Washington, D.C.

Dear Friends:

Two weeks, my family and I spent the week traveling down the East Coast of the U.S.  In the last blog post, we covered our time in New York.  This post is about our final stop in Washington, D.C..

We stopped in DC, not just because it's an amazing city, but because we were there to visit family.  My wife's brother lives there with his family, and we were going to attend the baptism of a nephew.

We arrived to my brother-in-law's house to find it chocked full of visiting family.  It was so great to see everyone.  A nephew of my sister-in-law was also visiting, and he was hilarious.  We asked him to make his "Hulk" face...here's a peek:

The next morning was the baptism, and it was beautiful.  It's amazing to watch these kids make covenants with the Lord.  I particularly love seeing them in all white:

We returned from the service and the kids started playing.  Their cousins have an awesome playground, right next door to their house:

That afternoon, we decided to take the kids down to the Washington Mall, so they could see the Lincoln Memorial.  We didn't realize that there was a concert downtown that day - so traffic was insane.  We parked far away and enjoyed a walk down the Mall:

Three beautiful cousins ; )

We stopped for a perfect shot of the Washington Monument - even though we had a surprise photo "bomb" ; )

We made our way to one of my favorite stops at the Mall - the World War II Memorial.  What an amazing an impressive sight, right in the very center - between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial:

I really liked this next picture. Really like it.  It's an amazing juxtaposition of an innocent child, simply tracing the outline of words - important words.  Behind her are the numerous gold stars that represent the ultimate sacrifice paid by Americans in that terrible war. 

We walked further to the Lincoln Memorial - it was cloudy that day, but never rained on us.

As always, the statue of Lincoln inside never fails to humble and amaze.  I absolutely love this sculpture, and the quotes that surround the interior of the memorial to this great president:

Outside, we showed G-Man the spot that Marin Luther King, Jr. stood, while delivering the famous "I have a dream..." speech.  G-Man was writing a report on all the famous and historical places he had visited this entire week:

That's it for the super-fast visit to DC.  We could have spent days here - especially visiting my favorite museum of the bunch (Air & Space).  We left DC, in awe of the symbols of America.  It's a place that every single American should visit.  I'm glad that we've had numerous chances.