So this will be a long post and that is why it has taken me forever to post it. Tom and I went a couple of weeks ago to D.C. and we stayed with my awesome uncle Chad and aunt Sue. We had an extra bonus of having one of my cousins and his wife visiting at the same time due to hurricane Ike. We had so much fun and I think that my feet almost fell off from all the walking that we did. Tom had never been to D.C. so we saw everything and it was really nice weather and the crowds were small because school was back in session. My uncle is in the Air Force and he lives really close so we were able to ride the metro everywhere. Our trip was possible because our friends Drew and Celeste watched Sophie for us, and my sister watched Bree thanks so much! We took the red eye so the first day we were pretty exhausted at the start. My uncle picked us up and took us right to Arlington Cemetery.
This is a Marine funeral which my uncle said is really rare and I think he said that it was his first time watching one with Marines. Marines use white horses and Army uses Black ones.
This is the Army funeral horse I think but the cool thing is the black boot that they have on the saddle to honor the soldier. Oh and this is a lovely pic of me with no shower or sleep for two days!
This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and it is really neat to watch the Change of the Guard. These guys do this in all conditions year round it’s amazing!
View of D.C. from Arlington Cemetery.
These are Segway’s and I have no idea how Tom was able to get me to do these because let’s just say traffic, bumps, rush hour sidewalk pedestrians, and lovely speeds of up to 30 MPH. So I was scared because they give you like ten minutes to feel comfortable on them but tell you not to step off or it will take off on you, and don’t run into anything because you surely will fall and look stupid. So they send us out into downtown D.C. and it is five o’clock and there are so many people walking and driving on the streets I really did panic. Then I had to cross the street and go up the little sidewalk ramp which is great until you get stuck half way up and don’t know how to make the stupid thing move. Yup so I stepped off because I thought I was going to kill Tom who was behind me. Nothing terrible happened luckily but every stupid slope I would get stuck on until finally the tour guide told me how to do it (That really should have been part of the training). So we rode these around for three hours and it was awesome. We were able to see everything in three hours that would have taken us days to see. We still went back to most of the sites to see them on our feet.
This is a blurry view from the top of the Washington Monument looking at the Lincoln Memorial.
WWII Memorial where we spent a long time because, my Papa served in the Navy in WWII and so we took so many pictures to hopefully give him so he can see it.
Bob Dole was there and both Tom and I really only know him from the Viagra commercials.
Lincoln Memorial.
Jefferson Memorial where we had to run and see and then run to the Metro to see the Nationals Baseball game.Tom actually started jogging with some random people because people are always jogging around D.C. and he finally decided to join them. The guys were so excited and were vvery welcoming!!
This is Tom and I with my uncle Chad and aunt Sue on the front row watching the Mets warm up. We had so much fun and laughed pretty hard when we took turns at the batting cage and all of us could only hit one ball out of all the pitches. You see those nice green hats. Well the first 2o,ooo fans were able to get a free one, and of course we were early because we had to do all the fun stuff before. Well the nice gentleman that was handing out the hats would not give me one. I thought he was joking with me and so I kept laughing but was like seriously dude give me my free hat. He then say’s to me you are not old enough. What? I told him I don’t understand and he told me you have to be 21 to get a free one because Miller Light was the sponsor. I laughed and went over to another guy, and he told me that if his boss would not give me one than he couldn’t. What? So Tom and my family are laughing and trying to tell the guy that I have two children and the big one is that I am 27 years old. Nope that did not work he told us that he did not believe us. So at 27 years old I was carded so that I could get my free hat. The guy looked at my license and handed me my hat and walked away. So I know that I had no makeup left after sweating buckets all day, and my hair was a greasy mess from sweat and humidity but I still think I look older than 21. So funny! We had so much fun regardless of my weird experience and it actually was a pretty good game and my uncle Chad had us play a fun game the entire time so it made the time fly. By the end of that night I was dead tired, and we had to wake up early to get our tickets to the Capitol. We forgot our camera the next day but we mainly saw museums and such and we were both really tired and grumpy so we retired to the house early. Thankfully,my lovely uncle and aunt had some great grub for us when we came back. That night we went with the family to the Pentagon 9/11 memorial which was sad because the first bench I look at is a 9 year old little girl and her brother. It is an amazing memorial, and then we went to the new Air Force Memorial and the new FDR Memorial which were both very neat. At the FDR we walked back to our car and we walked along the Potomac and I think that we said hello to a high price hooker because she was all alone late at night sitting on a bench. Weird!!
Air Force Memorial
Pentagon 9/11 Memorial
FDR Memorial has so many waterfalls its really neat.
So the next day we decided that we really needed some down time, so my Cousin Curt and his wife Julie wanted to go to the Temple and that sounded awesome to us. It is amazing and huge and I already get lost in all the Temples in Utah that I just knew that I would struggle to find my way in this one. Inside is amazing but one thing is different than in Utah, they do not have as many cute little ladies, and men standing in every door way showing you where to go. I made it just fine and it was really nice to be somewhere calm and relaxing. The rest of the day my poor uncle tried to teach me how to play tennis. I think that I might be a lost cause. It was so much fun playing for hours and I promised that the next time I would be better!
On our last day we went down to see the White house and to do a little shopping for our girls.
This is where visitors such as Presidents of other countries and really important people get to stay. Our Segway tour guide told us the funniest story about this place. He says that on one of his tours he had a guy that did maintenance or something on this house and so he told the tour that when these important people stay here and when they use the bathrooms the toilets have a 30 minute storage compartment for that person’s waste. Then they run in and retrieve the waste and do all sorts of tests on these people so that they know who is sick, dying and healthy. Gross but really interesting!!Of course the people that stay there have no idea right, otherwise nobody would stay there:)They also put the flag out of the country visiting to welcome them and when there are no visitors’ there is an American Flag out. When we went over to the other side of the White House we were stopped and had to wait for a long time to walk to the front side. Once we were able to walk in front of the White House we noticed that there was a long line of black Suburbans filing in. Must have been someone really special right? Then we flew home to our wonderful girls!!
The End I told you it was long!!
