got a sec

wow things on the east coast have been crazy. we are having a blast and loving every minute. there is so much to do and so much to see as i'm sure everyone knows. living a block away from the white house was pretty crazy. huge motorcades with sirens blazing every few hours had us running to the windows every time in hopes to see something spectacular.

the view from our room was pretty remarkable. the white building in front of the washington monument is the department of the treasury. if you take a right just in front of that, the back of the white house is about a 30 second walk on your left.




rooftop views...




whatcha know about air force one???


we took the kids to the washington national zoo our first saturday in town.

elly has been into naming things "daddy" for big things, "mommy" for a little smaller, all the way down to "elly" for the smallest. she was pretty excited to find this because she could name all of them "daddy, mommy, maye-maye, brennan and elly!"
(fyi, it was bird, monkey, human, elephant, and whale)

between trying to hold all the sight-seeing for the weekends as a family and moving last weekend, we weren't able to do much more than that until sunday. here was my first mother's day present...
i'm pretty sure those are just apartment buildings in the foreground, but this is the view from our new place. the washington monument is far off on the left, right down the street from where we used to live.

my second mother's day present was seeing one of the monuments. gabe took us to the lincoln memorial and we had a blast! it was very moving and awesome and just wonderful to see and try to understand everything that the memorial stands for.




Lincoln's second inaugural speech...



and the well-known gettysburg address. it was beautiful...