Washington D.C.

Now that I have made the trip back to "Blog land" I decided to stay a while and tell you a little more about what has been going on with me. Last month I went to Washington as a Chaperon with Hannah and her orchestra from school. I had never been to Washington so I decided it was a great opportunity to see the sites and spend some time with Hannah and it turned out to be a great trip. I would say the only down side to the trip was that the travel agent packed so much into the trip that we never had enough time to enjoy what we were seeing because we were so rushed. All in all though it was great. We did all the war memorials, the Lincoln Memorial and that kind of stuff on the first night we were there and it was cool to see those things all light up at night.






Because it was at night most of the pictures were not that great but here is a good picture if good old Abe. We also had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe which the kids all loved, but for me it was just another burger and fries that we wolfed down in a hurry. The next day we saw Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier and we got there just in time for the changing of the guard and a wreath laying ceremony. That was very impressive.







From there we got to go on a tour of The White House which was also very cool. Since the Obama administration took over tours have been hard to come by but our travel agent, who is a former teacher from Duluth High School once taught a girl who is now in the military and her job is to arrange all tours and events at the white house so we got lucky as scored a visit.
As it turns out the Obama's were lovely hosts and we had a wonderful visit although had I known ahead of time that I would be meeting the president that day I would have dressed a little different but hopefully nobody noticed my poor choice of shirts.





As it turns out we hit it off pretty well and I was invited back for dinner, but I did manage to spruce up a little before dinner.





If you are wondering about the microphones in front of us, it turns out the Obama's have started a tradition they call "karaoke desert" and just to show their were no hard feelings about the tee shirt mishap earlier in the day Barak and I teamed up for rousing version of Ebony and Ivory that brought the house down. I would say a good time was had by all.
Ok, I admit I made that last part up, but we did tour the white house and Barak was in Mexico at the time. We also went to the Smithsonian Institute but again we only had about three hours to cram in as much as possible and that's just not enough time.



On our final night in Washington we got to go to The Kennedy Center and see The National Symphony perform. We were told ahead of time that our seats were behind the stage where we would have a good view of the conductor which was great for all the kids in the trip since they are in the orchestra at school. what we didn't realize until we got there was that there are only three rows of seats behind the stage and we were actually on the stage. At one point you could hear the conductor breathing and I would have to say it was an amazing experience that I will never forget.
So I guess that's it for now but I will talk more later.