Washington D.C.

We went to D.C. for spring break a couple of weeks ago. It was, shall we say, eventful. The Saturday before we left Xander came down with the stomach flu, which the following Monday I had, then a call came from Trenton's school saying that he too had it and didn't quite make it down the hall to the nurse's office. Poor kid. And to make it all even better as I am loading the kids in to the van to go get Trenton, Jacob started whinning and said that his stomach also hurt. GREAT!! An hour after we came home the vomit began. I think I called Travis about a hundred times to see if he could come home early, which he said that morning he was planning on since spring break for him had already begun. But the Professors down at the school took their sweet time helping him get his paper work in order. So we got better and Trav decided that we should still make the 9 hour venture, to which I suggested that it might not be such a good idea. We left any way. The second day that we are there, Travis wakes up with the flu. NICE. But being the trooper that he is, we still explored the Smithsonians Aero Space and Natural History museums. Sorry to all those people who were also there and later came down with the flu after breathing in all of my husbands germs. It was cold and rainy part of our trip, and we never did get tickets to go up the Washington Monument, there were like a million people there since it was the Cherry Blossom Festival. So PRETTY!! We walked across the Washington Bridge (I think it was that one) which connects D.C. with Virginia and explored Arlington National cemetary. We watched the changing of the guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and took a tour of the home of Robert E. Lee before the war began. Way more history than I ever knew. His home sits at the top of the cemetary, and the cemetary is actually there because it over looks D.C. and one of the leaders in charge of finding a cemetary for all of the fallen soldiers during the war was angry at Lee for being a "trader" and buried the first soliders in Lee's prized rose garden and then later buried some two thousand unnamed soldiers right in the center of it, thus making it impossible for Lee to return and live in the house. Also, did you know that he was married to George Washington's great-granddaughter? Martha Washington was married before and brought two sons to her marriage. One died and George and Martha raised the sons children, one of the boys daughters is who Lee married. A connection I never knew.

Any way. There is your history lesson for today. We also drove out to Gettysburg and drove the car tour. It was alot bigger than I thought it would be, and yet not as much land to cover in the three or four days that they fought there. It was so cold and drizzly, it made it all the creepier. We tried to teach the boys what had happened there and the reason behind it, we must have droned on and on because the last time we asked them if they knew what happened there Trenton was like, "YES! There was a big fight and all because people weren't nice about the slaves." Well I guess that is close enough. We finished out our trip visiting and watching conference with our friends the Lundells. All in all it was good, atleast all I remember now is the good parts, I've finally blocked out the endless screaming of Xander and he has finally decided that it is okay to be in his car seat again.

These are all the pictures I have right now. Our digital camera batteries die so quickly, luckily we took our 35mm, but I seem to have already packed those in a box some where.