This past weekend my friend Andrea came for a visit and I had to opportunity to see more of my new city. Saturday was a whirlwind day of monuments. We started at Roosevelt Island, a beautiful nature preserve in the Potomac river. We wandered around, found the beautiful outdoor memorial, then discovered some enormous webs that had captured a startling number of caterpillars. From there we went to the Lincoln. It was raining and I had a bit of a hard time figuring out where to park and there were a lot of middle schoolers but it was still beautiful. Next we went on to the Vietnam Memorial, or "the Wall". "The Wall" is the most heartbreaking of all I have seen so far. There is something so powerful in witnessing the individual loss of so many lives. I tried so hard not to cry it made my face hurt. After Vietnam we walked over to the Korean where one of my favorite quotes is carved in stone, "Freedom is not free". Next was the WWII. Then WWI. We've lost so many in defense of liberty, I hope those sacrifices are never wasted. I often worry we take the freedoms we have for granted and aren't doing enough to protect them. If we don't protect the liberty of all we each lose some of our own. I'm stepping off my soapbox now.

After all the monuments we trekked down to Old Towne Alexandria for our Ghost Tour. We skipped the official tour and went with some ghost hunter dressed in Colonial garb. Turns out it was us and one other lady. Perfect, as all the other groups we saw had loads of middle schoolers being obnoxious! His approach was to tell the history and throw in the ghost story. I would love to go again - very interesting.

Sunday we slept in then headed over to the Museum of Natural History. The dinosaur exhibit made me miss my nephews more than ever! They would have been beside themselves... My favorite was the forensic anthropology exhibit. I'm going to have to head back to see the rest. Last stop, we went to the Jefferson Memorial, my personal favorite, mostly for all the reasons I talked about before. Without the inspired Decarlation of Indepence (based on George Mason's Virginia Bill of Rights and Constitution) we wouldn't have had the freedom that allowed for the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we may still have slavery, and my parents may have been allowed to marry me off to the highest bidder (maybe they would have had better luck).

Enjoy the photos. Sorry for the soapbox.