Thanksgiving

In the light of the holiday, I will list some of the numerous blessings the Lord has bestowed upon me.

First and foremost, thank you God for sending Your son, Jesus, to die for me. Without Him, I would not have the wonderful gift of salvation nor the promise of Heaven.

I have the craziest and most amazing family in the world. My loving and giving parents, insane little brother, even more insane little sister, two pairs of the most wonderful grandparents, awesome cousins, two aunts, two uncles, a number of second/third cousins, great uncles, great aunts...the list goes on and on. I am so thankful for each and every one of them. I love each one of you :)

My best friends. There's no way I could get through high school, let alone life, without y'all.

I don't know what I would do without music. God has blessed me with talents for it and I can't imagine my life without song, piano, or choir.

DC, Day 4

Our last day in DC :( It was extremely difficult trying to fit in everything we wanted to see because almost everything opened at 9 AM and closed at 5:30 PM, leaving not enough time to try and go to all these places. It was hard but I think we managed to get in everyone's favorites. Mine was the Library, Ryan - The White House, Mom - American History Smithsonian, Karis - Lincoln Memorial, and Mimi said she loved everything. At about 9:30 that morning we headed to the Air & Space Smithsonian. This was definitely Papa's favorite place. He loves to learn how everything works and the mechanics of machines.

I was so PROUD!!!

Everywhere we went Ryan had to have his picture taken sitting in a chair. So we have this shot duplicated (in different places) about 16326493984332 times.

He was proud too!

After the Air & Space, Mimi and I went off on our own to look at the Smithsonian castle. The others took a cab back to the hotel to watch the football game.

After we walked around the castle, Mimi and I headed to the Natural History Smithsonian.

This is the Hope Diamond, the largest blue diamond in the world. This picture does not do it justice, it was absolutely beautiful.

They had an exhibit of gems in the museum, and I think I took a picture of every single one. But these were my favorite, Marie Antoinette's earrings.

Our flight home left at around noon the next day. We were sad to see DC go, but I was anxious to get home to my own bed and my own home. Our trip to DC was amazing, and it's up there with my trip to Disney World 3 years ago as my favorite. :)

DC, Day 3

Karis was feeling better on this day. Her temperature had gone was down and she was acting normally again. Still, my mom wanted to be safe and keep her in the hotel for at least half the day. While Mom and Karis were at the hotel, Ryan, Mimi, Papa, and I went out to the Capitol building and the Library of Congress.

The dome inside the Capitol building.

I took ALOT more pictures of the inside of the Capitol, but the lighting was terrible and you can't really tell what anything is. The had a tunnel in the Capitol that took you to the Library, so we opted for that. Anything to stay out of the rain and cold.

Being the bookworm that I am, this was my absolute favorite place we visited in DC. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures in alot of places here either. :(

I snapped a quick shot of the Supreme Court building on our walk back to the hotel.

Mom gave the OK for Karis to leave the hotel, so the two of them met us at the American History Smithsonian. They had a cafeteria under the museum where we could eat lunch.

This place was absolutely amazing. We saw the flag that inspired our National Anthem (we couldn't take pics in there either!). I thought it was just the size of a normal American flag. Wrong! It's over 30 feet long! It took up the whole room.

This picture is for my beloved Aunt Neesie...

The original Ruby Slippers from Wizard of Oz!

Abe Lincoln's top hat.

DC, Day 2

On the second day, it was pouring down rain and the high was only 45. Karis was still very sick with a high fever, so she stayed at the hotel all day with Papa. Mom, Mimi, Ryan, and I went out into the rain, while the 3 of them donned ponchos. I was way too embarrassed to wear one! Haha.

It's no wonder that he is his father's son. :D

We walked around 15 blocks to the White House. I have never done that much walking at one time in my life. Most of it was uphill as well.

Secret Service car in front of the White House.

The front of the White House.

The back of the White House. (me & Ryan touched the grass and were so proud!)

Doesn't he look happy?!?!

After the White House we walked to the Holocaust Museum. This was one of my favorites. We were not allowed to take pictures inside so all I have is the outside of the building.

DC, Day 1

Thanks to this break from school, I have FINALLY been able to sort through all of my DC pictures and post them on here. We left right after school on October 13th and flew to Chicago O'Hare, then connected to DC. We got to our hotel around midnight. Needless to say, we were all exhausted and couldn't wait to start the next day.

We took a trolley tour around the city to look all around and decide where we really wanted to go while we were there. 5 days may sound like a long time, but there is SO much to see that it was impossible to fit everything in that amount of time.

Union Station (where we caught our trolley)

We hopped off the trolley at the Lincoln Memorial. This day happened to be Karis's birthday, so she got to pick where we stopped that day. Without hesitation, she said she wanted to see Lincoln. I guess she must've learned some about him at school?...

Front of memorial.

This man was standing at the steps in front of the memorial. His sign says "Entertain me. I'm bored." You can't see in this shot, but there were news reporters and just random people all around him asking him questions!

Karis in front of Lincoln's statue. As you can probably tell by everyone's attire, it is freezing outside. The temperature never went above 60 degrees, which was NOT home weather. This was the only day that we saw a tiny bit of sunshine. It rained nonstop for the duration of our trip.

Our next stop was the Arlington National Cemetary. It was neat, yet sad at the same time. There are over 300,000 soldiers buried here, dating back to World War I.

We headed back to the hotel on the trolley, and by this time Karis was not feeling well. When we got back we found out she had a temperature of almost 103. She had a rough night.

Us 3 on the trolley heading back to the hotel.

So sorry!

I promise I will get my DC vacation stories put up soon! I have had like, no time to post since I took SO many pictures. I'm still alive, I promise!