Washington D.C.

After our day in NYC we drove down to Washington D.C. for the first time for all of us.  We got there so late that we slept in to catch up on some sleep and rest our feet.  It was a crazy morning getting started and off to the National zoo.  Nothing was going our way, from not being enough room on the bus to the subway, so we decided to drive, so we hit traffic, no parking at the zoo because every lot was full, to our gps dying in the middle of us trying to find a place to park close to the zoo. It all worked out, we found a parking spot with just a little walk to the zoo.  All the Smithsonian's in D.C. are free,, including the zoo.  So you could just hop over to anything, which was nice.

 

Our good friends the Summers family here in NY came to do the D.C. part of our trip with us.  Sadly they are moving in June and they wanted to go to D.C one last time before they move and we wanted to do a trip with them.  It was a lot of fun!  This is their daughter Olyvia, these three are such good friends.

Exploring the zoo.

After the zoo we drove over to check out the Jefferson memorial.  It's an amazing thing to see, so much bigger and amazing in person.

Parker slept a lot of the time.  He was a trooper for sure.

Outside of the Jefferson memorial.

We ate at the California Pizza Kitchen.  It was delicious!  Their salted caramel dessert was the best.

The next day we were able to get things back on track and we caught the subway over to Ford's theatre to start the day off.

Posing in the theatre.

That's the balcony that President Lincoln was shot in.  He was brought across the street to the Peterson home where he later died hours later.  It was so worth the money to go there.  The park ranger told the story of that night very well.  I'm now reading the book Killing Lincoln because this all peaked my interest.  So far it's a good book, very detailed.

Just gotta get that tourist picture in front of the White House.

The nations capitol building.

It was a kite flying celebration through out the mall that day.  It was really neat.

A little closer up.  Such a beautiful place.

Had to try to get Parker in some family photos to show he was there too.  :)

The World War 2 memorial.

Lincoln memorial.

Reflecting pool and Washington memorial.

Lincoln memorial.

She just loved Erik the whole time.

Korean War memorial...this was really neat how the soldiers were placed walking throughout the plants.

We ate at Chevy's that night and they gave the girls tortilla dough to play with while they waited for their food, so genius.  They loved it!

Part of our entourage going up the escalator.  We were definitely the train going through D.C. with four strollers.

We had an Easter egg hunt in the hotel on Easter morning.  The girls had a lot of fun searching for eggs.

Since we needed to drive Erik back up to NYC that morning we missed church, but stopped by the Washington D.C. temple on our way up.  It's such a beautiful temple and grounds.  They have a really cool visitors center as well.  We watched a wonderful video about eternal families.  So good.

We had a wonderful time with Erik.  We are so glad he had the chance to come out to see us before he leaves on his mission.  We made some really good memories.