Spring Break in DC and VA!

We recently returned from a trip to Washington DC and Williamsburg, VA. One of the great things about living on this side of the country is the quick access to all of the historical sites you read about concerning the beginnings of America in Colonial times to the Civil War. We want to take advantage of showing as much of these places as possible to our kids and bring history ALIVE!

We also want to include as many spiritual experiences as possible, and this trip started with a visit to the temple in D.C. where you can view Joseph Smith, The Prophet of the Restoration movie at the visitor's center. The movie was very powerful and I know the girls could follow its message. (Preston didn't get a lot out of the entire trip, but 'twas expected!) We took a few pictures there, including some of a model of the Nauvoo temple made out of Legos- Darrin's highlight of the day:)

Then we headed into DC to see the Library of Congress before it closed. This building had been my favorite as a teen tourist, full of Greek-influenced architecture and artwork. It's not just a library of books, but also of some amazing things, like one of the oldest Bibles known to exist - the Gutenburg Bible, and some of the first maps of the round earth. The kids thought it was neat that they had just seen National Treasure 2 that has scenes from The Library of Congress.

Next, we checked into our hotel- nice place for the price and being so convenient to the Mall. A horrible front blew in and made it too cold to continue our sight seeing that evening, so we turned in early hoping for a better tomorrow. Well, didn't happen. The wind chill was 19 degrees as we ventured out to the Washington Monument. You have to get tickets in advance, so I didn't want those to go to waste. We bundled into 4 layers of clothing, hats, scarves, gloves, the works, but the wind was stinging any place it could touch. We suffered through the monument, which had awesome views, and got ourselves into the Air and Space Museum to stay warm for a while. By lunchtime, we could handle the temperature better and saw the Lincoln Memorial (Hannah's favorite), the Vietnam Memorial and the Korean Memorial. We drove by the newer WWII Memorial- it's very impressive. We wanted to get close to the White House for pictures, but the security around there is so tight that the walking seemed impossible to add on. There's still plenty for us to see on a return trip, and next time it will be in guaranteed warmer weather!
Then we headed to Suffolk, VA to stay with my high school pal, Angela, and her family. They are moving to Maine this summer to finish his tour with the Navy and we wanted to make sure to see them before they left. Since living in NC, we've had the opportunity to visit several times and enjoy their hospitality. They live within an hour of Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, so we spent a day at each place and then spent the evenings with them. All of these places are living museums of what life was like back then and the kids liked Jamestown best with the Indian village and ships to walk on. They also loved a tunnel that we had to cross each day that went UNDER the ocean! We learned a lot and got a small taste of the many historical places to visit just hours from our home. Hope you enjoy the slide show!