Day Six: The Grand Finale
I could not decide what was my favorite part about this day because we did such wonderful things -- the White House, the Washing DC Temple, and the Olive Garden! How could I possibly choose a favorite? This photo of us at the White House was actually taken the day before because there are no cameras or strollers or purses or etc. etc. etc. allowed inside the White House. So we left everything at the car and only brought a plastic bag with a diaper & small bag of wet wipes with us so we could change Lizzie before going inside.
Soon after I knew we were going to
DC, I contacted Senator Barrasso's office to secure a tour of the White House and Capitol Building. It looked like we wouldn't be able to go in the White House because all of July was full, but after bugging his office enough times, about 2 weeks ago they let me know what we did get in on a tour with another group. There isn't a metro station anywhere close to the white house, and we weren't allowed to bring a stroller (and there wasn't any place we could store one, either) so I carried Lizzie all that morning. We arrived about 45 minutes early for our tour, but they still let us go right in. We toured all of the East Wing, and it was very beautiful and interesting, but nothing we said could convince them to let us go in the West Wing. :) Of course, no photographs were allowed inside the White House at all so I don't have any pictures of the inside. I asked one of the secret service personnel who was guarding one of the rooms if the president ever even comes in that area of the White House that we were touring and he said yes, when tours aren't going on (tours are in the morning) they have dinners in the rooms at night. It was interesting to see the various portraits of past presidents and first ladies. Hillary Clinton has her portrait in a very prominent place. We were finished with our tour before we were even scheduled to start it! So when we came out, I looked across the city and could see the Jefferson Memorial off in the distance. I talked Cameron into walking there since we hadn't been able to go to it earlier. I thought that since we could see it, surely it wouldn't be very far! After carrying Lizzie for a couple miles, however, I thought perhaps I hadn't been very wise in calculating the distance. The memorial was beautiful, however, and I was glad we had made the walk. We went past the Washington Monument on our way there, and walked all the way around it. We didn't wait in the line to get tickets to go up to the top, however. We'll have to save that for another trip. We decided that rather than walking all the way back to the McPherson Square metro station, we would walk over to the Smithsonian metro station instead, and that was a little bit shorter walk. We were pretty exhausted by the time we made it there.
It was a Saturday and they were doing maintenance and filming (I think for a commercial) on the orange line of the metro. Because of that, we ended up waiting for 45 minutes at the East Falls Church metro station. That was pretty boring, especially since it was in the middle of the highway so it wasn't like we could walk around and look at anything. We were relieved when the metro finally came and took us to the Vienna stop, where we took off and headed for the Washington DC temple.
I had printed the directions off Map Quest, and it was actually very easy to find. We didn't, however, see any fast food places along the way (which I was hoping we would) so we ended up not having any lunch. We ate a couple small boxes of raisins from Lizzie's diaper bag and changed into our Sunday clothes in the car. I fed Lizzie, and soon after that Curtis & Lindsay & girls came. They were so kind to drive all the way out there (2 hours from their house) to tend Lizzie while we did baptisms in the DC temple. I had originally scheduled a morning baptism session at the temple (they would only schedule us with a larger youth group rather than having a session just for us), but then we were able to get into the White House that morning, so I was lucky they let me change our appointment to that afternoon.
We left Lizzie with Curtis & Lindsay and miraculously she didn't cry as we were leaving. Thank goodness she was finally used to them and not afraid any more (the day before we left!!!). The youth group we met up with was actually from Shenandoah Virginia and they were a singles ward. There was also 3 youth who had come from North Carolina to join us. The young men from the singles ward baptized us. I explained that my baby was waiting outside with my brother, so they sped Cameron & I right through. I had brought family names to do -- 12 female and 14 male. It was a neat experience. I thought about how the DC temple is where Grandma & Grandpa Butterfield served their mission years ago. I'm sure they worked in the baptistry sometimes.
We were out in a little over an hour and all was well with Lizzie & the rest of the gang. They were in the visitor's center, which has a beautiful statue of Christ. There were quite a few other people there. We took some photos and then I followed Curtis while he read my mapquest directions to the Olive Garden in Hiattsville, Maryland. (don't you just love mapquest?)
I could not decide what was my favorite part about this day because we did such wonderful things -- the White House, the Washing DC Temple, and the Olive Garden! How could I possibly choose a favorite? This photo of us at the White House was actually taken the day before because there are no cameras or strollers or purses or etc. etc. etc. allowed inside the White House. So we left everything at the car and only brought a plastic bag with a diaper & small bag of wet wipes with us so we could change Lizzie before going inside.Soon after I knew we were going to
DC, I contacted Senator Barrasso's office to secure a tour of the White House and Capitol Building. It looked like we wouldn't be able to go in the White House because all of July was full, but after bugging his office enough times, about 2 weeks ago they let me know what we did get in on a tour with another group. There isn't a metro station anywhere close to the white house, and we weren't allowed to bring a stroller (and there wasn't any place we could store one, either) so I carried Lizzie all that morning. We arrived about 45 minutes early for our tour, but they still let us go right in. We toured all of the East Wing, and it was very beautiful and interesting, but nothing we said could convince them to let us go in the West Wing. :) Of course, no photographs were allowed inside the White House at all so I don't have any pictures of the inside. I asked one of the secret service personnel who was guarding one of the rooms if the president ever even comes in that area of the White House that we were touring and he said yes, when tours aren't going on (tours are in the morning) they have dinners in the rooms at night. It was interesting to see the various portraits of past presidents and first ladies. Hillary Clinton has her portrait in a very prominent place. We were finished with our tour before we were even scheduled to start it! So when we came out, I looked across the city and could see the Jefferson Memorial off in the distance. I talked Cameron into walking there since we hadn't been able to go to it earlier. I thought that since we could see it, surely it wouldn't be very far! After carrying Lizzie for a couple miles, however, I thought perhaps I hadn't been very wise in calculating the distance. The memorial was beautiful, however, and I was glad we had made the walk. We went past the Washington Monument on our way there, and walked all the way around it. We didn't wait in the line to get tickets to go up to the top, however. We'll have to save that for another trip. We decided that rather than walking all the way back to the McPherson Square metro station, we would walk over to the Smithsonian metro station instead, and that was a little bit shorter walk. We were pretty exhausted by the time we made it there.It was a Saturday and they were doing maintenance and filming (I think for a commercial) on the orange line of the metro. Because of that, we ended up waiting for 45 minutes at the East Falls Church metro station. That was pretty boring, especially since it was in the middle of the highway so it wasn't like we could walk around and look at anything. We were relieved when the metro finally came and took us to the Vienna stop, where we took off and headed for the Washington DC temple.
I had printed the directions off Map Quest, and it was actually very easy to find. We didn't, however, see any fast food places along the way (which I was hoping we would) so we ended up not having any lunch. We ate a couple small boxes of raisins from Lizzie's diaper bag and changed into our Sunday clothes in the car. I fed Lizzie, and soon after that Curtis & Lindsay & girls came. They were so kind to drive all the way out there (2 hours from their house) to tend Lizzie while we did baptisms in the DC temple. I had originally scheduled a morning baptism session at the temple (they would only schedule us with a larger youth group rather than having a session just for us), but then we were able to get into the White House that morning, so I was lucky they let me change our appointment to that afternoon.
We left Lizzie with Curtis & Lindsay and miraculously she didn't cry as we were leaving. Thank goodness she was finally used to them and not afraid any more (the day before we left!!!). The youth group we met up with was actually from Shenandoah Virginia and they were a singles ward. There was also 3 youth who had come from North Carolina to join us. The young men from the singles ward baptized us. I explained that my baby was waiting outside with my brother, so they sped Cameron & I right through. I had brought family names to do -- 12 female and 14 male. It was a neat experience. I thought about how the DC temple is where Grandma & Grandpa Butterfield served their mission years ago. I'm sure they worked in the baptistry sometimes.
We were out in a little over an hour and all was well with Lizzie & the rest of the gang. They were in the visitor's center, which has a beautiful statue of Christ. There were quite a few other people there. We took some photos and then I followed Curtis while he read my mapquest directions to the Olive Garden in Hiattsville, Maryland. (don't you just love mapquest?)
The Olive Garden was able to seat us right away and we had an absolutely WONDERFUL dinner! OG tastes even better when you haven't had any lunch. We brought some left-overs home that we were able to eat the next day before leaving for the airport! What a PERFECT ending to a PERFECT trip!!! It was definitely a Grand Finale day!
1 comment:
That's great you were able to do baptisms at the DC Temple! I'm sure it was really special since grandma and grandpa served there.
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