Jared, Lydia and I picked Mark up from school Friday afternoon and we were on the road by 4:20 which is pretty good since school is over at 4:00. We drove to Manassas and stopped at Cafe Rio for dinner. Then we headed over to the temple to see the beautiful lights. It is no Temple Square but just as pretty and magical. Jared and Lydia loved seeing the lights and the temple all lit up. We walked around the visitors center and briefly met up with Tara and her family. They set up a large nativity and have beautiful music playing. It was so nice.
We made it to our hotel around 8:50 and turned out the lights at 9:15. I had a terrible nights sleep. The hotel was fine I just could not fall asleep and then when I did I kept waking up every hour and a half or so. It was no fun. Around 5:50 I moved to look at the clock and Miss Lydia looks right at me and says "What you doin' Mama?" She was awake and ready for the day. Crazy girl. She is such an early riser!! The plan was for Mark and I to go to the temple while Tara and Tom watched Jared and Lydia at the hotel with their kids then we would switch. We dripped off Jared and Lydia around 7:00 and got to the temple by 7:20 we then found out they did not start ordinances besides sessions until 8:30!! This was quite frustrating as I had called the temple earlier int eh week to ask if there were set times these things began and they said NO, anytime was fine. So Mark and I hung out together in the lobby and heard some good stories from the guy at the desk. We did go in and enjoy being in the temple but didn't get to serve anybody. That was a bummer! It was still nice to be in the Temple. We headed back to the hotel to pack up our car and watch Tara and Tom's kids while they went and actually did something at the temple. They got back around 10:00 and we headed into DC.
We had debated whether we should drive into the city or take the Metro and decided we would just drive in an find parking. Mark was more inclined towards the Metro but driving ended up working really well it being a Saturday helped a lot. We divided our day into two basic sections. First we would check out the Capitol, Union Station, and the Botanical Gardens since they are pretty close to each other then we would find a new place to park, eat lunch and check out the White House/Ellipse (Christmas tree area) and maybe go through a museum. We were only had to drive around a little while till we found some on street parking. We raided our coin container and cleaned it out. Jared and Lydia loved feeding the meter coins (It may have been one of their favorite things) and we only had to pay like 4 dollars for 2 hours of parking so we were good with that.
We were lucky in the morning that it was only lightly sprinkling every now and then. We were not so fortunate in the afternoon when we walked around in a lot of rain. We were also lucky that it wasn't very cold. It was right near 50 degrees which is not bad at all. Union Station had beautiful wreaths and a fun train display. It is a really big pretty building but the ceiling was having some restoration work done on it. All the building are so pretty near the National Mall. I was excited to see them decorated for Christmas. After Union Station we walked over to The Capitol and checked out the Capitol Tree which is much nicer (in my opinion and all the people who wrote reviews online about it and the National Tree) than the National Tree. It is always fun to be at the Capitol and look towards the Washington Monument. It was also sort of fun to describe what the Capitol even was to Jared and Lydia.
THE Capitol Tree
The Botanical Gardens were next. The gardens are right across the street from the Capitol and have a cool display of the most famous buildings in DC made out of all natural plant products. There is this man who uses bark and leaves and acorn shells and all sorts of things like that and makes replicas of these buildings. They were super impressive. The gardens also had a fun train display (trains are kind of a big thing in DC apparently?)
Lydia checking out the train. It is fun how it goes above your head.
The buildings were so detailed!
We got back to the car and changed Jared and Lydia's socks and shoes. It had started raining while we were in the Gardens and they did their best to find every puddle! I was glad we had spare sets. We looked up a place to eat and went to find parking. We were lucky that it was a Saturday so we could park in a garage for the whole day for 15$. We ate at 5 Guys then walked over to the White House which was not far at all. I had read online that the National Tree was not that impressive so I was not expecting much. (I am glad I did so I wasn't super disappointed) The tree is perfectly nice but the tree at the Canadian building (maybe their Embassy, probably) is so much nicer which is slightly embarrassing as this is our country's capitol but go Canada!! The National Tree really only looks good at night. A large tree is brought in and then they construct this cone like net around it. It looks fun lit up but doesn't do much for you in the daylight. We did get to see it lit up as we drove out of DC that night and it was really pretty. We walked around the tree in the rain (So glad I and an umbrella) and then headed over to to American History Museum. I love how all the museums are free! It's so cool. They were hosting a history of Chocolate display which was fun to check out. We saw some of the more famous displays: the HUGE American flag, fancy 5 foot Doll House and the Ruby Red Slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Our kids haven't seen that movie yet but now they can say they have seen them when they do see it. It was nice to be in a warm dry place. Both Jared and Lydia were super tired by then but they made it. It was not pretty at times but overall they were such troopers. It was a fun trip. A wet one but fun.
I think we will make seeing the temple lights a yearly tradition and maybe just go in to DC every few years specifically at Christmas time. Since we have been here we typically just go to the temple then go home but it may be worth it every now and then to head into the city and check out a museum or the zoo in nicer weather. It is so close!
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