren't shooting real bullets… and when that didn't work he showed him that this particular gun was much more likely to hit the Jefferson Memorial which seemed to help Caleb's mood… sorry Jefferson.




All in all it was an awesome experience… next time we will show up MUCH earlier than we did so we get better seats and probably bring ear protection for James. We brought snacks and bug spray which while we didn't use much of either I'd recommend just to be on the safe side. I really hope we get to catch it again later this summer because it really was a lot of fun.

Oh and I totally lucked out because we past a playground on the way back to the car so I got to watch Caleb run his wiggled out while Jacob was awesome and went to get the car.