This past weekend I took a trip to Washington DC to visit my best friend, Dianne. I was a little hesitant about leaving the boys for three days, especially Shepard who I’ve never even been away from for a single night. But I think this break was good for all of us. I was able to take a little breather from mommy duties and just have some fun while the boys got to have a lot of good Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa time. I came back feeling refreshed and much more appreciative of my family. All in all, it was a great weekend!
Caden drew me this picture on Thursday before I left and I took it with me on my trip. I love how much more interested he’s getting in drawing specific things. This is a picture of me on the airplane going into the clouds and him on the ground sending hearts up to me (totally his idea!). That other thing is a tree with two branches – one branch with a birds nest holding babies and the other with an apple. 🙂
I flew in around six on Thursday night and Dianne met me at the airport. We took the metro back and had dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant. On Friday morning Dianne and her boyfriend were signing the lease to their new apartment so we had a few things to take care of for that and then Dianne and I headed to George Washington University where the food trucks were going to be stationed that day. I’m intrigued by the food truck idea since it’s something I pretty much never see in Wisconsin. I was excited to try this spicy bbq jalapeno chicken sandwich and mashed potatoes. It was pretty good. Unfortunately it was the only meal I took a picture of the whole trip.
The food trucks. My sandwich came from the BBQ Bus.
After that we did a few sightseeing things. On my first trip to Washington DC about seven years ago I kind of had sightseeing overload and didn’t feel that inclined to revisit much on this trip. But I did manage this picture of the Washington Monument.
And here we are. I should mention that it was insanely humid on Friday. Like so much more humid than we ever even experience in Wisconsin. And it’s the middle of October. I was SO hot all day.
I’m not sure what this building is, but I thought it was pretty.
Then we went to the Hirshhorn Museum to look at the Ai Weiwei exhibit. It was fun going to an art museum – something I used to love doing and never have a chance to do these days. I liked this sculpture.
We walked through the surrounding sculpture gardens too.
Next we went on a quick tour of the National Archives, where Dianne works. I’m not too enthused about old federal documents, but I had’t been there before and it was neat to see.
We were pretty worn out (and very hot) by then, so we headed back to Dianne’s new apartment. It started raining again and this pretty rainbow appeared over their awesome view. When the rain finally let up a little many hours later Dianne and Jack took me to their favorite Thai restaurant. I’ve never had Thai food before and thought it was quite delicious!
On Saturday morning we got up and headed straight to Arlington Cemetery. This is one place I really really wanted to see on my last trip and missed out. So it was the only thing on my must see list this time around. I’m fascinated by cemeteries and this one was pretty amazing!
It was slightly cooler on Saturday, but still quite humid.
A few of the Kennedys had simple white cross grave markers. I liked those.
I loved the older section with more variety in the headstones.
After Arlington we went to Georgetown to shop. I didn’t really take any pictures from that point on. The shopping was great, though! I got a few new shirts and some small Christmas gifts. We had lunch at Serendipity 3, which was very tasty. Then we took a cab back to the apartment (my first ever cab ride) and relaxed a few hours. By that point my legs were killing me, so it was nice to just read and rest for awhile. That night we ventured out again to see the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I had no idea what it was about ahead of time, but I really enjoyed it!
And that was my trip! Sunday morning we just hung out and then I headed to the airport around ten. Overall I had a really good time! It was so nice just spending time with Dianne and taking a little break from my regular life. Hopefully it will become a yearly tradition!
After many hours of sitting in the airport and on the plane I finally made it back home to my babies! It was an awesome weekend!
