D.C.

I think Washington, D.C. is one of the neatest places to visit. There is so much history and so much to learn there. Dave and I were lucky enough to be able to go to D.C. a few weeks ago, and we got to go for 8 days! That felt like so much time, and we did so many things, but still felt like we barely even scratched the surface of things to do there. Originally, Lydia was going to come with us, but after a while I finally convinced Dave that it wasn't going to be a very baby friendly trip and that it might be better for her and for us if we left her home with grandparents. So, we had a baby free trip (which was great for about 3 days, and then I started missing her like crazy! It was still such a good thing she didn't come though - she wouldn't have enjoyed it, and we wouldn't have had as much fun either) and we got to see and do SO many things. WE took about a zillion pictures, so there's a nice little warning for you. :)

The first morning we were there, we spent some time in Arlington National Cemetery. I think Arlington is a really sacred place. I have been there a few times now, and each time I am constantly humbled by the row after row after row of white grave markers that so clearly show the cost of freedom. I will be forever grateful for the courageous and brave men and women throughout the history of our nation who have, as Abraham Lincoln said, "given the last full measure of devotion" to preserve the freedoms that we have today. We live in an amazing country, and I will always be proud and extremely thankful to be an American.

We spent some time at Arlington looking up some famous graves. Dave, of course, had an entire folder of printed out articles about each of the graves we were visiting, just in case we wanted to learn more about them. Haha. My history loving husband at his finest. :)

We also got to see a really neat changing of the guard while we were there. We just happened to be there while there was a wreath changing ceremony in connection with the changing of the guard. We saw all five branches of the military, each with at least 15+ representatives marching up to the tomb with a full color guard and even a military band. They all performed everything with such preciseness and exactness. It was really awesome to see the level of respect that surrounds the tomb.

A little snippet of the ceremony. Look at how precise all of the soldiers are!

Arlington lets each family choose a religious symbol they would like to have placed on the top of the headstone that identifies them with a certain religion. For Mormons, it is the angel Moroni blowing his trumpet. We only saw a few of them. 

We learned that Arlington has an average of 27 funerals per day. Per day! Since we were there in the morning, we heard Taps about 8 or 9 times, as well as the 21-gun salute. We saw a few carriages with caskets driving through the cemetery as well. It was really a neat thing to experience.

The tomb of the unknown soldier is behind us.

Since Dave was out there mostly for work, his boss and his wife came with us. They were so much fun, and I had a great time getting to know them better. Here's a nice view from Arlington of the Lincoln Memorial.

After Arlington, we made a little pit stop at the Marine Corps (Iwo Jima) Memorial...

And then we were off to the Air & Space Museum extension at the Dulles airport. They have an ENORMOUS airplane hangar there that is just FULL of airplanes that were too big for the Smithsonian that is on the National Mall. It had the Enola Gay (the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima), the space shuttle Discovery, and a bunch of other cool planes. We could have spent hours in there!

Seeing this airplane was like a trip to Mecca for Dave. He was just staring at it for the longest time. What a cutie. :)

I really don't know what this airplane ever accomplished, but it was so cute I had to take a picture!

Space Shuttle Discovery!

We learned that this shuttle flew 39 missions into space, and also launched the Hubble Telescope. Pretty cool. It was absolutely enormous.

The next day we woke up early and went to see the WWII memorial. We were actually going to meet a group of WWII veterans who were supposed to be there on an honor flight, but they weren't there. We were bummed about that. But, it was a great morning to see some of the memorials, and the weather was perfect!

I just LOVED this quote. That is exactly what I think of when I see our flag.

Next, we sent Dave's boss and his wife on a tour of the white house while Dave and I just wandered around the mall and the outside of the white house for a little bit. We had already done a tour of the white house last time we came, and they really don't let you see much. I swear it took longer to go through the security screening process than it did to actually go on the tour. Everyone should do it once, but it's not something you need to repeat. But - we totally should have gone because Dave's boss and his wife got to see President Obama! They were just finishing their tour when the workers there ushered everyone out to the front lawn, because they needed to clear the house since the President was leaving. Marine One flew down onto the front lawn, he walked right out and waved to the crowd, got on the helicopter and flew away! Even though we are not Obama fans, we so wished that we would have taken a tour because how cool is it to see the President regardless of your opinions of the man!? We felt totally gypped.

This is as close as we could get when we found out the President was leaving. They blocked off all access roads for about a mile outside of the white house and had police guards and dogs at every possible entrance. This guy was right in front of us.

Look at all the guys on the roof! Dave's boss said there were swat people in the bushes all around too, ready for anything.

After we watched Marine One fly over our heads, we went back to the Washington Monument for a ride in the elevator to the top. I actually didn't think you could go to the top anymore - turns out you can! And it gave us an awesome view of the city.

A North, South, East, and West view from the top of the George Washington monument. Check out whose face is on the grass in the picture on the top right! Haha. We had no idea what this was all about until we got back down and I read some news articles about it. Apparently it is an art display of sand and the artist goes all over the world depicting famous people in sand. 

After the monument, we had lunch at a Farmer's Market that was just outside of the Department of Agriculture. It might have been my favorite meal of the whole trip. It was just local vendors selling their yummy sandwiches and such. I got a chicken empanada and a loaf of cranberry apple bread. Super yummy! Then, we decided that we wanted to see the Hope Diamond at the Museum of Natural History, and then see as much of the American History Smithsonian as we could before it closed at 5:30. We saw the diamond, but the American History museum took us four different visits to feel like we had seen what we wanted to. It is by far my favorite Smithsonian museum there. There is SOO many neat things in there. We still didn't see everything, but we at least saw all the highlights that we wanted to. You could easily spend three entire days in any one of the Smithsonians, and not see everything. There is just too much to see and do in DC!!

The Hope Diamond. Originally it was twice the size. Throughout time, people have cut it down and it is now only half the size as it was when it was first found. Still huge though!

Harry Potter's costume from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movie at the American History Smithsonian. I'm still trying to figure out why it's in the American history museum, but for a Harry Potter fan, it was cool to see anyway!

Do you recognize that guy in the middle?? They had a section of influential Americans at the American History Smithsonian, and Joseph Smith was one of them. 

A sun stone from the original Nauvoo temple.

For dinner that night, we walked to Georgetown and ate at a Spanish restaurant called Bodega. Dave was in heaven that all of us were brave enough to try Spanish food. It was actually really yummy, and I think everyone enjoyed it, but none more so than Dave. He was beyond thrilled. 

We found this on our way to Bodega! It was right next to an Indian restaurant and an office complex. So different from the church houses in Utah.

My brother and Dave's best friend both live in the D.C. area, so we got together with both of them on Saturday and spent the morning at Mount Vernon. This was one of my very favorite places last time we went to DC, and it didn't disappoint the second time. It is SO beautiful - no wonder George Washington didn't want to be President for longer than he was - he wanted to get back to his beautiful Mount Vernon home!

The Mount Vernon crew

So right as we were walking up to the front gates of Mount Vernon, we see a guy just dancing up the road playing yankee doodle on the fife! It totally made us feel like we were back in the 1700s coming to visit our friend George at Mount Vernon. It of course inspired Dave and Brian to do a jig.

The guy was so impressed with Dave and Brian's dancing, that he pulled out a second instrument, the recorder, and played another song for them! He's got some seriously fancy footwork!

G enjoying the wind blowing through his hair! Haha.

He loved running around on all the grass in the backyard.

Every time Dave gets together with Brian he turns into a little boy again and just giggles and laugh at everything.

After Mt. Vernon, the crew decided to go to the Holocaust Museum. I've been to the museum twice now and while it is awesome to see, it is also really, really sad. And three times was going to be too much for my tender little heart. So, I stayed at our hotel with little G man while he took a nap and the others drove into the city and went to the museum. The Holocaust Museum is open every day of the year except two - Christmas Day and Yom Kippur. Well, the day they went just HAPPENED to be Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day of the year for Jews. So, appropriately, the museum is closed that day. It was a big bummer for everyone that wanted to see the museum though. Darn it! So they went to the American History Smithsonian for as long as they could, and then came back to get me and little G after it closed.

After they came to get me, we drove into DC and spent some time at the Jefferson Memorial. It was so pretty at night with the reflection of the tidal basin all around it. It was absolutely beautiful, and absolutely freezing too. The wind was blowing like crazy, and it felt like ice wind. So, we only lasted for a little while. We had dinner at the Shake Shack, which was really tasty, and then retired for the evening.

Dave and I were really excited for the next day. It was the day we drove up to Baltimore to see my brother's house and spend the day up there with him. On our way up, we stopped at Fort McHenry, which ended up being my favorite thing we did on the trip.I knew almost nothing about Fort McHenry before we went, and I left feeling much more educated. :) Fort McHenry is the place where Francis Scott Key saw the Star Spangled Banner (our American flag) flying through the fog of cannon fire warfare during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. He was watching from a distance, and after the guns were silenced and the cannons had stopped their blasting, he could barely make out a flag on the horizon, but he couldn't tell if it was the American flag or the British flag. As the fog cleared and he finally saw that it was the American flag flying and that we had defeated the British, he was overcome with grateful emotion and felt inspired to write the words for our national anthem. It was published in the newspaper the next day, and "went viral". People all over our new country had read Key's words and felt stirrings of national pride. It was SO cool to see the place where all of that started. 

We learned that there are three places that the flag has to be flying at all times - Arlington National Cemetery, the George Washington monument, and....Fort McHenry. They have different flag raisings  there throughout the day that visitors can come and help with. Dave and I got to help with one, and it was really cool. They have two flag poles, and while they are taking one down, the other one is flying still. The actual star-spangled banner is on display at the American History Smithsonian, and we got to see it! It is pretty tattered and worn, but so awesome to see in real life, especially after visiting Fort McHenry.

The flag that they fly there has 15 stripes and 15 stars, just like the one that Francis Scott Key was inspired by, for the 13 original colonies plus Vermont and Kentucky, the 14th and 15th states. After this flag, they decided not to add any more stripes for states, but to add a star to the flag for each new state.

After Fort McHenry, we drove to my brother's house and spent some time with them there. Ashton made us some yummy soups for lunch and we even caught a little bit of General Conference. It was so fun to see where they lived and to explore their town a little bit. Plus, it was nice to just relax for a little bit. Our whole trip so far had been full of nonstop sightseeing, that it was nice to take a break for a day and just hang out. We really miss Jeff and Ash and so it was really special to spend some relaxing time with just them. It was the highlight of the trip for me for sure.

Me and little G playing together. I love his laugh so much!

After lunch and G man's nap, they took us on a driving tour of Baltimore. We drove through some pretty sketchy places (places where Jeff would say you don't want to be at after dark, or any part of the day for that matter). The sketchiest place was the cemetery where John Wilkes Booth was buried. We didn't get out of the car. In fact, we didn't even stop because it was in the scariest part of town. The fence was covered all around by a black rock wall, and then a fence on top that had barbed wire all around the top. It was so scary looking. We also drove to the church that had a little cemetery where Edgar Allen Poe was buried. Jeff and Dave got out to snap a picture, but they locked us girls in the car and only stayed for a few seconds - it was in a scary part of town as well. 

You know the Baltimore Ravens? They were named the Ravens because of Poe's famous poem, The Raven. He spent a lot of time in Baltimore and was living in Baltimore when he died.

Dave's 2nd rendition of Good Morning Baltimore. We actually did a previous recording of this song earlier in the day on our way to Fort McHenry. I kept telling Dave that I didn't think it was the best time to be making a recording, because I was trying to navigate, we didn't know where we were going, and we might get lost. He insisted we do it anyway, and guess what happened? He got pulled over! Haha. Luckily, he didn't get a ticket.

A little nicer view of Baltimore

But, Baltimore had some beautiful, not scary places too. Jeff took us to the hospital where he works, Johns Hopkins, and showed us around there a little bit. The hospital is HUGE, and really really pretty.

He showed us the old part of the hospital, which was the original entrance. It is still used today, but not for patients. He said it is just for administrative things. But we walked in and saw a statue that is very familiar to us as Mormons. It was a huge statue of the Christus, the same one that is in the visitor's center at Temple Square. The words on the bottom of the statue read, "Come unto me all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."  I thought this was so cool to have in a hospital - Christ, the ultimate healer in a place specifically built for healing. There was a book off to the side of the statue where people could write prayers to Christ. I read a few of them and was so touched. People were asking Christ to heal not just their physical ailments, but their hearts and their lives as well. The whole experience was really touching.

The outside of the original entrance. The statue is just inside those doors. Isn't it pretty??

We had a great time touring the city with our favorite tour guides! It was fun to see their stomping grounds, and so fun to just be with them. We miss those guys!!

The boys had to go to their conference the next morning, so Heather and I took the metro into D.C. and finished seeing the American History museum. After that, we met up with the boys and went on a tour of the capitol. We did this last time we went to DC, but I forgot how cool and pretty it is. 

Every state has 2 statues of historical significance in the capitol. Utah's are Brigham Young and Philo T. Farnsworth (although there is some debate about whether Philo belongs to Utah or Idaho). 

A replica of the statue on top of the capitol.

Robert E. Lee

Pierre L'Enfant designed the city of Washington, DC. He planned for George Washington to be buried in the middle of the capitol, and then planned for the capitol to be in the very center of the city, so that George Washington was, quite literally, at the very center of Washington, DC. It didn't quite work out that way though, since Washington wrote in his will, "Do not bury me in the capitol. I want to be buried at Mount Vernon." So, no one is buried in the capitol, but this spot marks the spot where Washington was intended to be buried, and so also marks the very center of DC.

The old senate chambers

The old House of Representatives chamber

After our tour, we wandered around the pretty buildings up by the capitol. The sun was just getting low in the sky and it made for some really pretty pictures of the buildings. Too bad the capitol was under construction!

Supreme Court. There were quite a few newscasters outside the building, but we weren't sure what they were there for. We found out later that it was the day that the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal in 6 more states, one of them being Utah. I wish we would have known, and we could have gone inside to see the ruling! 

I'm still not sure what prompted Dave to do this, but here it is anyway... :)

Library of Congress

My Mecca. :) It was actually closed when we took these pictures, but we did go back another day.

We met up with Brian and his friend Kaitlyn and had dinner at We The Pizza and shakes at The Good Stuff Eatery. No kidding, at The Good Stuff you can order the Prez Obama burger, as well as the Michelle Melt. I wish we would have eaten our dinner there, but we only made it for shakes, which were absolutely delicious. The toasted marshmallow shake is their specialty. I don't really like marshmallows, but I ordered one anyway and it was the best shake I've ever had in my life. Hands down.They were so good that we went back again the next day, just for toasted marshmallow shakes. If you are ever in the DC area, make sure you get one!

After dinner we rented bikes (which they have stations for all along the national mall) and did a nighttime biking tour of the mall. It was absolutely beautiful. It was quiet and peaceful, and very little car traffic. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves! The weather was great, and the sights were even greater. Besides Fort McHenry, this was my favorite thing that we did. 

The next morning the boys had their conference again, so my sister-in-law Ashton drove in from Baltimore and met up with me and Heather and we went to the National Zoo. It was an enormous zoo! There actually weren't TOO many animals, they just had these huge habitats for each of the animals. It was kind of a rainy day, so there weren't too many people at the zoo and the animals were out and about, so it was a double bonus for us. It was so fun to see Garrett with all the animals. He loved them, and would point and babble at each one of them. When he would get really excited, his eyes would get as round as saucers, and he would just point and say the same babble word over and over. It was the cutest thing ever.

I've never seen a panda in real life before! I saw two of them here. One of them was sleeping in the tree.

Garrett loved the gorilla. And smelling the flowers. Actually exhaling on the flowers. :)

Turtle! Doesn't he have the cutest little voice ever??

I kind of have a weird obsession with turtles. And these were two HUGE ones. I loved watching them. They were just trucking along, slowly but surely eating the leaves. So so cute.

Don't worry - there was just a pride of lions at the zoo. I felt like I was in the Lion King!

We ended the zoo day with lunch at Five Guys. I was so glad that Ash and G could come and meet us and that I could spend one more day with them. When we live so far away, it is fun to soak up every minute together. We had a great time together, and was sad to see it be over. Luckily, we get to see them again in November, so we're excited about that!!

Garrett and I shared a milkshake for dessert.

I kept sending Dave pictures of the zoo, and he sent me this picture and I think I almost peed my pants. I don't know why it struck me as so funny, but it did. The Washington Nationals mascots were at their conference and Dave got a picture with them. 

Their conference was at the National Harbor in Maryland. When Heather and I went to pick them up after the zoo, we walked around for a minute and saw some of the weird statues they have there. 

We spent the evening in Alexandria, Virginia. We ate dinner at a Mozambique place (just to add to the list of ethnic places we ate at. The list also included Korean, Ethiopian, and Honduran. Dave was in heaven and I get an A+ for trying new weird things.) After we explored the town a little bit, we went on a Ghost Tour of Alexandria. Appropriate for Halloween, right?? 

This is the smallest house in the U.S.! It is literally 7' x 35'. So small!!

Before I tell you about the ghost tour, let me introduce you to our friend Candi, or Candita. She owns the candy store, Candi's Candies. We went in there to look around, and just casually asked her if she had heard anything about if the Ghost Tour they had advertised was good or not. That one question led to at least a 20 minute story about how her place is haunted. She told us about how she was from Honduras, and she grew up not believing in ghosts or spirits, until she came to Alexandria to work in this shop. She proceeded to tell us that there was a spirit living in her basement, that it was male, and it was evil. She then showed us the basement, as well as the space where she leaves the key to her shop so that she doesn't have to go in through the basement because it is inhabited by the evil male. She said she was talking to her friend one day about how the house was haunted, and she said, "Oh, if you feel the spirit you just have to say, 'Hello Laura!'. We proceeded to ask who Laura was and she said, "Oh, the lady that burn to death right there on those stairs." But she told us that the spirit in her shop was not Laura, but was the evil male. She was just cracking us up, talking about 90 miles an hour about her haunted shop when all we asked about was the ghost tour. Needless to say, we ended up booking the tour because of her, and we even tried to convince her to go on it with us! She came for the first little bit, but only stuck around for the story about her shop. While the worker was telling us the story of her shop, she kept tapping Dave on the shoulder and saying, "See? it's true. That's true." She was the funniest part of our trip for sure. We loved meeting her!

Our friend Candita!

The ghost tour was really fun, and gave us some good history about Alexandria. It ended in the cemetery behind this church, and we learned that this is the church where George Washington's funeral was held in, because it was the biggest church around and could hold the most people. 

The next morning the boys went to their conference again and Heather and I took the metro into DC and spent the morning at the Newseum, a museum all about the history of news. It was 6 stories tall and was filled to the brim with amazing exhibits. There is no way you could get it all done in one day. We had to be selective about the things we saw because we knew we wouldn't have enough time. They had a 9/11 section, a Berlin wall section, a Pulitzer Prize Photograph section, headlines from today section, a baby boomers section, a 2nd amendment section, a civil rights section, history of news section, and about a million more. It was one of the neatest museums I've ever been to, and I so wish we had 6 or 7 more hours to spend there. It was so great!

These are four giant pieces of the Berlin wall.

View from the top of the museum

A wall of headlines from the 9/11 section. 

The history of news section. This was my favorite part. They had newspapers from almost every major event in American history, and you could pull them out and read them! Each of those cases had a newspaper in it, and you could pull out each of the cases. They had newspapers from when Joseph Smith was killed, from when we declared war on Japan, when Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, when the Watergate scandal happened, when the declaration of independence was being circulated, and so many more. I could have spent half of a day JUST in that part alone. It was awesome. 

After the Newseum, we met the boys at Ford's Theater and took the tour there. Dave and I had done this before, but it was awesome to see again. We could also tour the house across the street where he actually died, which was closed last time we were here.

This is the room where Lincoln died. Nothing in the room is original, except the room itself. Everything is a model of what it would have looked like though.

This was at the end of the museum - a HUMONGOUS stack of books all about President Lincoln. All of those books are books written about him!! Can you believe it!? 

The house where Lincoln died.

After Ford's Theater, we quickly caught a cab up to the capitol hill where we were able to see the current senate and house of representative chambers, even though they were not in session. Then we ran over to the Library of Congress to quickly look in here before it closed. The library is the coolest place ever for someone who loves books like me! The coolest thing there though is Thomas Jefferson's library. My little video explains it.

Look at all those old books!!

Listen to the explanation of how Thomas Jefferson's books got here, if you're interested. :)

Do you see that quote?? Not only is that the best quote of all time, but look at the date it was given! MY BIRTHDAY!! Totally awesome. :)

We finished up the evening with a nighttime stroll through the FDR memorial, MLK memorial, and the Pentagon memorial. They were all so beautiful at night, and so peaceful to walk through.

Our LAST morning (can you believe we were there for so long!? It felt like forever being away from my little Lydia!), we drove up to the National Cathedral. It was stunning. It is the 6th largest gothic church in the world. It was seriously so pretty, and the inside was just as pretty as the outside. 

The very top part is under construction as well as some of the inside from the earthquake in 2011. 

Look at how beautiful the stained glass work is! Also cool that they have a flag from each state hanging up.

This window is intended to look "space-ey" because it has a piece of moon rock in it. See that little black dot in the big red circle? That came back from one of the Apollo missions! Cool!!

These were Dave's favorite stained glass for sure. This was in the war memorial wing of the chapel. If you look at the bottom right, you'll see stained glass depicting the battle of Midway, and the middle panel has the white crosses to show the graves of fallen soldiers. Really really neat.

The bottom left here shows the amphibious landing of D-Day.

The bottom left here shows Iwo Jima and bottom right shows Paratrooper landings.

They had prayer cushions embroidered for a bunch of influential Americans. Each cushion had a name and things embroidered that were significant to that person. Here is a cushion about Ronald Reagan.

And a cushion for George Marshall. They had so many different cushions. I wish I could have spent some time wandering around just looking at all the different people that were represented here.

The stained glass was absolutely beautiful.

In the 1980s, National Geographic issued a challenge for children to create gargoyles to go on top of the towers. The third place winner was a Darth Vader gargoyle, and if you look closely you can see him right there underneath the pointed arch with a round helmet on. That was so fun to see.

After the National Cathedral, the boys went to the Holocaust Museum for just a little bit while Heather and I did some last minute shopping. After that, we drove to the airport and boarded the plane for home. We had the best trip ever, and were able to do and see so much! DC will always be one of my favorite cities, and I hope I can keep going back there, because there is just so much to do there! So until next time, DC! Thanks for a great trip!