Weekend with Matt and Cami

I guess I should post about last weekend since it is already Thursday. Matt and Cami drove up from Richmond and we spent Saturday visiting some of the Washington, DC monuments. We started off with the Marine Corp Memorial (Iwo Jima) and the Netherlands Carillon (bell tower). I had forgotten how big the Iwo Jima monument is until we were walking up to it. Next we went to the Arlington National Cemetery. We arrived at the vistors center 10 min before the top of the hour which is when the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier occurs. The sign at the information booth said that it was a 20 minute walk. We ran it (boy am I out of shape) and made it there just in time. The discipline, exact timing, methodical manner of the ceremony is pretty amazing. After watching the guard change, we casually made our way back to the JFK memorial. Here are the rest of the pictures of Iwo Jima, Tomb of the Unknowns, and Arlington. Next stop, lunch in Crystal City then across the Potomac to DC. We stopped at Hains Point and played around on The Awakening for a while. Matt made several attempts before finally getting to the top of the knee. It took me 2 or 3 times to get up the highly polished surface. Cami casually made it to the top on her first try! Here are the rest of the pictures of us playing on The Awakening. We spent about 15 or 20 minutes driving around the neighborhoods of the White House before we finally found a spot to park. They were setting up the National Christmas Tree display and the smaller trees from each of the states and territories. We walked over to the World War II memorial, then the Korean Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial then back to car and home. Here are the rest of the pictures of the DC Monuments. Jill finally caught up with us after finishing her fruit basket project for the in-actives in her ward. We got dressed and headed to the DC temple for a meeting on the 7th floor in conjunction with the Oakton Stake Conference. The Temple President said that this group was the largest they have ever had. We stayed for an Endowment Session then ended the day at Silver Diner. Sunday we slept in a bit, made a fritatta (not a quiche because we did not have any milk or cream). Then I spent two hours trying to get my GPS to synch with my new laptop. We finally had to go to my work in order to use my other laptop to download the Geocaching sites we wanted to find. We spent a couple of hours enjoying the parks of Herndon as Jill got excited about finding more treasures! We found 5 out of 6 caches. The one we did not find was a micro container next to a strip mall. Micros are not my friend. Micros are tough. Our last one was in the middle of a lot of briars and poison ivy. The GPS was leading us all over the place which was no fun at all. Everyone was ready to settle for a DNF but I wanted one more try and finally found it. Thanks Matt and Cami for coming up here to play with us. It was a fun weekend. PS - How often do you see roses in full bloom in December?