Trip To Virginia!

The week of Thanksgiving I found out that my grandma (from Utah) was spending the holiday at my Uncle Alan's house in Virginia.  I haven't seen her since my Grandpa's funeral back in March, and I don't know when I'll make it back to Utah.  I decided to round up my family and make a trip up there to see her the week after Thanksgiving.  We picked up Phillip on our way, and Andrew was going to meet us up there.

 We decided to make a stop along the way to visit some old friends from our days in Albuquerque. The Savages!! (And the Kites!)  I hadn't seen them since my wedding reception 7 1/2 years ago.  It was so nice to see Heather and meet her husband and their boys.  My kids enjoyed playing with them too.  Her parents are fantastic too, and it was so great to be able to catch up.

Me and Heather

 We visited for a couple hours and then headed up to the Washington D.C. Temple, to see the Christmas lights. 

 Andrew was going to meet us there, but ended up not being able to come.  He was missed!  Christmas lights have always made me think of Andrew so I missed sharing that with him!  The lights were amazing though!  As a kid I was able to see the light display at Temple Square several times, and I had forgotten how breath taking it is, and how much I miss it...  Being at the D.C. Temple brought it all back to me!  I really enjoyed reliving those long forgotten memories.

Posing for a picture!  The kids were in awe...

We went inside the visitors center and got to see nativities from around the world. There were so many of them!  We also had one of the sweet Sister Missionaries take a picture of us!
Left to right: Uncle Phillip, Ben, Me, Sarah, Joseph and Maddy

I took so many pictures of these Nativities... but I only posted a few.

The Temple, surrounded by lights... Only the visitor's center grounds have lights around them. This is the view from there, with the Temple in the background.

They had a beautiful nativity outside, with a narritive playing through a speaker for everyone to hear.

We finished up at the Temple and loaded up in the car to drive to my uncle Alan's house to visit with him and see my Grandma.  He lives in Alexandria, so we had a little drive ahead of us.  Now, we have never been to D.C. before.  We got the brilliant idea to drive through downtown and see some sights on our way.
Anyone who's been there knows how incredibly foolish that was!  My Uncle will never let me live that down.  (Can I plead tourist??)  We did succeed, but with lots of stress and LOTS of time.  Who knew traffic lights only stay green for 5 seconds in D.C.!!

All of these pictures were taken from a moving car... I had to include them since it was such an ordeal to see them!

 

The White House

 The Capitol Building

The Washington Monument!  Well, the bottom half anyway!! haha

We arrived LATE to my Uncles house, where he and his wife Denise were nice enough to still feed us dinner... 

We really enjoyed staying up late to visit and eat "digestives" and icecream!  I learned a few new things about my dad as a child...  And it was fun to see my Grandma. 

I'll post a few more pics from our trip on the next post!