Visit from Christie & John

You can probably gather from all the recent posts, that we've been super busy lately!

Last weekend our friends, Christie & John, dropped in and stayed with us for a day on their way back to Florida. It was awesome to see them and catch up with them. We love when we have visitors!

Here's some pictures...

Christie & John...Look at all our pizza! Yummy!

Ray & I

Alexandria City Hall, Old Town

John, Christie, Me, Ray @ City Hall

Ray & John walking ahead as we watch the storm approach...

We got caught in a downpour, so Christie & I found this little covered garage and we waited for the guys to go get the car and come pick us up...

The Dairy Godmother is a place that sells homade frozen custard...it's simply the best in all of Alexandria! And it sure beats ice cream...we come here at least once a week...

The four of us at The Dairy Godmother...

Capital Tour

The next day, we had the opportunity to take a tour of the Capital...it was really awesome and I'd do it again!

We started our tour at one of the Seante buildings, which is a few blocks away from the capital itself. We were taken underground, where we walked around some underground tunnels and then got to get on the Metro type deal which took us underneath the Capital and that's how we entered it. (Left to Right...Amanda, Clay, Jasenn, Me, Kerry)

On the metro, underneath the capital (Left to Right-Chelsea, Kerry, Amanda, Me)

So, we were all given these security passes which stuck to our shirts...this is what let the security guards now that we were ok to go into the capital. Well, within the first 10 minutes of being in the capital, poor Jasenn lost his pass. We turned around and it was stuck to the tile inside the capital. To make it even better...the girl giving the tour just finished saying that they had just refurbished the floors - which are the original flooring in the capital. So, Jasenn tries to pull his pass off of the tile and it doesn't come off. The white spot on the tile...yep, that's part of his pass. Poor Jasenn!

We are standing at the very center of the District of Columbia.

The Capital Dome...that's George Washington in the center...

Another shot of the capital dome...

After our capital tour, we went to Union Station to eat lunch...(Me, Amanda, Chelsea)

(Clay, Kerry, Jasenn)

Happy Birthday Chelsea

On July 6th, I went out to dinner with some friends to celebrate Chelsea's birthday...

We went to an awesome place in Chinatown called Matchbox...

From Left to Right...Amanda, Kerry, Chelsea, Lori, Summer

More Pictures from the 4th of July

Here are some more pictures from our awesome day in the city of the 4th of July...

Our view of the Washington Monument from where we sat for 8 hours prior to the start of the fireworks...

Summer & Kerry...rain and shine we waited...

This is what one of the roads looked like during the day...masses of people continued to flood into the city from the metro stations...it was truly crazy to see how many people kept coming and coming...

Another picture of the masses of people...

I was given a nice backpack from one of my students last year, although it looks quite pink, it's actually peach (I say that in Ray's defense...) Ray was being awesome and offered to carry the backpack for me as we began what became a 1.5 mile walk to a Metro Station.

There were so many people leaving the city after the fireworks that night, that everyone just walked in the middle of the road...there was no way the police were going to keep everyone on the sidewalks...

4th of July Weekend

We had a great 4th of July in DC this year!

We decided to brave the crowds and the weather and head into DC to watch the fireworks on the National Mall. This was our first 4th of July up here and we had a blast. We got into the city around 1 (fireworks weren't until 9pm) and met up with some friends who had already claimed some ground near the Washington Monument. There we hung, under a tree, rain and shine for the next 8 hours. We watched as the masses of people continued to pour into the city...

Around the 4th of July, they do a folklife festival each year...they focus on celebrate cultural traditions from around the world. The nation they did this year was Bhutan, it's a nation in South Asia...