Hanging with mom

In October I completed 3 awesome things from my list in one day.

#62 - Mother/Daughter day

#62 - Play tourist in DC

#63 - Visit grandparents grave

Mom and I spent a fun filled day in DC. We originally went for a Mass at St. Patrick's because they were remembering Nana during the service. We got up early and headed into the city to be there for the 10am service, we got their early because we planned for traffic because there is always traffic and wouldn't you know it there wasn't any and it didn't take long at all to get into the city. We walked around a little bit before the service, but we really weren't there a lot early so it was ok.

Sadly, they didn't actually remember Nana outloud - they just lumped her in with the "remember the one's we've lost" part. They did put her name in the booklet though which was nice. So of course we grabbed a few of those :)

After the service we decided we didn't have anything else going on (well there was cleaning to do at home but that's no fun) so we decided to hang out in the city and see some things we've never seen. That's right - I've lived her 26 years and there are still things I've never seen.

We started our adventure at Madame Tussauds. When we got there we discovered it was crazy expensive to get in to and we thought that was crazy. Some guy in there told us we should go find the McDonalds and grab a coupon so we took him up on that. We didn't actually make it to the McDs because there was a hotel down the street so we decided to pop in and see if they had any coupons and they did - buy 1 get 1 free! We printed one off and we set off back to the wax museum. We had a ton of fun posing with the wax figures and hanging out in the oval office with the Obamas :)

After that we headed down the street to Ford's Theater. There's a museum there, but its a scheduled tour and we had just missed one and the next one wasn't for an hour. Instead we went inside the theater for a informative talk on the theater's history and the events that occured on the night Lincoln was shot. After the talk was over we wandered around the theater and took some pictures. Then we headed across the street to the Peterson house where Lincoln was brought after he was shot and where he eventually died. That was a small little house with only a couple rooms, but it was still cool to see how it looked back then.

After that we did a little shopping, had some lunch, did a little more sight seeing around the area. Then we decided to head home.

On our way we made the impromptu decision to travel through the city and see some of the monuments (from the car...). On our way out of the city we made another impromptu decision to swing by Arlington Cemetery to see my grandfather. I haven't actually been back there since we buried him. In 1997. I always planned to go but I just never got around to it. I'm glad I went. He's got such a beautiful view from where he is and it really is a beautiful cemetery. We spent a little time there and then we drove around the cemetery and saw the Tomb of the Unknown and we saw the hill where Kennedy's tomb is but the cemetery was really crowded on account of the Marine Corps marathon that was earlier that day (which explained why some of the roads we needed to be on were closed!).

After our tour of the cemetery we headed home. For real this time. I had such an awesome day and I'm really glad we went :)