ronald reagan presidential library.

at each new location, we do a lot of research about things to do in the area, and then we plan accordingly, timing the things derek wants to do on the weekends and the things he’s less interested in for our weekday activities. while we were at thornhill broome, the top item on his agenda was the ronald reagan presidential library in the simi valley, about 40 minutes away.

i was pretty excited to learn more about the president of my childhood. especially given the current presidential climate in our country.

the kids were at best, resigned to the adventure. and at worst, completely miserable and grumpy. (anna).

and off we went….

the path through the museum was chronological, so we spent a bit of time learning about reagan’s childhood, acting career, early political career and his presidential campaign.

we loved the “inauguration room” where you could read from a teleprompter and pose for an official inauguration photo op, with nancy cheering you on.

if you are tall enough, that is. (isaac declined the offer to be presidential).

then, off to a room dedicated to the assassination attempt, which was isaac’s favorite. (“i mean, i found it very interesting,” he clarified).

we totally loved the oval office replica.

we wandered into the nancy reagan area, where the kids and derek found some screens to test their formal etiquette skills.

the room was filled with gifts from foreign diplomats and such, given to nancy reagan, details of her updated interior design of the white house, and information about the causes she championed. in the middle was this display of some of her famous outfits, along with some info about how she was perceived in the press as a bit obsessed with fashion, and how she responded by poking fun at herself and showing up in all second hand clothes to an event.

soon, we popped out in the huge air force one room, where the plane overlooks the beautiful valley.

there was also a little room, detailing the efforts it took to get the plane into this spot, which was quite an undertaking.

we boarded the plane, but not without having to take a million photos by a library photographer, so that later we could pretend we were interested in the $50 package, just to see how cute they turned out, but knowing that we snapped a few of our own. the “thumbs up”.

“the salute”….

the oval office in the sky.

below the plane, we checked out the presidential motorcade.

and marine one.

and then. our favorite. the jellybean portrait of ronnie. the kids thought it was really fun that he was known for loving jellybeans. there were lots of jellybean surprises all over the museum.

we learned a lot about reagan’s foreign policies and relationships, but obviously, the thing that everyone thinks of is the tearing down of the berlin wall. the exhibit about communism and the soviet union leading up to and during reagan’s presidency was dark and sort of ominous, and we ended up sort of racing through it in hopes of making it to a showtime at another part of the museum.

(we didn’t make it). and there is no backtracking allowed in the library. so, we had to go all the way out and around through everything again, just to get back where we were. by that time, the kids were definitely over it, but thankfully, the final stretch was about reagan in post presidency, with some fun ranch stuff that they were a little bit more interested in.

at this point, we needed some food, so we sucked it up and bought super expensive lunches and found some seats in the outdoor eating area. nearby, there was an actual bit of the berlin wall, overlooking the valley.

so. there’s a special exhibit at the museum dedicated to genghis khan. even though everyone was tired and grumpy, we had paid extra to see it, so we made a quick pass through.

the little huts that they lived in were my favorites.

the artifacts and stuff were cool, but didn’t make the same impact as the big recreated displays.

and then these masks.

we didn’t stop to read too much and/or learn anything. just took pics of cool looking stuff.

finally, we had reached the end of our collective ropes, so we hit up the gift shop, coming away with some us history flash cards and a sweet ronald reagan mug. i learned a lot that i didn’t know about RR, and i know that any presidential library is going to paint it’s prez in the best light possible and that not everything was as hunky dorry as it would have me to believe. but, i sure miss the days of having decent humans in the office of the president. and that’s all i’ll say about that.