Day 9 Washington D.C. Part 3 :)

To finish off Day 9....(we had a very big day;)....after our tour we walked from the capital to the National Archives to the White House and eventually the Lincoln Memorial.

This is a cool pic from the Capital to the monument.

This is the Supreme Court that is right across the street from the Capital.

Travis had to take a pic of this.....a port a potty was being raised up by the Supreme Court. I guess they have too much B.S. in there;)

This is the National Archives. We actually got there just in time to see all the stuff before they closed. I just loved all the architecture!! Why can't we still build buildings that look like these!! I love it.

They had some neat stuff in there!! I love history!!! We also got to see the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There were so many people there so we only got a couple of pics and they had to be no flash. They are really faded now!

Pretty cool stuff!!

Our next stop was the White House. We saw the National Treasury on the way there with Alexander Hamilton's statue out front. I wish we had time to go inside!

Another squirrel!!! I miss those dang squirrels everywhere! And so do the girls!

The White House!!

Next stop was the monument!! Jordyn wanted to get down and run by this point so Trav let her roam a bit! We were getting pretty tired by now. These buildings all look like they should be pretty close together (which they kinda are) but it's pretty long by foot. And unfortunately our blisters were letting themselves be known at this point;)

The monument! If you look closely, you can tell that the bottom portion of it is a different color than the top. I guess they ran out of money and stopped construction on it. It took 30 years before Congress gave the money needed to finish it. When they finally started construction again, it was a different shade of stone. You can tell where they stopped and started again by this difference.

The Lincoln Memorial looking from the Monument. Again...check out the dead grass;(

Almost there.....walking....always walking. We were pretty weary at this point but this was the last stop of the night and we were determined to see it. We couldn't be this close and not see it;)

Monument at twilight.

Lincoln statue

Monument at night from the steps of the Memorial.

We actually got to the Monument and Memorial at the perfect time. We got to see them in the daylight and then gradually as it got dark. I love the pics that we got!! Unfortunately, we had to walk all the way back past the monument and halfway back to the capital to get back to the metro!! We were so happy to get to the station only to have to wait forever for a train!! I guess a baseball game just let out and the trains were slow!!! Ugh!! We were so happy to get on it and get moving toward our beds. It was a very long day but we got to see soooo much!! It was great!!

Day 9 Washington D.C. Part 2

These are the pics of our tour of the Capital!! This post took me the longest to do because I wanted to explain the pics as well because it is so neat to know the history behind it all. It was so cool!! The building is so beautiful and it really stinks that the people that get to work there don't DESERVE to work there!! We didn't get to tour the White House (because the people that work in Reid's office SUCK but that's another story!! But I bet I would have felt the same way about the White House too;-) Anyway....

Just FYI, I'm going off of mostly memory here so if any of my info is wrong....sorry;-)

We left the Air and Space museum a little later than we thought we would and had to hustle to get to the capital for our tour. It doesn't look that far but you actually have to go in the back to get to where we needed to go and we didn't think we were going to make it. Travis and I ran in front so we could tell them we were coming! Baby girl fell asleep on the way there and my legs were burning while carrying her on my back and running!! We thought we would never get there and we had to ask new directions after every turn hoping that my parents were pretty close behind us. We finally got there in the nick of time (we still had to wait even when we got there but they were so rude on the phone that we thought they would leave without us;). My mom almost gave up and said forget it! But I'm so glad we still went.

The first place they take you is nicknamed the 'crypt' because it was supposed to be George Washington's last resting place. But in his will, he said he wanted to be buried at Mount Vernon so this area now just has different statues from history surrounding it.

D.C. was supposed to be divided into four equal sections from this star which is in the middle of the room but D.C. got too big so it's not directly in the center anymore. Our guide said that you will get good luck if you walk over it and it is sunken in because so many people have walked over it. Travis and I had to walk over it twice;) They said that the Presidents walk over it as well when they are inaugurated.

That would be me about to walk over the star;)

This is the old Supreme Court. All the chairs are different shapes and sizes depending on the preference of the judge. They said that one of the first ladies (I think Dolley Madison) would go down and observe the proceedings and even if they were at the end of a trial, she would make them start over so she could hear it all.

This is just a small rotunda outside of the old supreme court.

Very pretty chandelier.

The old Senate area. They moved it when they got too big for this room.

I can't remember where this was but it was probably outside the old Senate.

Now this was so cool! This was the Rotunda which is located above the 'crypt' and this next pic is looking up inside the dome. The mural inside it took 11 months to complete while the painter was suspended 180 feet in the air. Crazy!

This is a closer look at the mural. If you look closely, you can see George Washington on the bottom of the inner circle with two goddesses on each side (the one on his left with the horn represents victory and on his right represents liberty). There are also 13 other maidens that represent the 13 colonies and some have their back to him to represent the ones that seceded from the union at the time it was painted.

Jordyn and me looking up at it.

This is called the frieze which is all around the base of the dome. It was painted by different people because it took so long to complete. It was started by the same guy that painted the dome and when the next guy took over, he made the shoe of one of the guys different than the other so people would know where he started and the other guy left off.

On the walls of the rotunda, they have paintings that depict the development of the United States. They were huge and so cool!!

Eleven Presidents have also lain in state for public viewing after they have passed away in the Rotunda. The platform that supports each casket was what was supposed to support George Washington's casket. They use it for each President.
There were also some statues. This is Alexander Hamilton.

This is the Ronald Reagan statue! At the top of his base, they have actual pieces of the Berlin wall!!

This is the National Statuary Hall Collection (which was the old room where the House of Representatives met). They didn't know what to do with it so they just made it a statue room and had every state donate two statues to add to it. The statues got so heavy though that they thought the floor was going to fall through so they had to reinforce it and move some of the statues out to other places.

This is where John Quincy Adams sat when he was in the House of Representatives. The others used to joke that he always slept and didn't pay attention because he always had his head on his desk. Little did they know, the acoustics were all messed up because they made it like a Greek amphitheatre and if Adams bent over like that, he could hear everything that they were saying clear across the room. He would get up when it was his time to argue and he knew everything about the opposition. They were always dumbfounded as to how he knew these things. Our tour guide showed us how this worked. He went across the room while we huddled around this plaque and bent over. He said quietly, "if you can hear me, raise your hand", and we could hear him as clear as day!! It was so neat!!

This is one of Utah's statues. Brigham Young. Nevada's statues are Sarah Winnemucca and Patrick McCarran. I guess McCarran was responsible for making the eight hour work day!

We had a great time touring the Capital. It was neat to see everything in person. We also had the chance to go in to the House of Representatives and the Senate!! The House was quite boring but we saw quite a few Senators. We saw Senators McCain, Ensign, Lieberman, Shumer, Dodd, Kerry, Durbin, Burris, and dorky Al Franken and I'm sure others that I can't remember!! Some of them truly, truly don't deserve to be there but I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to go tour the Capital! It was a great experience.

Day 9 Washington D.C. Part 1

I have so many pics of Washington D.C. that I have to do a few posts for the same day. This will be the first part of that day. First of all, the girls looked so cute that morning that I had to post them.

Oh, how precious they are when they are sleeping;)

Anyway, onto the day. This is our first ride on the metro. We gave Makenna our old camera to take pics with (unfortunately we didn't think about this until the last few days) and she did a great job with quite a few of them. She got a few pics that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten. This would be one of them. She was on the other side with her daddy. The girls loved the trains. We liked the subways in New York better though. You didn't seem to have to wait as long in NY and the workers helped more without attitude!!! Either way, I think all major cities need a train system!! It's awesome not to have to deal with traffic!

We got off the train right here!! Unfortunately, it's kind of an ugly pic because the grass is all dead because of Obama's inauguration! Figures!

There was a carousel right there and the girls had to have a ride.

Makenna was quite upset when we got off.

This is Smithsonian castle. I wondered what the history was behind the Smithsonian museums and it's actually pretty cool. A man named James Smithson said in his will that his estate would go to the United States (if his nephew was not living) to found an establishment to increase the knowledge of men. It's pretty cool since he was British and they still don't know why he did it. So, there is your history for today;) Anyway, the castle is kind of a weird but interesting museum if that makes sense. It has quite a lot of different things inside. And I mean different both ways;) There didn't seem to be a flow to things. There was a weird display that had a mix of Sesame Street and muppets stuff, an American Idol display and other things like spiders and china. It was cool to see though.

It had some great architechture inside!

Here is china from John Quincy Adams.

And here is a lovely tarantula.....(just for you Jen;)

Makenna loved having a camera!!!

This is the inside of the National Air and Space museum!! It was so cool. Travis looked like a kid in a candy store! This was right where you walk in.

This is the inside of one of the early airplanes with all the old style furniture. The seats were so tiny!

Lots of cool stuff!

One of the Apollos. The seats inside this were so tiny and squished! I don't know how astronauts do it!

Inside of a cockpit. Both of the girls loved looking INSIDE the planes. They are definitely good flyers;)

These are those drone planes (without pilots!) that are starting to get used.

And this is my crazy baby that was so tired and ready for a nap!!! She kept pulling my hair and playing with it. I didn't care as long as she wasn't crying;-)

We had a blast at the museum and wished we could spend some more (kid free) time there;) We also wished we could have gone to the other museums too. I love that they are all FREE!! It was great to just be able to walk in......well, after you are searched and go through a metal detector, that is;)