We just visited Washington, DC (first time ever for K; first time since the late 90's for me).
The trip was primarily to see K's great uncle laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, and we decided to add on a few extra days to get to see more of the area.
We had a good visit with his parents, brother, grandmother and her husband; and we also got to see (and I got to meet) some of the extended family (great uncle's kids and grandkids) for the service.
I hope my father-in-law didn't get tired of driving us all around -- they had gotten a rental car for the ceremony and we also made sure we saw things that took advantage of having a rental car (and let them see things that were new to them since they'd made trips to DC before). We did well -- saw a Civil War sight and the Air & Space museum that is out in VA -- including seeing a space shuttle! and they even had the type of plane that K's great uncle flew in WWII.
The ceremony was powerful and a bit amazing to realize that many Marines were there to honor one man. I was lucky to get to know his great uncle a little bit - he was the BEST. We knew him as J.R. but I didn't know much about his younger life -- nor did i know that he was in TWO wars (WWII and Korean).
The day after the ceremony the rest of the family flew home, and we stayed on to see the area. We met up with a friend of mine from college to tour Mt Vernon, and another college friend met us for dinner (I am still bummed I forgot to take even ONE photo of us together)...still fun to catch up, and we tried crabs (crabs make crawfish seem easy to eat).
Our last full day was just K and me and we used the Metro (and scooters) to tour all around the National Mall. While there are tons of museums we did not see we were able to see the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence (National Archives) and see the outdoor memorials that were 'must see' on the list. We even took a detour off the mall so we could see the front of the White House.
All in all it was a great trip.
I will admit on that last day I was distracted as I knew my sister had gone to the hospital to have her baby (our niece!). That is another post entirely.
This is one of my favorite pics from our day in DC. K really wanted to try these scooters, and they were a great way to get around! I had a good time on them too! We were safe, but sorry moms we didn't have helmets...
We definitely had some issues with them - not 2 minutes after that photo was taken my app wouldn't cooperate to reload $ and his scooter's battery died.....we still had fun, and its part of the adventure. Kevin is my voice of calm after my freakout about the app telling me we were in a no parking zone.....didn't give much of a choice since neither scooter would move. and yes, we found other ones to try again
