We started out our Christmas yesterday by driving up to Washington, D.C. We stayed with mama's high school (and college) friend Miss Andrea and Mister Christopher. Thank you for the hospitality, wonderful supper, and great Christmas decorations (Juner really liked those).
This morning we got up and rode the train downtown. we started in Union Station, where we saw the train exhibit put on by Norway. It's supposed to depict a Norwegian winter scene and did a great job, except for the unproportionally large trolls that dotted the landscape. Maybe we don't want to visit Norway anymore...
Mama and Papa had to drag me away from the trains, but we eventually headed towards the Capitol Building. It was very big and impressive, but we were a little worried that we weren't supposed to get too close when we saw the guards with the big rifles. But I guess that is just normal these days.
Around front was a huge Christmas tree! It was full of cute homemade decorations from kids. You can see that the Capitol is undergoing some renovations. Pretty much everything was under construction in preparation for next month's inauguration.
Mama says that this is called the National Mall. She also said we were going to walk all the way to that giant pencil. That looks like a long way.
We posed for too many pictures today. I tried to mix it up at the reflecting pool by turning myself into an overpass.
But I did calm down for a few minutes when we saw a lady feeding bread to the birds and ducks. They were actually climbing all over her. We were amazed and a little grossed out.
Future Attorney General Henry Turner. After lunch, mama and Juner decided to go check out the National Gallery of Art while Papa and I went to the dinosaur museum. I don't know why anyone would chose painting over dinosaurs, but mama said something about the texture in the paint of a Van Gogh she saw in the impressionist room and I knew I wasn't going to convince her otherwise.
We finally made it to the "Big Pencil" (the Washington Monument. By this time Juner and I were getting pretty tired, so mama and papa decided to keeping walking to the Lincoln Memorial.
We saw the (relatively) new WWII monument.
And stopped by the Vietnam Memorial. Mama liked the reflection of the Washing Monument in the stone. Did we mention it was sunny and 60 degrees? Not very Christmas-like, but wonderful for sight-seeing.
I missed out on a few monuments because I was too tired. Juner made it through on only a half hour of sleep today, but she spent most of her time in the stroller, so she didn't use much energy.
I woke up when we got to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see mama and I walking up the stairs. I was a little scared of this one because Mister Lincoln was so big. Mama says he was kind of a big deal, so she didn't let me stay at the bottom.
We took this picture for Grandma Cooper. 3 of her favorite guys and a little lady.
I wasn't really into this picture, but mama said I could have a fruit snack if I cooperated.
We made it a long way and it was starting to get dark...
...so we headed over to the main event-the National Christmas Tree!
There were no less than 10 model trains running around the tree. Even Gugger liked it.
I tried to show her all the different trains. She was a very eager learner. In addition to the big tree, each state had their own little tree that they decorated. We found the Ohio and North Carolina trees.
Unfortunately, we weren't there long before they shut down the whole place. We don't know why they closed it, but we had to leave before we even got to see the National Yule Log.
But then we looked across the street and saw the White House!
Mama was really surprised at how white it was(well, obviously mama, but she said she was expecting it to be more like the Lincoln Memorial). She also thought it would be bigger. But she thinks the Obama girls will like it anyway.
We were glad to see our friend Miss Sara, who works a few blocks from the White House. She came down to visit us when she head we were in town.
After our long day, we took the train back out of town and were glad to find a warm bed at Miss Leah and Mister Josh's house. They put us up for a night even though they just got back from Germany and were still pretty jet-lagged. This time we did remember to get a picture of our hosts.
