DC Fun

(This was written by Heather on March 30th. She just never got around to posting it, so I'm helping her.)

So- you have all heard about the marathon from Todd, and I am so proud of him for his accomplishment (although seeing him train, I too have come to a sure knowledge that I will never do a full marathon!). It's my spring break right now, and I wanted to take a minute to share the fun I had with Todd's family who came to see Adam and him race. We definitely enjoyed watching the race, but that was not the end of our adventures. Oh no.

During the race, we all (Nate, Sarena and the kids, and even me with my pregnant belly) had to run several blocks to make sure we were going to be at the right spots at the right time and luckily we never missed seeing Todd and Adam. I took a lot of pics, so that's why I am not in many!

After the race, we all had our sack lunches under the trees while the kids enjoyed some big blow up jumping things. It was the perfect day for this. Next, we said goodbye to the boys, and Sarena and her kids, Meagan and Chris and their little one Wendy, and me all decided to do a little touring. We started off going to the capital for a tour. Annoyingly enough, they allowed absolutely no food or drinks inside the capital. You couldn't even have an empty water bottle. I asked the security guard if that was really necessary and he said "for safety, no, but I guess they want you to buy the food in there--so sorry mam." Very annoying since we had brought food to munch on through out the day. Meagan really didn't want to trash all her food, since she is nursing and needs the sustenance, so they waited outside in the nice weather with all the food.

The capital was pretty cool. I had never been inside before. They showed us the halls of statues, the dome, and the most awesome part- we got to see the House in session. We got to watch the preceedings for a couple minutes and even got to see a little bit of "frustration" on the part of one house representative about how vague a particular vote had been. It was neat to see how they cast the votes and how it shows on this screen with colored lights indicating who voted. I am sure it was even more crazy there the next day when they voted for health care.

Speaking of...

(This is not a picture taken of the protest we saw, but something I downloaded off of the internet that is akin to it.)

On our way out, we immediately realized something was different. The way we came was barracaded and an officer with a machine gun was standing at the top of the capital stairs. Snipers were on the roof of the capital and huge crowds were surrounding the capital. Apparently we had the priviledge of being a part of the Anti-Health care rally. It was actually pretty awesome in some ways to be in the middle of such a huge controversy, we even got into it a little with some chants as we were trying to wield our way through the crowd to get to the air and space museum like we wanted. Finally we came to a stand still. We saw that the police had made a pathway for house reps to walk to their vehicles and both sides were lined with people yelling and screaming (at this point the kids especially were a little scared and worried-- some of those people were really mad!). So- I did the only thing I thought I could-- squirmed my way to the front and told the police officer how I was here with my family and we weren't a part of the rally, we just wanted to get the air and space museum. He said "you are going to have to go all the way around the crowd and cross way over there." Then he looked at my stomach (yeah for pregnant me) and said, "Ummm actually just go right this way." And that is how we ended up walking right behind different house representatives in the area blocked off to other people besides them. I wish I would have recognized some of them, but I didn't. There were a couple who we had seen in the capital in the house room voting or speaking though! I'd like to say it was smooth sailing from there, but we still had quite a time, crossing streets and getting through a couple more areas. All the policemen were quite on edge as well. It was crazy!

The rest of the day we saw some of the museum and by that time we were all pretty exhausted. Sarena and I took the kids home on the metro and finally got home where we enjoyed much needed rest along with Kentucky Fried Chicken and ice cream. The whole day it was really a lot of fun to spend time with my neices and nephews and to be able to see a little more of the city. Nevertheless, I think we did our own kind of marathon, not to take away from Adam and Todd--- it was a great but pretty grueling day for everybody!