The day after Christmas we decided to take a trip to Washington DC for several reasons. One of our traditions for the holiday is to make a "Cafe Rio" meal on Christmas Eve. We didn't want to cook this year and make a mess of the kitchen so we drove up to the real Cafe Rio instead. This was supposed to be a 4 1/2 hour trip but ended up taking 7.5 hours because of the bad weather, snowy roads. There were vehicles in the ditches all the way there, there were some that were flipped over on the road.
At one point we actually took some backroads to get around the heavy traffic. But we made it for dinner. At Dinner we met the McCorquindales at the restaurant and then went with them to the Temple to see the lights and the visitors center. It was beautiful - there was a mist of sprinkle rain which gave the temple a cool look.
After spending the night in a hotel in Alexandria, we proceeded to take the Metro up to the National Mall to see some of the sights - while we were navigating the Metro - the underground subway, we figured out the hard way that you need to add money to your ticket to get out of the Metro station, not just into the station. So we made our way all the way to Downtown DC but were unable to get out of the station because we didn't have enough money on the cards. Earlier in the day, at the hotel, Carleigh had found a penny on the ground in the middle of the road - I told her it was a lucky penny and put it in my pocket. While I was frustrated at the Metro ticket station looking for coins to allow us to get out of the station, Carleigh looked up at her frustrated Dad, took me by the hand and said "Dad, you can use my lucky Penny!"
Washington monument - Michael and Bri
The Capital building - Bri and Carleigh. It was freezing cold and I made the mistake of getting off the Metro at the wrong station - it made for a long walk in the cold to get to the Smithsonian museums. We went to the museum of American History where we saw the largest American flag ever made. We also went to the Air and Space Museum - honestly it was mostly because we knew that was where the McDonalds was located - we did a quick walk through. the kids were cold and everyone was excited to get back in the car and head back to Greensboro - After sitting in traffic for 2 hours to go 30 miles, we finally hit the open road and got home in a total of 6 hours. Better than the trip down.
Lizzy is getting a Cheeseburger - can't hide the smile.
Everyone was tired after the Christmas holiday - Carleigh chose to curl up with Ooma's new afghan, specially made for her by Dad.
