Virginia and D.C. 2011 -- Part 1 -- Buildings, Monuments and IRL Friends

My family just got back from a fabulous vacation to Virginia and D.C.  We weren't planning to take a family vacation this year but my workout accountability partner persuaded us to come down and actually meet him and his family in person.  We figured after all the text messages, Facebook status updates and e-mails it was about time.  So we saved our little pennies and made it happen.  And let me tell you, we are so glad we did.

First and most importantly we turned a "virtual" friendship into a "real life" friendship.

 This was us getting ready for our first trip on the Metro to visit the National Zoo.... 

forever referred to from here out as the "Un-Zoo"...

Oh yes folks, it happens!! It was amazing to be able to workout in real life with the man that pushes me to workout when I am not feeling it... to have his family and my family GEL the way they did.  Everyone of us wanted the vacation extended... and we are hoping that we can do it again.

So not only did we have that... which would have made an amazing vacation in itself, but we also had the opportunity to travel around D.C.  I was so overwhelmed when we came up the escalator (which Ethan continues to call the excavator) to see the Washington Monument on one side and our countries Capital Building on the other... Oh yes... I was sappy.  Jacob even asked how long I was going to cry before we could "get on with it"...

These are a few of the pictures I took that day.  There are more and I will post them, but decided it was best to break it up a little.  There is so much that took my breath away and I want to do it all justice.

 

 The Washington Monument

 The Capital Building

 

The White House 

photo taken from the Washington Monument

 

The Boys... 

 

The entrance to the WWII Memorial

Looking out over the Memorial from the Pacific to the Atlantic
(this photo was taken on Curt's cell phone, hence the graininess, but I loved it and had to include it.)

 

The Price of Freedom

"Freedom Wall holds 4,048 gold stars. Each gold star represents one hundred American Service personnel who died or remained missing in the war. The 405,399 Americans dead or missing from World War II are second only to the loss of more than 620,000 Americans during the Civil War."

The Lincoln Memorial

 The Old Post Office

The view from the top is beautiful... 

 

 The National Archives Building

I got chills when looking at the original copies of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States.   To see the signatures of the men that shaped our country... to know how strongly they believed in their vision... and to know they were risking their lives for what they believed....