Brace yourselves...

Back in mid-October, Ben and I were VERY lucky to be able to take a trip to Washington D.C., NYC and Palmyra. Needless to say we took hundreds of photos and I've been waiting for a calmer time when I could weed through them to blog about. Well that time has come, and "weeding out" photos isn't my greatest strength when all I want to do is remember every moment of the trip.

So, because these posts are mostly for journaling purposes, I'm not holding back. :-) And because of that, this one post might actually turn into a trilogy.

Part 1: Washington D.C.

Our friend, Nate Barker, works for Southwest Airlines and has some buddy passes that weren't being used and so he offered them to us. Since my trip to NY in 2008 I have been dying to take Ben back and talking about it constantly, but between finances and timing with babies, we haven't been able to make it work. Ben wanted to go back East for the historic aspect. So when Nate offered these buddy passes, we gratefully accepted and started planning.

First we drove to Denver, where Dave and Jera (bless their souls) had offered to watch Logan while Ben, Lincoln (still nursing) and I traveled. Due to a work crises for Ben, we left Provo at 5 pm, later than planned. We got to Denver at 2 am. Because we were flying stand-by we had to be flexible with our travel dates/times, therefore we were planning to catch the 6 am flight. We had to leave the house at 3:15 am to get to the airport by 4 am. That left us a whole hour and fifteen minutes. So we just decided to stay up, repacked our luggage and shower.

We flew into Baltimore, MD where we stayed with Ben's second cousin, Jocie and Larry. After picking us up from the airport and eating lunch, Jocie dropped us off at the National Mall to get some touring in that first day.

Despite our best attempts to sleep on the plane, Ben and I were both dragging at this point, but we didn't let that stop us from taking it all in.

Ben & Linc with the Capitol Building in the background

Me and Linc with Washington National Monument

Our first museum stop was the American History Smithsonian. So, so, so amazing. Ben's standing by an old WWII army jeep, similar to the one Pa owns.



I had to get a shot with the Ruby Slippers for Logan's sake. I was missing him already at this point.



Ignore me, but check out that dress! This was my favorite exhibit in this Smithsonian - it was the Dresses of all of the First Ladies and includes all of their inaugural gowns.
This was Martha Washington's dress. Amazing! Women were so little back then.


Michelle Obama's dress was covered in Swarovski crystal. Gorgeous.


For some reason I loved this one. It was much prettier in person than in photo. It was Jaqueline Kennedy's dress. She was so classy.

Another one of my favorites... Julia Child's kitchen. The glass I'm standing by was actually a wall that held all of her pots, pans, cookware, etc. She has so many items and each one had a specific place where it hung.


Looking through that glass and into the kitchen.

All the museums close at about 5, and that's about when Ben's cousin got off work (who we were staying with). He works right down along the National Mall and so we followed him home on teh subway, bus and then to his car where we drove the rest of the way to their house in Maryland.
This is their youngest daughter, Riley, who LOVED Lincoln. The two were inseparable the entire time.

This is Alice, who is Jera's aunt, and Jocie's mom. She and lawry were there visiting for a few weeks and because of her bad hip, she opted to stay at home while we were touring and she offered to watch Lincoln for us. I was hesitant just because I'm still breast feeding and am terrified of getting another clogged milk duct (OUCH!), but I'm so glad we took her up on the offer because it was pouring rain that next day! It was incredibly helpful and kind of her.

First we went to the Air and Space Smithsonian.

I can't remember what this is... sorry Ben! Unfortunately, we found out AFTER this that Pa actually helped create the Hubble while working at Lockhead and it was actually on display here, but we didn't get any pics.

Another cool exhibit - the Wright Brothers. This was a model of their first airplane.

Ben was thrilled to find out they actually made bicycles first. Who knew? This is an original Wright Bros. bike.

Not sure what plane this is, but we wanted to capture the amazingness of this exhibit... the fact that there were many HUGE planes just hanging from the ceiling. Very cool.

I didn't show any photos here, but next we went to the Indian Museum where they show information on all kinds of tribes native to the Americas.


Then we ventured out in the rain to walk to all the monuments we would that are along the mall. The first stop was the Washington Nat'l Monument.

Ben and the grasshopper on the side of the monument.

Here I am standing at the Washington monument and beyond me is the WWII memorial, then the Lincoln memorial.
I didn't know this before this trip, but the National Mall is just a huge long rectangle strip of land and there are monuments all up and down the land/park. Then to the sides of it are tons of Smithsonians (all free!) and federal buildings.


Ben at the WWII memorial. The solemn feeling here was intense. The amount of gratitude we felt here at this monument is hard to explain. It was neat, too, that there was hardly anyone here. I think we were the only ones at the monument for quite some time. This was actually built during George W Bush Jr's administration, so it's relatively new.




Then we continued walking on until we got to here - the Lincoln Memorial! There was equipment everywhere here that was being monitored. We found out later they were actually filming Transformers 2.

We are standing in the same exact place in this picture as the picture above, but just turned around the other way. So here, we were standing right in front of the Lincoln memorial.


I think this was Ben's favorite part of DC. Well, at least one of his favorites.
Here we are doing the honeymoon photo shots... most of our pictures have either Ben or I in them, but not very many with both of us. :-)

This was the most solemn, sacred feeling of all of the monuments and places we went in DC. I think we were in tears realizing everything this great man and this monument stand for and recognizing what an awful, bloody history our country has.

If you zoom in here, you can see the wording above Lincoln.

This is what we saw walking out of the Lincoln Memorial - gorgeous shot looking down the National Mall with the sun trying to come out.


Then we walked... and walked... and walked to the Jefferson memorial. I think we would have done it another way had we realized how much time it ended up taking us to walk there and back. It's not right on the mall, so it took a little bit. It was still amazing to see, though.

Me in front of the Jefferson Memorial. Rolled up pants becuse they were soaking wet from all fo the rain and it was bugging me. I can't stand soggy jeans. :-)


We saw this van on the way home that day while we were on the bus. We noticed the "Save the ta-tas" sticker and it reminded us of our friends.


The next day the kids were out of school, so Larry, Jocie, Lawry and Riley all ended up spending the day in DC with us and it was so fun being with them and having personal tour guides.
First we went to The SPy Museum. It's not right on the mall, and it was the only museum that we had to pay for but it was SO worth it. It was so funa dn interactive and showed what a huge roll spies have played in all of the wars our country has been in thus far. Very cool.
While in the gift shop afterwards, Riley got a pair of handcuffs and so here we are cuffed together.

After the spy museum we walked to The Archives (above) where all of our nations historic important documents are held... The Declaration of Independence, The Magna Carta, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights. It was amazing to think of how old those documents were and how special and sacred they are to our country. It was a great reminder of how much sacrifice has been made by so many to set forth the freedoms that we still hold precious today. No photos were allowed inside.



Then we had lunch in the sculpture gardens and then ventured onto the Natural History Smithsonian. We could spend all day there, but we just had a limited amount of time, unfortunately. This was one of Ben's favorites: It's a fossil of a fish that died soon after eating another fish. You can see the second fossil inside of his belly. Ben remembered this being about 45 million years old. That's all.


Also got to see the Hope Diamond. Huge.


After the museum closed, we ventured on to get frozen yogurt. Yum. Here's the whole, wonderful family, minus Maryn who opted to stay home and do homework and babysit Lincoln.


On the way back to the car, we happened to walk by Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot.


Here's Ben in front of Ford's Theater, leaning because he's about to run to avoid getting hit by an oncoming car. :-) Lincoln was rushed out one of those arching doors and taken across this street to ....


Here. Not sure what it's called. It's under construction and the sign says, "The House Where Lincoln Died"


More Ford's Theater.

The next day we left DC to head up to NYC but I'll save that for a second post. This one has been long enough. In a nutshell, going to DC has left me in awe of all that I DON't know about our own country and history. It was amazing to think about all of the great people hwo have gone before and waled the streets where we were. Very cool. And it was also really fun staying with the Denyers. Because the National Mall pretty much shuts down at about 5 or 6 pm, we ended up spending more time with them than we originally thought we would and it was great. They were so gracious and amazingly intelligent. Wonderful hosts. We'd go back to DC in a heartbeat!