It's an exciting moment - possibly the first trip I get to plan for my family using miles and points! My father travels quite a bit for work and has accumulated a hefty chunk of points with IHG and Marriott, and we've been wanting to visit D.C. for a while. This year, our vacations line up such that we can travel together, but I don't know D.C. nearly well enough and am looking for advice on all sorts of things:

1. What's the best place to stay? We likely won't have a car, but I've hard that the DC Metro is quite functional. Should we stay "downtown" near all the attractions, or perhaps a little farther away, where it's cheaper?
2. Is D.C. a good city for point redemptions or, like London, a city where it sometimes makes more sense to just pay for the room with $$ or even stay at a boutique hotel?
3. Since there'll be three of us, we're looking for a suite rather than just a regular room. Again, reasonable redemption rates, or more worth it to pay with $$? Also, any particular hotels you can suggest that have suites? (the only ones I can find are horribly overpriced, for obvious reasons I suppose)
4. Since we have more than a week, our travel time is flexible. Is it better to go during the weekend (and deal with lots of other weekend tourists) or during the weekdays (when there might possibly be fewer tourists?) My parents are interested in things like the White House tour, etc - will things like that be unavailable to the public on weekends?
5. Any other advice for visiting DC on points?

I know this is a lot of questions, but hopefully those that have traveled to DC recently (and not 10+ years ago like me) can provide answers to some of these questions.

Edit: I realized that perhaps this thread might make more sense in the DC/Baltimore forum so if a mod could move it that would be appreciated.