Sarah and I took Lacey with us to Washington DC the other week to attend Sarah’s brother Steve’s wedding. I had never been there before so it was a treat to be able to go and we stayed for a few days to see some of the sights. Sarah been about 10 years ago or more so it was good for her to see things again. Here is a run down of our trip.

Wednesday – arrived in DC, checked into hotel. Went to dinner with the group then took the metro to the national mall and walked to the Lincoln Memorial. Saw Washington monument, WW2 memorial, Vietnam memorial and Korean memorial. In the process I was reminded why dry heat is not so bad compared to humid heat.

Thursday – took tour to the top of the Washington monument with awesome view of the city. We then went to the national archive and saw the declaration of independence, constitution, and other founding documents. We then drove to the temple which is actually in Chevy Chase, MD. After the sealing we all drove down to VA to Mount Vernon where there was a small reception/dinner. We planned on taking a tour of the mansion and property but got there just as it was closing.

The next day, Friday, was a wild one. We were woken up early in the morning to sirens and alerts and a message from the hallway that there was a fire in the building (we were on the 15th floor) and that we need to leave through the stair wells. We quickly found out that the power was out and we had no water in our room. A little panicked we started to get shoes on and pull ourselves together. A littler later another voice comes on and tells us there is no fire and that the elevators were working on the backup generator. Phew, we don’t have to leave and can let Lacey sleep a little longer. We then had to get ready for our tour of the senate offices and capitol ( no shower mind you). We get to the elevator and it doesn’t work. The backup generator ran out of juice so we had to go down 15 floors in an unlit stairwell with only our cell phone back light to see where we were going. We make it down stairs to find out the metro was also not working so a few of us decided to walk to the senate offices. The rest of the group stayed to wait for my brother-in-law who was actually stuck on the elevator at the hotel when the power went out. We all made it to the tour covered in sweat from the long walk and half of us with no shower (come to find out, those on the 7th floor had water. it was just the upper floors that didn’t have water because there was an electric pump providing water for the upper floors). The tour was good and we even got to go into Senator Kyl’s Minority Whip office in the capitol.

After seeing the capitol I got to see the Supreme Court and Library of Congress. After lunch I went to the Holocaust Museum and Air and Space Museum. After dinner met up with everyone and went to the Marine barracks for their weekly concert/parade. That was a lot of fun

Saturday – we went to Arlington Cemetery (much bigger than I expected) and then I hurried to see the white house real quick before we had to catch our flight back to Phoenix. It was a busy and fun trip and we were glad to get back home to Jackson, who did very well with the babysitter.