Guess what?!  This is my 201^st post! Here I am on the 9^th day of [31 Days of Life] already and I haven’t recapped our Washington DC trip like I had planned. [Imagine that?!]  Did you know there are now over 1200 participating in 31 Days? We are all linked at The Nester.

Today I’m going to post about [Memories]. Even though these are all a year ago, as I went through the pictures I feel as if it just happened. I can see the sights in my mind, smell the air, feel the heat, and hear the sounds. I find it interesting how vivid memories can be [or how vague].

One year ago today, we were packed and ready to leave DC – our flight left at 7AM, or something equally awful. I just remember had to get up about 4AM to get ready, checked out, and take the subway back to the airport during the morning rush hour. Four days using the subway – I was getting used to it – but now we were going to be hauling our luggage & we’d be obvious again [back to the Alaska hick that I am…]  I couldn’t believe our time was already up. I was tired and exhausted. But I missed Christine so much!

Here are a few pictures to recap a bit of our trip:

First of all…this is the hotel where we stayed. It was amazing.beautiful.old.historical!

This hotel has hosted inaugural balls for each president from Roosevelt to Clinton. And it’s absolutely gorgeous! I knew that tiny bit of history and was excited to see it, I was a bit disappointed it had been obviously upgraded, but I suppose I should have expected that. After all, what is a public building without codes & regulations – right :-D? I do have to say – I am really, really thankful I did not know this before staying there. True or not/believe it or not – it would have creeped me out!  That article was written 14 days after we were there!! [Instead I wisely believed all sounds to be normal hotel sounds with water in the pipes.] I did love seeing the old heat registers.  So glad God blinded me to that knowledge prior, especially since there is about a 99.9% chance I’ll not have the opportunity to ever stay there again :-D.  There is another place – near Dupont Circle – closer to the Washington Monument/Capitol/everything else, I really want to stay.

60* outside? Not a problem! Vince did say it was cold getting in, but once he was in he enjoyed it. :-D.

At the end of hiking our-feet-off-two-days-a-row, Vince still wanted to go swimming. Each time I took him to the pool it was basically empty, even at night when it was so pretty.  I’m sure others thought we were nuts. But being Alaskan we’re used to that, using an outdoor pool is a novelty – especially in non-summer months. I sat at the edge and read.

Vince is totally laughing at/mocking me because I absolutely stink at any form of self-photography.

I totally can’t aim the camera….this is like the 10th or more picture – so, ya – this was supposed to be our picture with the Capitol in the background [use your imagination, you’ll see it :-D]

I was desperate enough to have documentation of me actually in DC I let Vince take a picture – and – I’m posting it here. Someday, Lord willing, I will be there again with both Vince & Christine and we’ll have lots of pictures of us all with historical buildings in the background/foreground. The bag I have over my shoulder is my Vera Bradley tote – it weighed about 25 lbs! At this point I was questioning my sanity for carrying it – but I didn’t know what to expect. I was glad to have it for the various trinkets we picked up – it sure beat carrying a plastic bag where the handle might break. But my shoulder & neck were so sore! We were on our way to take a tour of the Capitol, and right after taking these pictures found out we couldn’t go through because we both had water bottles.  We were so disappointed, we tried the next day – planning for the tour, waited in line to get in…just to get in and realize, we didn’t want to be there without Christine. She is the one who LOVES going through a Capitol building. So we visited the gift shop and left, to re-visit when we are all three back there.

 LOOK AT THAT SMILE! This is at the end of four+ hours in the Air & Space Smithsonian.

Makes my heart so happy to see & remember how pleased and excited he was to be there. Since it was just the two of us, he got to call the shots as to where we went, what we saw, how much we travelled and how much we just hung out at the hotel.

I was overwhelmed with just being in Washington DC and I knew we couldn’t do it all – not even close. So, while it was a no-brainer we’d for sure go through the Air & Space – [what he didn’t know until we got there was, we’d stay for as long as he wanted]; but he’d already studied and decided we’d do ‘just’ that one museum and go all over from end-to-end, no matter how many miles we walked. The second day we planned the night before and decided to buy tickets for a trolley to see the sights far apart, it was awesome & totally worth the money. NEXT time, we will buy the tickets ahead online & print them out.  We used a couple hours getting to the office to buy the tickets because we didn’t want to wait for the location by our hotel to open up. [and because we kind-of got lost, but yea for ‘around me’ on the iPhone!] But, I would have liked to do the three day pass and take it all in m.u.c.h s.l.o.w.e.r. Knowing we hope to get back to DC with Christine and then we can take it slower, she’s not a walker. We will see fewer attractions in one day’s time.

Christine would have been sooo bored within a few minutes of the Air & Space museum, but the longer we were there the more excited Vince got. It was an awesome experience for him, and for me as his mom to see his pleasure.

Phew! I’m tired remembering all these things. I want to go back and visit. In fall and in spring. Please, Lord? Someday?