As a final entry in his series about the Obama inauguration, I asked the Father of All Trips to reflect on what it meant to him as a citizen, a parent, and especially as a traveling dad. He titled this entry “This is Hope.”

I am worried about a lot of things these days. Given the state of the economy, I’m glad that my kids are very young and not just about to enter college or the job market. But when I think about the debt burden they’re going to inherit (tens of trillions of dollars) it is hard not to feel gloomy about the future. We’re all traveling with our kids forward in time, and that is a trip that seems especially expensive and difficult to prepare for.

But this week, I took comfort in President Obama’s invocation of 1 Corinthians when he said it was time to “set aside childish things.” In that phrase, I understood the criticism of the political divisions he was aiming at. But as a parent, I also took it as a call to think seriously about how I will accept my responsibility to prepare my own children for their uncertain future.

I still want to shield them from the harsher realities. For instance, I will continue to keep them away from network TV news coverage and to fold the morning paper to hide upsetting images and headlines. But I want to be especially vigilant about how they see me spending money, acquiring things I don’t need. And I want to involve them in volunteer activities because even at their young ages, they can help with things like the annual rivers and streams clean-up. Small steps, I know, but then they are still pretty small citizens.

There is a lot of talk right now about how tough times can lend great clarity about priorities, and I think that’s true. On the large scale, I’m thrilled by the clarity of the new ethics rules and the closure of Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA prisons. And personally, those very decisions make me feel more confident about opening the paper in the morning and planning for my next trip outside of this country with my kids.

This post is the second written by the Father of All Trips, Matt. I asked him to keep his eagle eye on people who attended the inauguration with their children, partly because I was in awe of anyone who had the courage and the wherewithal to do so. These are his observations and photos.

Taking kids to the Obama inauguration was strongly discouraged. The inauguration Web site told families not to bring young children because of the anticipated massive crowds. Strollers were among the items specifically prohibited from the Mall (along with firearms and explosives). From what I could see, many people took this to heart.

Although there were very few families with little kids, a major exception was African American families. I saw good many African American parents attending with their kids—and a few of them with grandparents, too. This was clearly worth the trouble for them. It was a pilgrimage.

If small children were not much in evidence, I did see a several families who made the mistake of brining teenage kids with them. On my Metro ride into town, one couple had to hustle off the train at their stop and their teenage son shuffled lazily behind, saying to the benefit of the rest of us, “Worst idea EVER.” I’m not sure the irony was as devastating as he intended for it to be, but I do know that his parents were in for a day of such witticisms (lucky them). Then in the huge crush at the Blue Ticket Gate, a teenage girl was very concerned that her father had led the family to cut in line and kept insisting that they go to the back of the line before they got caught. (The back of the line at that point was a block away and probably 5,000 people back at a minimum.) She was especially rattled by one very noisy woman who spent about 5 minutes in line hollering at others whom she felt were cutting. Then she spent another 5 minutes out of line, trying direct people. The teenage girl hissed, “See that? She’s official! She’s got a red had on” (She was not; the security officials wore blue hats.) Then the teenage girl hissed to her father, “FINE. Then when we get kicked out, I’ll just laugh and say ‘I told you so.’”

The little children I saw were tired and cold by the end of the ceremony, but I witnessed no meltdowns, which was pretty impressive. I think the palpable pride and joy made even the cold and the crush of people tolerable for them. It certainly did for me.

I’m going to write a full post about our day at the Mount Vernon estate but also wanted to share this photo of Teddy for Photo Friday at Delicious Baby.

I rented one of the audio tours thinking that it would be just the thing for 6-year-old Tommy, since it includes many kid-friendly entries about what such things as what a “ha-ha” wall is and what one uses a “necessary” for. But it also helped 3-year-old Teddy manage the wait to get into the mansion. Here he is listening to the story of what George Washington had for breakfast. Apparently this is serious business.

If you had asked me this morning I would have said our trip to Washington DC was just a little bit cursed. A pipe cracked over the entryway to our hotel suite and we woke to the dripping of water and a bowing ceiling, which necessitated packing everything up and moving to a different room first thing. I remember the days when this would have meant throwing our clothes back in the suitcase and grabbing a laptop bag, but with the kids in tow it proved to be a 45-minute operation including one last sweep of the room, which revealed the inevitable left-behind sippy cup.

The nice thing about this is that we now have a two-bedroom, two-bathroom suite, much to the children’s delight. Poor things. All they wanted was to stay here and play all day and instead they were all over the city on foot. Or at least Tommy was – Teddy got his last hurrah in the stroller (I’m anticipating its demise soon and it will not be replaced).

I’m going to write in more detail about different parts of our trip later this week but wanted offer a few highlights of today’s fun:

• We walked 15 blocks from Georgetown up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House where, you will be pleased to know, they are already building the inauguration stand. This made it very difficult to get a good photo, although I did try. I felt this was important since POTUS is Tommy’s current stated career goal. On the way there we talked about the role our family would play. Matt gets to be Vice President, but I get to be Chief of Staff. (And yes, Tommy did know that there was such a role having heard me and Matt discuss it. Our Future Wonk of America.)

• We walked down past the Ellipse and over to the National Museum of Natural History where we saw, among many other things, rocks that were billions of years old, soil from all 50 states, and a much-enlarged representation fo the atomic structure of quartz. I reminisced about how my sister set off the alarm there circa 1976 when she leaned in too close to the Hope Diamond.

• We walked (are you getting the theme here? I feel like I should have my feet in a bucket of ice) another four or five blocks up to the National Portrait Gallery, where both boys were taken not at all by the photographs of Lincoln we had brought them there to see. We ended up wandering instead into the American art wing where they were enchanted by the folk art exibit, which includes a huge altar made of silver and gold tin foil that was created in the garage of an area janitor.

• And finally, after Matt left us to go to his conference, we walked a good long mile at least back to the Mall, past the Washington Monument, past the reflecting pool, and to the Lincoln Memorial, where Tommy wrote a message of goodwill to Barack Obama on the huge board that is posted there. And then the three of us ascended all of the steep steps.

It has been such a momentous week that I was teary looking at the statue of Lincoln and thinking of all the significance of that place. The boys sensed that it was special (or else were rendered motionless with exhaustion) and so after we had a good look around, we sat for a good twenty mintues on the top step and surveyed the city of our national government, gorgeous and soft in the warm autumn air, for me as full of hope as it has ever been.

It was a lovely day.

There is a rule, unwritten until now, that while adults will use vacations as an opportunity to sleep several hours later than they are accustomed to do while on vacation (thereby distinguishing a vacation from just any other old day) children will wake up earlier, sometimes appallingly so.

Today Tommy awoke just before five, and since he and Teddy are sharing a bed, well, you know what happened. This means that by the time we made it to the Smithsonian from our hotel in Georgetown they had both already been awake for five hours.

In spite of this, we did have a great 90 minutes in the National Air & Space Museum. I took Tommy to a planetarium show about collisions in space that blew both our sleep-deprived minds – did you know that the moon was formed in 30 days? Tommy was also thrilled to stand inches away from the plane the Wright brothers flew and to watch computer-enhanced films of their first four successful flights.

But before we had a chance to see the entire museum, Tommy asked if he could go outside to “get his wiggles out” (a phrase used by his teacher, bless her). When we got out onto the Mall, he proceeded to run spastically around the way only an exhausted 6-year-old can while Teddy flopped in his stroller as if his legs had stopped working. I looked at them both and realized there was no way I was keeping them down there until the late afternoon as I had originally planned (especially since I would be doing the afternoon and evening solo – Matt is here for a conference). I jettisoned the visit to the cool tacqueria up on Capitol Hill and a jaunt through the National Portrait Gallery and instead we headed back to our hotel.

After long naps, they were both in better shape, but it was of course too late to head back downtown. So we walked along the towpath that lines the canal in Georgetown. It was a beautiful golden afternoon, unseasonably warm. The path was full of college kids doing what they do – making out, lying asleep, running. So much youth and vigor and beauty and freedom made me almost want to weep but my two grumbled along like little old men. Teddy was especially opinionated calling it a “boring” canal and a “boring” city and only displaying enthusiasm when a plane would fly low overhead (which, happily for him, happened every two minutes as it is the flight path for Reagan National). Tommy asked when he was going to get to go to an art museum. And I thought longingly about the chic shops lining M Street and sighed.

Don’t feel too bad for me. Tomorrow is a new day. And we’ve told Tommy in about ten different ways that if he wakes up and it is still completely dark out he is not to move.

Yes, the Obamas are probably measuring for curtains (hooray!), but before they move in, the MOAT family is going to take the city by storm this weekend, armed with a both a new digital camera and mini camcorder (yes, I’m threatening the potential vlog entry). After all the excitement of the election, I’m really looking forward to showing the kids what our government is all about in the city where it all happens.

I haven’t completely firmed up our plans, but the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, and the National Zoo are all good bets. We will only see the White House from the outside, but will be dining at Union Station and strolling the streets of Georgetown.

I’m hoping to live blog during the trip, assuming no technical difficulties. Please feel free to leave comments with your suggestions for must-sees.