Thursday, June 7, 2012

My trip to Washington DC!

So I went to visit my sissy in DC and had such a great time! 

We went to DC to site see, went to an air and space museum, hung around a lot, ate delicious food (Megan is a GREAT cook- I felt royal), watched some movies, bachelorette, hung by the pool or sand, played with Scarlet, tended to Scarlet (poor thing was sick half the time), and talked lots! 

Lets start from the beginning. Get ready for lots of pictures of....me. haha. Sorry. 

So here I am waiting for Meg at the airport. I had just gotten off a 4 hour flight and I had watched the last Harry Potter on my ipad during the flight. I totally was crying throughout the WHOLE thing. That movie just does it for me. Snape, Harry's sacrifice, Ron & Hermione, NEVILLE! Everyone. I just can't keep the tears from coming. Thank GOODNESS the people sitting next to me were sleeping! How embarrassing. 


  The first day there Scarlet wasn’t that into me. She would give me faces like this:
                                       
Or she would just cry if I even looked at her! She had a major fever, and wasn’t feelin good. Megan kept saying, “I promise she isn’t normally like this!”, but she was still super cute. The next day when we were getting ready for DC she was warming up to me a bit more. SHE IS SO CUTE. Here are some cutie pictures.
 
She liked to be wrapped like a baby and be held like a baby sometimes.
 
Right before we left for DC.
 
The metro! We went on the metro and I really loved it. It was so fascinating to me. I’ve never been on anything like it except at the Seattle airport, which is like…barely anything compared to this. I just kept thinking, “This is genius!” haha. I know, I sound like I’m a amish person or something. But it really was awesome. I felt all “city girl” like.
 
Here we are in DC! We were walking around finding a spot to eat some lunch and the capital building was on one side, and the Washington monument on the other!
 
First stop was the Archives of the United States of America. I totally didn’t expect this to be cool. But it was one of my favorite things! I’m SO GLAD we went!

We weren’t supposed to take pictures, but we snuck a couple.
 
Declaration of Independence.
 
So we saw the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The Constitution you could see really well, but the others were WAY faded. It was so cool though! I just couldn’t believe the penmanship of them and how perfectly they did it. It had to of taken forever. The paper was HUGE. Way bigger than paper we use! And it was pretty cool to think that they all signed that very paper I was looking at. I liked it lots.
 

I loved the architecture of everything. So cool. I kept thinking at every building, “How in the world did they build this? Amazing!” it made me realize I would love Europe, cause of all the cool buildings.
 
Look at my eye balls closely...freaky!
Next stop, American History Smithsonian Museum! This was way cool. There was everything from pop culture, movies, to war history, presidential history…I really liked a lot of it. It’s so funny cause I swear all the things I didn’t think I would find interesting, I loved. So there were things like, George Washingtons pocket watch, or his ACTUAL CHAIR, or his plate. All of these things, he ACTUALLY used and handled. It was so cool! I just thought how crazy that he was sitting there, or looking at that watch. I loved it.

I wish I’d taken a picture or something, but it was really crowded when we were there- but we saw the American flag that flew, which inspired the song “Star Spangled Banner”. It was AWESOME. Really sobering. And HUGE! I loved it.
This was the actual hogwarts uniform Daniel Radcliffe wore in the first movie! So little and cute!
Next stop, Natural History Smithsonian Museum! I’m probably saying all these names wrong, but they are what I remember them being called…

There were all sorts of things here…animals, fossils, SKULLS!
 
Then we went to the Capital Building. It was way cool. We just sat and ate snacks and rested for a bit infront of it and I kept thinking…”Um…Hillary Clinton could be in there right now doing who knows what” haha. It would be cool to tour it someday.
 
White house. I loved this. There were two men ontop of the whitehouse with sniper rifles set up. Hey Obamas!
 
Then we stopped and saw some ducks on the way to a bathroom which had no toilet paper in any of the stalls. There were two women in there saying, “I would think with ALL the taxes we pay they could handle putting toilet paper in the bathrooms…my gosh”…Megan and I couldn’t help but roll our eyes at them and talk about how ridiculous they sounded…and then realized they were standing right next to us…haha:)
 
Lincoln Memorial! One of my VERY favorites. The building was cool, the view was cool, LINCOLN was cool, everything just felt so important and almost holy. It was pretty great.
 


Megan and I trying to take a picture of the view with both of us in it without destroying the view…
 
Next was the Korean Memorial which was sweet…but we decided to rest there for a bit. Scarlet had fun playing in the pretty fountain.
 



Then, we saw FIREFLYS! Oh my gosh- I’ve never seen fire flies before and they were MAGICAL! We loved them, obviously.
 
Very cool view as we were headin to the Jefferson Memorial.
 
Before we hit up Jefferson, we went to Roosevelt. There weren’t really picturesque areas in that one at night time, but there were SO many quotes on walls that I realized I loved. Like, “The only thing to fear is fear itself” or something like that. He had a lot of good ones.

Jefferson Memorial was cool. Not as cool as Lincoln, but cool in a different way. The whole building was like…see through? As in no back walls. It was like all columns around. I didn’t realize that this quote came from Jefferson and I love this quote. It’s basically my whole belief system. Seeing all the quotes of some of these guys made me realize I really am interested in learning about our American History again. Of course I did as a child, but I was a child and don’t really remember any of it!
 


At the metro waiting for our train. We were EXAUSTED. We had basically been out and about for 12 straight hours. I learned something…a pregnant lady and a lyme effected person make a LOT of groaning on their way back to the metro after a long day in DC. We kept laughing cause we kept moaning and groaning. Megs back was killing her…my knees and hips were feeling like…broken and beat up. Oh man…I felt a bit like death on that tail end. But it was worth it. It took me till today to feel back to myself and my legs back to normal. I am planning on mentioning it to my doctor, but I do think that my joints just are damaged and can’t handle too much! Obviously everyone would be sore and such after a day like that, but it was pretty bad. I didn’t really feel like doing anything but laying around the couple days after.
 
Tired tired tired tired TIRED feet.

Scarlet was OUT and so tired. She was such a good girl! I couldn’t believe it. She like, never whined at all as we were out. It was awesome.
 
This is Scarlet talking to her dad on skype. It was so cute. He would sing her songs and she would dance and smile and sing along sometimes. He is out of town.
 
A few days later we went to the air and space museum. I wasn’t expecting to be TOO into it, but it sounded interesting. Right away it was cool. There were all sorts of planes all over the place hanging from the ceiling, sitting on the floor, it was cool.

This is the VERY plane that dropped the first atomic bomb. Insanity.
 

I just kept thinking, “How in the world did they feel sitting in there flying that thing and dropping it!?”
 
This is an ACTUAL space ship that has been in space! It was HUMONGO! I couldn’t believe it.
 
I just loved looking at that space ship. It boggled my mind that it had been in space.
 
The whole thing, and really all of my trip in general, felt really patriotic. Like this picture.
 

Scarlet just randomly laid on the ground and started scootin around. It was way cute and funny. 
I feel like I’ve left out a lot, but I think that’s pretty much all I documented on my iphone. Thank goodness for my iphone. It was so handy. A few times we didn’t know which way was best to get somewhere and it was night…so I just typed it in my google maps and it told us where to go! It even gave an estimated time to walk there…that was handy too.

All in all it was a wonderful trip! It was so fun being with Megan. We really are only around eachother in big family group settings and so it was fun to be just one on one and get a chance to talk a lot. She is a really good mom and a really good cook! I seriously felt like I was getting royal treatment. Everything was delicious. Scarlet is such a good little girl too! A few things that were cute and funny:
When she got a time out, Megan would put her in this corner kind of, but it was totally open and she could just walk away from it if she wanted. But when Megan put her in time out she’d say, “Time out” and Scarlet would cry and scream and be so upset, but stay there! I thought it was so hilarious. I kept saying, “I don’t understand why she doesn’t just stand up and walk away!” and Megan said she just really is a good girl. It was so cute.

She didn’t snuggle me the first day or so, but after a bit she let me hold her and one day I got her up from her nap when Megan was in her shower and she was SO CUTE. She said, “Mommy?” and I said, “She’s in the shower” and so then she wrapped her arms around me and let me hold and snuggle her for a few minutes. Then she said again, “Mommy?” and I said, “Lets go look” and I showed her the closed door to the bathroom and said, “See she’s in the shower! Should we wait?” and she nodded her head and wrapped her arms around me again and let me snuggle her. It was heaven!

She is just always smiling and so cute. Seriously, just a doll. I read her a book that had a spider in it, not a real one, like…the book showed a spider, and she started kind of singing the itsy bitsy spider. So I started singing it with her and then when I was done she made the sign for more. So I sang it again and then turned the page. Right away she turned back the page and signed more. Haha. She LOVES singing I think. Greg would always sing to her on Skype and she LOVED it. So precious.
 
One thing that I learned while at megans was…days sure do slip away quickly with a child around. I would tell clay what we did one day, and it seemed like…nothing. But the day didn’t feel boring or like we did nothing. It felt full…but somehow it didn’t sound full? It was odd. But I soon realized I think it was because of Scarlet! Haha. She just made time pass really quick cause I dunno…I guess maybe things just get interrupted so often and she is so dependent on others to help her you know? An obvious thing I suppose, but I never fully experienced that till this trip I don’t think!
 
This was on one of my flights. I looked out and it looked unreal. Like...heaven or something? It literally looked fake. I loved it. 
Last stop in Salt Lake before home. I had a really short time between flights, but enough time to think, "I am in the mood for chocolate". Clay and I have kind of a rule when we are traveling. We can eat whatever we want guilt free. So I was thinking...I will get a chocolate bar at one of the stores. Well, I never passed any! So I debated for a good 10 minutes whether or not I had enough time to go look for a store to get a chocolate bar, or if I should just resist. OR if I should go and get a cinnabon. I ended up just waiting for my plane and going without. 

Anyway, it is good to be home. I am still catching up and feeling pretty tired from the travels and time change. The time change isn’t much (two hours) but I think combining it with the long day of travel and still recovering from that long DC day, I’m just pooped. Planning on sleeping in tomorrow for sure.      

Last note- I just read through this whole post and I think I said the words "cool" and "cute" about a million times each. Yowsa.

6 comments:

Megan and Greg said...

Great post! I can't believe how much I've already forgotten! I'm so tired too! I didn't think I needed to recover from anything, we sat around mostly- but man! My body is catching up too! Great pics! I'm glad Scarlet is smiling in so many. I swear she was so grumpy the whole time you were here! I'm glad she was cheerful sometimes. I'm so glad you came out. I had a blast. Love you tons.

Megan and Greg said...

Oh yeah, I can't believe how high and girlish my voice is in that video.

AMY AND MIKEY said...

The video didn't work on my computer. Oh my gosh that was such a fun post! I laughed through so much of it: the eyes, haha- scarlet scooting on teh floor, and i don't remember what else, but it seemed like i was laughing through all of it. It was great. What a fun trip! I want to see all of that!!! What an amazing experience! Megan is an amazing cook. We LOVED eating at their house. Greg is a great cook too. Their meals were always to die for. I'm so glad you had such a good time and that your body is starting to feel back to normal. love you and thanks for posting everything, it was so fun to see and hear everything. love you!!! OH- and you are gorgeous!!! So beautiful and stylish!!!

Lizzie said...

Thanks for posting this!! I love it. Scarlet is so so cute!!! cool picture of the clouds. I love the pic of scarlet skyping with greg. love you

The Congers said...

Oh man so fun, I remember my first time out East and i was so awe struck too. Every day I think I would love for my West coast friends to visit and see all the wonderful sites out here, and yeah fireflies are so cool.

Sharon/Mom/ Grandma said...

Oh, that brought back so many memories. The only thing we didn't see was the Jefferson memorial. We saw lots of other things of course since we were there almost two weeks. It's just so cool to be around all that history and like you said patriotism. Thanks for sharing! Scarlet is a sweetie! And you are drop dead gorgeous! love you!!!