Happy New Year!

I'm happy to see that 2007 is gone. It was pretty eventful and full of stress and the unknown. Here's to a hopefully fabulous and exciting 2008. Of course I can't think of a more exciting place to be than near D.C. I tell ya, I really do love it there.

We picked Mike's mom up at Reagan National in D.C. on Saturday. On the way we stopped off at In Stitches so I could pick a few things up. I'm in a Valentine exchange in one of my yahoo groups and picked a couple of things up for that. I have some things I thought about stitching for my stitched part of the gift but couldn't get too overly excited about any of the Valentine charts I had so thought I'd spring for a new one. They were having a 20% off sale so that made it even more appealing. After we left the shop we went to pick her up. This is the first time the kids have ever been to an airport and thought it was super cool. Her flight arrived on time. After we collected her, off to the National Mall we went. Boy, I bet you didn't see that coming! Our first stop the White House, of course! This was the first time we had been back since before Thanksgiving. I'm glad we stopped by because we could see the lights from a Christmas tree through a window. We walked by the Washington Monument, pointed out lots of buildings to Mike's mom and told her what they were while we walked to the US Capitol. Now for your viewing pleasure, another D.C. pic. Sorry, can't get enough of the place. I'm sure there will be tons more to follow in the future. Especially this spring. I'm planning to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival in April and am sure I'll have lots to show then. Ok, on to the pic. Yes, that is the National Christmas tree you see in front of the Capitol there. I disappointed to say that I thought it would be much bigger than that. I tell ya, they really do make everything look larger on TV. The tree in Rockafellar Center was much larger than this one. It was still pretty and I'm glad we got to see it.

Mike's mom only stayed a few days, we took her back to the airport yesterday morning. I can now tell you that the best day of the year to visit D.C. is New Year's Day. The place was a ghost town early that morning. It was SO nice! We got a parking spot by the Monument right away. It's rare to ever find a parking place there...at least a free one. We had been wanting to get tickets to go up in to the Washington Monument but every time we tried the were already gone. We walked right up to the window and got tickets for the first tour. It was really neat! I loved it up there! You could see all of the Memorials, the Pentagon, White House, Capitol, everything! I'm really glad we got to do that. Afterwards, we headed back over to the Capitol. We walked right up in front of it this time and then around to the back. We got to see where the US Supreme Court was and the Library of Congress. Very very cool. I can't wait till we get some more visitors so I can show them all of these things. After we finished gazing at all the new things we hadn't seen before, we went to the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum. We had a really great time there and are really looking forward to going back. Joshua especially loved it. He was really fascinated by all of the airplanes hanging everywhere. I really want to go to the National Museum of American History. It's been closed for over a year for renovations and is supposed to open up again around the summer. I'm sure I'll be there waiting with bells on when it does :)