A Week In DC Day Three - A BIG DAY

Saturday began with breakfast at the Eastern Market.  The Eastern Market was a place where you could buy, from vendors, everything from raw chicken feet to flowers.  And breakfast!  It was a really good breakfast, once you ordered what the owner wanted you to order.  He was hilarious!!  

 We all enjoyed our food, especially those of us who did not have grits forced upon us :)

 Then we spent some time shopping at the Flea Market while Brennan and Emma went on their White House tour.

And then it was our turn for a White House tour.  But first, we HAD to go see the Willard Continental Hotel, which is where is were the wheels came off the wagon, so to speak.

We needed to go up half a floor.  Just four steps up, to use their, what we imagined must be a VERY nice bathroom.  Because it was a VERY nice hotel.  But we had Grandma in a wheel chair, so Karen started looking around for a way to get her up, and a very nice gentleman, who turn out to be the manager of the VERY nice hotel, came to their aid.  With Karen and Grandma taken care of, the rest of us went up the four steps, found the bathroom, and then waited for Karen and Grandma to join us.  We were just beginning to wonder why they were taking so long when Amanda, who was on Facebook on her phone, said, "Oh my gosh, Grandma is stuck in the elevator!!"  So we RAN back downstairs to find the above situation.  Luckily it wasn't an actual elevator, it was just a lift, and they got them out, but the Manager was SO nice and SO FUNNY!  My favorite quote of the day was when Elaine asked the manager if he had plenty of liability insurance, and he said, "Three Million.  But it's never enough."

 We did finally make it on our White House tour, which was really cool!  SO worth the effort to apply in advance for!  But there was no picture taking allowed inside, so these are the only pictures we have of the event.

After we finished with the White House we spent some time at the American History Museum  This had such things as Dorthy's Ruby Slippers, the all of the first lady's Inaugural Dresses, and Julia Child's kitchen!

Right here we went "off schedule" a little bit.  We were supposed to eat at Good Stuff and We the Pizza, but instead we ate at a very fancy restaurant of which I can't remember the name.  Brennan was SO shocked by the prices, all he ordered was a hamburger, but I got a very nice chicken breast.  And then told him I was paying for his meal :) 

  And we got right back on schedule with our Monument/Memorials night time tour.  First we visited the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.

 I was having a lot of fun photographing Jefferson.  It was just starting to get too dark.  If you zoom in you can see how bad the pictures on my old Pentax are at a high ISO.

Rick was telling us about how there is not a building between the Jefferson Memorial and the White House because Thomas Jefferson once said he always wanted to keep his eye on the White House.  So they let him. :)

  Those of us who were brave and/or warmly dressed walked through all the war memorials.  Vietnam, World War I, World War II, and the Korean.  It really was too dark to do them justice with photos

But I couldn't resist trying to take pictures of the Iwo Jima Monument, even if it was just with my cell phone.  I had read a book about this moment in history just before we came out with Drew's history fair project, and was SO excited to see it, but someone, perhaps Ronald Regan? had jut died and the flags were at half mast.  That made this monument look ridiculous.  The flag was laying down on the men, partially covering them.  It was fun to be able to see it again looking awesome.  You can tell that by now it is dark and late, and we were done.    

A Week In DC Day 2

 One important thing I forgot to add yesterday was our first glimpse of the Washington DC Temple from the freeway.  At one point the freeway turns and the Temple appears in the night sky right in front of you.  It was an impressive sight!

 Our first stop on Friday was Ford Theater, where Pres Abraham Lincoln was killed.  This is the box the Lincolns and their friends were sitting in when John Wilkes Booth shot Pres. Lincoln and then jumped onto the stage, catching one of his spurs on the flag as he jumped, causing him to break his leg.

 On a normal day they don't open the Lincoln's box for people to look into, but there were so few visitors the day we were there they decided to open it for us.  The picture below was looking through the back of the theater box, directly at Pres. Lincoln's chair.  The view John Wilkes Booth would have had the night he shot Pres. Lincoln.

 And this is the door to the box.  It didn't have a big window in it back then, just a peep hole, which John Wilkes Booth looked through, anticipating the right time to enter and kill the President.  The window, of course, is so visitors can see in better.

 There were a lot of interesting things to see, timelines of the day Lincoln was shot, what he was doing, what John Wilkes Booth was doing at the same time,  For a history buff it was fascinating!

 The above picture cracks me up.  Those girls look like they are on a record cover or something.  I had to go across the street to get all of them AND the Ford's Theater sign in, and they are just doin' their own thing, not paying attention to me at all.

And now they are posed.  Outside Ford's Theater and on our way to the National Portrait Gallery . . .

 From Ford's Theater we walked over to the National Portrait Gallery.  This is a Gallery of important people, including Brigham Young and Joseph Smith.  And Ethel Murman as Annie in Annie Get Your Gun.

 Also, Elvis Presley . . . I'm not a fan, but hey, he's famous!!

 There was also some weird art there.  The above art was a milky screen where, if you stood on the other side, you became art . . I guess.

 The first picture in this series of pictures is of Martin Luther King's funeral procession.  The second is a watermark of the picture with a black dot on every black person in the procession, and the third is a watermark of the picture with a red dot on every WHITE person in the procession.  Art.

 Here Amanda is trying to explain to us, by reading the explanation on the wall,  why this lime green pillar is art.  We still didn't get it.

This piece of art is a crack up.  It is many, many different sizes of television sets, each one playing something to do with the state the set is in.  The Utah screens played random video of someone riding an ATV across the desert while taking video of whatever they saw.  Which really was nothing.  No Delicate Arch, no Salt Lake Temple, nothing that Utah is really known for.  And the Idaho screens just played video of bags and boxes of potatoes.   Art. 

This is just a random picture of Jennifer, Elaine and Karen checking out a beautifully ornate antique table this guy was loading in the back of a van.  The introvert in me would check the table out from the sidewalk, but these girls have no qualms about getting right up close and personal with a complete stranger and his antique table.  Now, THIS, to me, is art!

After the National Portrait Gallery we met up with Ellen, who had gone back to Ed Hoyt and Shirley's house to pick up Mary Jane, and went on a tour of the Washington Monument.  The tour got you up really high, but is not nearly as pretty on the inside as it is on the out.

 

 The Botanic Gardens (yes, it is Botanic, not Botanical like I thought) were on the agenda for another day, but we had time, so we threw this one in on Friday.  This was fun because there was plenty of light, so finally an opportunity to use my camera I had been carrying around all day.

 Amanda was SO excited about the South American plants they had.  This tree grows in Bolivia.  She REALLY, REALLY wanted to pick one of the fruits on the tree.

But she didn't.  She just stood by it for a long time and looked at it and took in it's essence and explained the tree to us.  It was GREAT!  We had our own Botanic Gardens tour guide :)

We also found this cactus type plant that grows in Bolivia.  Amanda had only been home for two weeks from her Bolivian mission.  She was a little home/missionary sick.  

 Grandma was having a great time enjoying all her girls and all those plants and the warmth.  It was a good day to go to the gardens.

 The whole group at the Botanic Gardens.  Lots of pictures!  I was having too much fun.

We did eat lunch this day at a really good restaurant called Clydes just before our Washington Monument Tour.  I had THE BEST turkey sandwich!  After the Botanic Gardens we went back to Ellen's made Tuscan Tomato Soup and Grilled cheese Sandwiches and then watched a funny episode of Modern Family while we waited for these two hooligans to arrive.  

And that was the end of day two in DC.  

A Week In DC Day One

WARNING, although these are much better than I can do with a cell phone, the following photos are all cell pictures.  Not that I'm becoming a photography snob or anything,  Just sayin' . . .

We officially began our "girls trip" to Virginia/DC on Thursday, February 26th.  We arrived at the airport and boarded our SouthWest Airlines flight with little waiting  You can't tell in the photo below, but we had front row seats, thanks to Mary Jane being in a wheel chair and getting to board first.  Our flight did not have assigned seats, it was first come, first served, and since she got to board first with two helpers, they were able to save the first two rows of seats so we could sit together.  

It was a four hour flight that seemed to take forever!  But the flight attendants were delightful, quite laid back, and even willing to take our picture :)  Grandma really is having fun.  That's her, smiling :)

This picture was NOT taken by the flight attendant - thanks Jennifer!  She got in trouble for taking this because she got too close to the cockpit.  Remember, we were the first row!!

We finally arrived at the airport where Ellen was waiting to pick us up.  Mary (Paul's Mary) had flown from Las Vegas and had been waiting for two hours.  We thought OUR time was long!  This picture was Ellen's first glimpse of us.  I'm surprised she didn't turn and run!  We look a little overwhelming there.  

Our first stop was at Mary Jane's brother, Ed Hoyt's house.  She was going to spend some time with them (Ed Hoyt and his wife, Shirley) before joining us the next day.  She hadn't seen her brother for sixteen years!  Can you tell how excited she was to finally get to see them?  It was here that the agenda gauntlet was thrown down by Aunt Shirley and her daughter, Regina.  They had been given a copy of our agenda for the week and were laughing at the thought that we THOUGHT we were going to be able to accomplish everything on it.  So, we took the challenge right then and there.  We were DETERMINED to do everything last thing Ellen had scheduled for us or die trying!!

After a short visit with Aunt Shirley, we made a quick trip to Ellen's house to drop off our bags, and then we headed out for dinner.  We are at a place called Cava Grill.  It's a "build it yourself" place where you first choose to start with a salad, wrap, or rice bowl and then decide exactly what is going to go on it.  Most of the stuff I didn't recognize, so after a safe salad choice, I asked what combinations were most popular and got those.  It was VERY good!!

  And then we went grocery shopping at Ellen's favorite grocery store.  It had EVERYTHING!  There I am, standing and watching the well oiled Cozzen's girls machine work.  The way they move in, around, and with each other is fascinating to watch, and often I feel that if I stepped in to try and help, I would throw a wrench in this beautiful working dance that is happening.  So sometimes I stand back and watch it all happen: )  And then we were off to bed, because we had a schedule to keep, and we were starting early the next morning!!