A couple of weekends ago I got to go to DC and be in the wedding of my wonderful friend Jenee. The two of us met while studying abroad in Uruguay and have been friends ever since. I was so honored to be in her wedding and to meet her new husband. The wedding was so beautiful and everyone was so welcoming and friendly. Here we are together making our excited faces!


And here are the bridesmaids with Jenee!
Since the wedding was in DC and I had not been there since 3rd grade, I decided to make a fun trip out of it and my mom joined me! We had a great time and saw as many sites as possible in one day, 2 days before the inauguration of Obama. The city was crazy and it was so fun and full of energy!

One day we went downtown to sight see but we were so unbelievably cold that we wimped out and went into a museum that turned out to be really neat. We visited the American History museum and saw some great exhibits on Lincoln, cooking shows, advancements in technology, the Star Spangled Banner- the song and the flag, and one of my favorites, the Inauguration dresses of the first ladies.
This was the dress Laura Bush wore

Here I am in front of the Washington Monument. It's so huge! Look how tiny I look!

The WWII Memorial was a new addition to the Mall area of monuments and I was really looking forward to seeing it. It was beautifully constructed and had many interesting elements to it that I really appreciated. Each state has its own column with a wreath above it. My mom go to take a picture in front of Oklahoma for my grandpa who fought in the war.

I wasn't sure if you were supposed to smile when posing in front of a war memorial...so I did a half smile.

From the WWII Memorial you can see the Lincoln Memorial, which I really wanted to visit but we could not get very close. You see, we were downtown on Sunday, the day of the huge concert, and guess what was the stage. The Lincoln Memorial! We got as close as we could but thousands of people and many many fences stood in our way of getting anywhere near it. We actually did not stay for the concert because it was stinkin' cold and by the time we got done seeing the sites we were tired. So we went home and watched the concert on TV in the warmth of our hotel room. There were more monuments in this area than I even realized. So because of the major ones being shut down we saw some of the not-so-major ones, including Roosevelt. Did you know that Roosevelt was the only president to serve more than 2 terms? He was also handicapped and part of the memorial highlighted that and the differences he made for handicapped people. He also helped start up a lot of jobs to provide for the American people and build up our country. Nothing like a trip to DC to realize how little I know about American history.

Here I am waiting in line for food
We also got a chance to go to the Jefferson Memorial which was so beautiful inside and out and gave honor to him and his writing of the Declaration of Independence.
Our last stop was the Capitol Building. We could not go inside but we got to see it being set up for the Inauguration with thousands of chairs (perfectly lined up), thousands of port-a-potties, huge TV screens and beautiful flags as decoration. Although we did not get to stay for the Inauguration it was a really interesting way to see the city. A way that I will probably never see again.

So the trip was really great and my mom and I had a good time together. The wedding was really nice and fun to reconnect with Jenee. Our adventures around the city were great too, especially figuring out how to manage the Metro. All subway systems are a little different so that made it exciting too.

Cheers to McDonalds for giving us a place to warm up