Washington DC part 2

I bet you thought you would never see Washington DC part 2 (part one was about three months ago!). Several things motivated me to finally post - 1. I finally had the motivation to go through the many pictures from our trip; 2. A renewed excitement about blogging made me realize I had a DC part 1 with no follow-up (I know that kept many up at night); 3. We are headed on another family vacation to Mexico shortly and I needed to clear out my camera; 4. Jon is skiing today and me and Spencer are hanging before the baby wakes up (it's nice one of our kids is a good sleeper....if only Spencer learned the joy he would bring parents if he awoke after sunrise!).

What an amazing trip we had. After running the marathon on Sunday we spent Monday through Wednesday touring DC. It was Jon's first visit there ever which made it extra special for me. We also got to spend time with my friend Pam and her daughter Camilla - Pam and I worked together at my first job in the city manager's office in Des Moines, Iowa. We had a really fun dinner with my cousin Mitch and his wife Gretchen, made extra enjoyable by both kids sleeping through the entire dinner. Gretchen is a professor spending a year in DC and Mitch is a recovering professor who does intellectual and witty things like sitting in front of the Lincoln Memorial for 24 hours and blogging! We also met up with a friend from graduate school, Matt.

In all, an amazing trip that inspired us to book our Mexico vacation (the hope with Mexico is to swim and sit by a beach for six days and not leave the compound...more relaxing than DC which had me running a marathon and then site seeing for three days with the two kids). Bring on the margaritas!

The first set of pictures is from our last day at Arlington National Cemetery (the first few at the tomb of the unknown soldier...the last at JFK's memorial).

These pictures are from day one of touring (marathon day plus one, so I was a bit slow going!). We walked from the Capitol to the White House with a stop at the Air and Space Museum.

Day number two we walked to the monuments with Pam and Camilla.

I may download a few iPhone pics from the past few months but this should make you feel relatively caught up in our lives! Spencer and I are about to figure out our day...it's so exciting to start a Sunday knowing the temperature is supposed to reach almost 70 degrees today (after a long two weeks of cold!).

In case you were wondering, yesterday's run was nothing but 10 miles of ice and snow. I was all glad to run it but all too happy to be done. Bring on the melting!