Roaming around D.C.

Tax season is finally over and we are ready to hit the road. My mom got Jackson some Bose headphones for his birthday (early) and he was pretty excited. 

The top corner is him getting his present. The next one is him on the plane looking cute.  Next is Jackson enjoying some silence. The final photo is when he takes his headphones off and realizes how loud it is when he doesn't have his headphones on. Love it. 

After we got off our early morning flight we decided to go ahead and start seeing the sights in DC. We really wanted to see cherry blossoms but we had heard that they were no longer in season. That was kind of true. We did find one, though, and took advantage of having Susie with us to grab a photograph of the two of us. (We really need to travel with a photographer.)

None of us had been to the Jefferson Memorial so that was our next stop. 

It is seriously beautiful.

I was shocked at how huge his statue was.

We went below the memorial to go to the restrooms and Susie was escorted to the women's restroom by a lost pair of Japanese men. It was hilarious.

The view from the memorial is quite neat. 

It seemed to give Susie a bit of a headache though. ;) (How cool is it that she was willing to pose for this photo for me?! Bravo, Susie!)

We left the Jefferson Memorial and stumbled upon the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. This monument was so neat that I decided that Susie could take a normal picture with her baby boy. ;)

Isn't this water feature so cool? You see a little sign that says, "do not step on the rocks, coins hurt the fountains." We didn't see that sign until after we all made wishes with the coins I found in my purse.

Jackson's prom pose.

Jackson also greeted Eleanor Roosevelt.

The memorial had many of FDR's famous quotes, I liked a lot of them.

And of course his most famous quote of all, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The above quote, however, is one of the best I have read. Ever.

As if being an awesome and very quotable President wasn't enough he also had a statue of his dog next to him at his memorial. #Winning. 

Just down the way from FDR's memorial was a memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. It was really large and was also flanked by some of his best quotes.

From there we walked down to the Korean War Memorial which was interesting. It depicts soldiers in the actual act of war and also has a wall with engraved photographs on it. Susie said it is very creepy at night and I believe her! The Lincoln Memorial is at the end of the reflection pond so we stop by to see it (again, we'd visited on prior trips I'm told). This was, by far, the most crowded memorial of the day as shown below in our photo.

Again with needing to travel with the photographer. (Minus Jackson with the funny eyes. Squint much?) We never get photos of the two of us!!

By this time we'd walked about 500 miles and we figured it was time to find lunch.

We found my favorite East Coast lunch spot, Cosi, and dug right in. (Big thank you to Jackson and Susie for bearing with me while we found said restaurant!) 

From there was time to go on our Pentagon tour. I was so excited to see the Pentagon. They had an official picture taking area where we were able to stand behind the podium and pretend to be important. (I'm just kidding about the pretend part, we are important.)

While some people tried to look stern behind the podium, I could not hide my excitement.

We had to wait for about an hour for our tour to begin in what felt like an airport. The tour was very fast and very structured. We were not allowed to stop and look at any displays nor were we allowed to get out of line. We had one soldier in front of us speaking and one soldier behind us making sure that everyone stayed where they were supposed to be. That was a little intense. The best part of the tour was by far getting to see the internal 9/11 memorial. We were amazed at the yellow hue to the room and were informed that all of the windows at the Pentagon are spy proof and cost $10,000 per pane. The tour covered 1.5 miles of the estimated 17.5 mile Pentagon campus. (That is just inside the building!) After the tour ended we went to the 9/11 memorial that is outside of the Pentagon. It is made up of benches that either face the building if you were on the plane that day or face away from the building if you were inside the Pentagon at the time of impact. It was very interesting. 

We decided to walk back tour hotel from the Pentagon as it was only about a mile. Uphill. Poor Susie. We had finally had enough and needed a nap. Waking up at 3:30 a.m. is for the birds. After our nap we met up with some of Jackson's family that had arrived for the party tomorrow. We caught up with them for a while before heading down to Pentagon Row (a cute little village area) for dinner. We were seated next to some pretty cool looking flight men at the restaurant. I had trouble paying attention to what was going on with Jackson because I kept observing the military people around us. It is a little distracting.

Our hotel had a great view of the Pentagon. Since we were not allowed to take photos of the building while we were close to it, we took a photo of it from our hotel. After dinner and grabbing a quick drink with Jackson's family we came back to the hotel to crash out for the night.

We did get this adorable photo of MacKenzie from my cousin Bethany who is watching her and my folks' dogs while my parents are away at Alex's birthday party for the weekend. She has a way of getting her tummy rubbed no matter who is watching her. Spoiled! We love that little puppy!! (Thank you, Bethany!) 

We are looking forward to another big day of sightseeing today!