Happy Easter All! It has been a wonderful week and a wonderful Easter. Church was especially good today! All of the meetings were really great! :) A lot of members shared their testimonies - we even got to hear from a man who is being baptized! He said that we are all brothers and sisters wherever we are, because we are all children of God. It was really cool to hear from him because, he's not a member yet! He said he'd been "frequenting this place for the past few months, and I have a baptism date in May!" Rich said to me that the missionaries must be FLOORED. I guess it's not too often that investigators share their testimonies - which doesn't surprise me one bit because honestly, it takes a lot to get me to share mine and I've been a member my whole life! So that was a treat to see.
In relief society today, the sister missionaries had an investigator with them. Because I've living in Utah my whole life and because I didn't serve a mission I've never had the opportunity to see what investigators are really like. She was obviously feeling the spirit throughout the day and during the closing prayer she said "Mmm PRAISE JESUS!" It was pretty cool to see her feel the spirit so strongly and to see that she'd been coming to church - it was her 2nd Sunday! I don't think there is any greater joy - for missionaries and members - than to see an investigator join! I hope to see her again :)
Earlier this week, I was out on a walk on the Norwalk trail with Bilbo when we saw some new growth sprouting up from the ground.
I don't know what kind of plant that is but I'm excited to see that there are green things and new life growing! I can't WAIT for everything to look like this! I am honestly so SICK of the chilly weather and not seeing leaves on the trees. When they're not covered in snow, bare trees are ugly.
Nearby where I saw that new growth, I discovered this perfect fishing spot! We haven't noticed any fish at all in the Norwalk river (which runs along the Norwalk trail), but people have said that there will be. I don't know if they will fill the river or what, but this spot would be perfect! It's separated from the trail by a bridge and the water has little current, so if there ever ARE fish, then we WILL fish right here!
We went to Stew Leonard's on Thursday night (can you tell it's one of our favorites?) and we strolled through hoping to find some samples. Stew's generally has samples throughout the store during the day, so we went around 7 o'clock hoping we'd catch some of the last samples - but none were out! We're going to try going on a Saturday sometime - that should guarantee us some samples! At the end of the "maze" (like Ikea...at Stew's you have to walk through it in a pathway that goes in one direction) there's a buffet of different foods that are priced by the pound. Rich got some ribs that were actually very delicious (I tried some), but turned out to give him some indigestion issues in the middle of the night. We thought about even cancelling our trip - but it turned out just fine. :)
We left at about 8:30 Friday morning to head down to DC. Which, by the way, this trip was fairly impromptu - we talked about it during the beginning of the week - and we still weren't for sure until Wednesday when we got a family in the ward to watch Bilbo for 2 days. So we really had NO IDEA that this weekend was the kickoff for the Cherry Blossom Festival. We made it there by about 2 o'clock. We took the metro to Union and walked around, got some lunch and went to the Capital Building (which was the closest thing and it was huge).
You can see that Rich is trying to grow a little beard - this is about 3 weeks worth of beard hair. I think it looks pretty good!
IUnfortunately the Capital was under construction....so that made the pictures not look as great. But it's big and beautiful. Behind us and across a large park is the supreme court building. I was reminded of watching School House Rock videos in high school as I learned about the different branches of government....do I remember what they all do? No. Not at all. Do I remember the song "I'm Just a Bill?" Yes. For your listening pleasure - I'm Just A Bill.
After visiting the capitol we headed down the National Mall and came to the Washington Monument. You think the walk isn't that long to it because it's so huge and in pictures it looks like it's just a lovely stroll away. No. Don't be fooled. By the end of the day, I wanted to saw my feet off. And by the way, Rich and I were both over dressed (pants, sweaters, boots). We'd been on the road and we didn't know how warm/cool it was outside - not to mention humid. I was wearing comfy flip flops in the car but switched to my boots when we parked at the metro station. Bad idea. We quickly took off our jackets, tied them around our waists (praying we wouldn't see anyone we knew) and kept on sight seeing. In the long run, when the sun went down it did get a little chilly and breezy - so we were glad we kept our jackets throughout the day.
When this picture (above) was taken it was actually very windy outside and it made it very hard to take this picture. It was hard to hold still enough to make it perfect. So for those with OCD viewing this, cringe and keep scrolling.
It was really a beautiful weekend to be in Washington DC. You can see just how blue the sky was and how pretty the blossoms were.
This was twilight (taken from the Lincoln Memorial). There were a LOT of people congregating around Lincoln around midday, so we waited until evening to see Lincoln in all his grandious massive greatness.
After seeing the Washington Monument, we went to see some museums. We wanted to see The Natural History Museum, the Air and Space Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum. The Natrual History Museum was our favorite by FAR, mostly because it wasn't as crowded as Air and Space, and also because they had MUMMIES!!!
These are Canopic jars used to put the deads organs and intestines in. The ancient Egyptians believed in the afterlife and that they would be needing their organs during it. So they kept their guts in these fancy jars.
Pretty scary looking, but also pretty well preserved! It amazing me that on these mummies you can actually still see their skin!
The section of the museum with the mummies was actually VERY SMALL - I'd love to go through a museum that is JUST MUMMIES! Before we moved, Rich and I should have gone to the Mummies of the World exhibit in SLC. We would have found it fascinating!
We went through a section of the museum that had skeletons of all kinds of creatures. They had horses, giraffes, lions, dogs - even manatee skeletons. Can you see what animal this skeleton belongs to? (hint....it says in the picture)
THE HOPE DIAMOND - AKA - the heart of the sea (anyone who has seen Titanic should understand that reference). Apparently this is the largest and most valuable diamond in the world. We had no clue it was Washington DC.
This friend is a model and skull structure of "early humuns". I'm not sure if I believe that humans evolved from ape like creatures....in fact, I don't believe that. I do think that creatures that looked like this once lived and that they are related to homo sapiens.
We also visited the air and space museum. Because it was kickoff weekend for the cherry blossoms - the entire city was swarming with tourists.
As you can see, in this picture Rich isn't feeling too hot. Or...maybe so. In fact, he's sweltering hot. I swear it was like 90 degrees with 100% humidity in there. I think there were like 100,000+ people in the museum right when we were. We didn't stay very long because of the heat and mass quantities of crowds. Blech. But the plane is cool!
Here is the command module that the astronauts from Apollo 11 came back to earth in. That thing has been in space!! So cool.
Old school pilot uniforms for men and women. The brown one is UPS!
All of the flags in Washington DC were at half staff out of respect for the terror happening in Europe. We had several recorded warnings broadcast to us over the intercom in the metro stations to be aware. The Metro Station Police Captain had a message that we heard a few times stating to call the police if we saw any unattended packages. These are the flags surrounding the Washington Memorial.
We visited the Holocaust museum last on day one. We'd heard it was pretty amazing but, after expecting a pretty intense experience (turns out we were supposed to have booked a tour- which we didn't, we'll do it next time we're in DC) we felt pretty underwhelmed.
This was part of the museum. Local children had designed tiles to commemorate and remember the lives that were lost during the Holocaust. I, as a teacher, thought it was pretty cute. I think that's a great way to get kids engaged in their learning!
We strolled around (we did a LOT of strolling - bring incredibly comfortable shoes if you decide to walk) and visited the World War II Memorial. My mom explained to me that that monument wasn't there when she served her mission there - so it's fairly new. It too was huge and beautiful. We took pictures by our states :)
Clearly I wasn't ready to take the picture. Or have to deal with ticks in Connecticut.
We love you home state!
Rich isn't a natural selfiest - he doesn't even try. He is however a natural Spanish speaker and he loved his mission in Puerto Rico - so he had to have a picture in front of it!
After that, we went over to the Lincoln Memorial. That was by far the best part of visiting DC. It's just so huge - so much bigger than you think it's going to be. The pillars are so thick and Lincoln is so majestic! I'm glad that he has such a beautiful monument dedicated to him. He was an incredible president!
Again...we don't take selfies very well. Also, at this point in the day - we were pretty painfully tired and didn't bother trying to be at all normal/nice.
Get a load of that sunset......*sighs* #tendermercy
#sunsetsaremyfavoritetendermercy
We decided to head back to our hotel after that. We stayed in College Park (which was one of my mom's areas on her mission). We went to McDonalds for some kids meals and then hit the hay.
In the morning, I tried to meet up with my good friend Katelin (she lives about an hour outside of DC) but we slept in too late and got stuck in a sickeningly long line! We wanted to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the National Archives building. It was Saturday so...the crowds...I swear TRIPLED.
Here's a photo of the Archives building. The line for it wrapped around from the front and part of the way down the side of the perpendicular street. It was long. It wasn't too bad though because it was moving fairly quickly. We were almost inside when things stopped. We were stuck about 20 people back from the entrance when the moving stopped! We waited and waited and WAITED!! We contemplated leaving the line....and then KEPT WAITING!! We were stuck in that spot for lie 40 minutes!! Finally, some people from the back of the line, pushed their way forward and then just opened the front doors - and then magically, things started moving again. It was like the people in the front just didn't open the doors or something...we still don't know what happened. It was a long frustrating wait though. It was pretty cool to see the original Declaration and the Constitution. Rich and I have been itching to watch National Treasure ever since our trip!
There was a museum inside and it was actually pretty cool. After we saw the DofI and the Constitution, we walked around and saw this TV which was a recording of Eisenhower reporting about Brown vs. Board in Little Rock. Rich said - "Imagine you were tuned in to this for real, imagine watching this back when it was headline news!" It was cool to watch that clip and see what a great president he was. He was stating he wanted to be in the Oval Office where all these famous presidents once sat to deliver this important address. Pretty neat.
After the Archives, we had some lunch and then weren't sure what we wanted to do next. We decided to try to find the White House since we were somewhat close to it. We just started following crowds of people and eventually ended up finding the rear of it.
There it is. It was kinda small...but otherwise looks just like it does in the movies. Speaking of movies with the White House in them - I recommend Dave. It is SO GOOD.
This picture is kind of dark, but if you look close, you can see that those are secret service guys. They were pretty legitimate.
After seeing the White House, we were feeling pretty overwhelmed by the copious amounts of tourists so we debated just going home at that point. We decided we should see Arlington. We totally misjudged how far away it was and walked about 500 miles to get to it. Ok not 500, but it was far. And it was hot and humid so it was hard to stay positive.
We had to cross this forever long bridge. It was so long that there were bridges ON the bridge. There really were. I took a minute to enjoy the view - to the left of me was Washingon, to the right Arlington. In the middle - a vast river. Instead of Rich saying "Hey Tara - smile" he just...took a picture of me not looking at the camera. He thought it was funny to see me on my tip toes.
Arlington was worth the walk though. It's holy ground and there's a special spirit there. And it's so beautiful - I want to go back in the fall when the leaves are changing - I think that would be so stunning!
Rich and I were imagining that these head stones were crosses - obviously we were mistaken. Anyone know where we got that misconception? And also...are the soldiers actually buried here or is it just a memorial for them?
This man in uniform was playing "Taps" for us in the visitors center - it's one of my favorite songs on brass. Just kidding!!! He's made entirely of wax! Doesn't he look real though!?!? I thought he was real when we walked in and I was about to tell Rich to be quiet so we could listen to his song.
That pretty much sums up our trip! We originally planned to take a trip to the Washington DC temple, but we didn't have time! (and someone -not me- couldn't find their temple recommend.....) It was a blast (even though I whine a lot in this entry, we really did have fun).
The Tupper family in the ward took care of Bilbo this time. They live in Wilton and he had a fun time playing at their house in the woods. They have a dog too so they had the chance to play with each other and wear each other out. I think they had a lot of fun - both Bilbo and the Tuppers. It's always nice when it's a Win-Win-Win.
He was helping clean up sticks from their yard - I'm sure he loved that because he LOVES sticks.
Well, auf wiedersehen goodnight!!
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