Washington DC Trip - part 1

I'll try to make this brief, but sadly, it might not be.  For Shannon and Allan's Christmas gift, we decided to go somewhere instead of buying them things that were not needed.....games/clothes/etc.!  So on New Years Eve, we took a 1am flight to Washington DC, getting in there at 7am.  Crazy?  Yep.  

Arlington Cemetery.  This was a pretty impressive wax guy.  

Funny picture of the scout uniforms in 1922- See Allan, scouts even had flag duty back then!

It was really amazing to see all of the headstones.

It was SOOO cold!!!  I'm not joking!

One of the days we were here was so cold that they high was 22 degrees!!!!!

I took this picture as they were changing the guards and the other folks - all 5 of them, did not appreciate the little camera sound.

So guess what we Arizonans did when we saw ice on the ground -.....yep!...  Walk on it and break it!

After renting our car, went straight to the Cemetery and then that evening, although exhausted, we went to a play at the Kennedy Arts Center called; Shear Madness.  It has been running 24 years!!!  It was cute and we all enjoyed ourselves.  Kind of an interactive play where they ask the audience to participate with questions that they ask.  

After the play we drove to the Lincoln Memorial.  

And of course stepping out of the Lincoln Memorial we viewed the Washington Monument, which we found out the next day, that it was closed due to renovations from a small earthquake.  Hmm.....earthquake?  Should I be nervous.  Our hotel room is up pretty high.

And Allan found something funny to do.  Oops, he went the wrong way the first time.....he had to do it again of course!!!

See his gloves?  Those are texting gloves.....one of his pre-Christmas gifts.....to get him excited about the upcoming trip.

On Thursday, we got to go to the Washington DC Temple and do baptisms!  And the unique part is that they actually take you into THE temple and down a few hallways where there are some gorgeous paintings.  They explained that the kids, or those with just a baptism recommend, are interviewed and found worthy to be IN the temple and so they take them a new route that lets the kids see the beauty of the temple.  We were there with another family from Michigan.  It was nice.  When we first arrived you could not even see the spires. It was so foggy - really neat.  By the time we came out.....well, you can see for yourself....simply beautiful!

Tossing his hat

this is just a 'tease' picture for my next blog.

 Okay, so here's my blog for today.  I made these super Hero men for all
of my earthly grandsons, 6 in total.....and then the Princess for my two oldest granddaughters....
and then 2 sets of polka-dot girls for my youngest granddaughters....
My Christmas has been busy and I will give a thanks to Katie, she was
a big help.  And another shout out to Jason, who painted the green
cup holders for my Hulk.

Our Christmas decorations this year were nil.....and we barely made the
last minute cut for getting our Christmas Tree put up this year.  Shannon
had been making a quilt, which took up our living room space for several days,
if not weeks, finishing only on the night of the 23rd, and I then made Doug
bring up my $5 Goodwill tree in the house. Our stockings, luckily, were at the top
of one of the many Rubbermaid totes we have crammed into our storage shed.
We didn't even get our Nativity set on our roof.  Sad......

  Also as luck would have it, we had a few

ornaments, either not put away from last year or, were given to us this year by friends, teachers and

neighbors.  And with a few others things stuck on the tree, it was beginning to look nice. 

 Doug did hunt out our lights that you can put on different settings and wha-la.....done in a matter of minutes. 

For each boy, I lucked out and found some zipper bags at the thrift stores and then put a name on them.

  For the two older girls, I found these cute Princess purses

and lined them.

 It was quite the task, but I loved seeing them all together.