catch-up ketchup

Last week I was able to make a trip to DC for work to attend a leadership conference, it is a great place to offer such amazing legislative and leadership sessions.  It was extra fun to be able to attend with a friend and co-worker!  However there is far too much there to do, to focus only on work!  Lucky for us we were able to balance and made the most of our time!  Here are some pictures from the week...

I thought this was exciting...I got to walk through the "occupy DC" area.  I am not sure how occupied this area was originally, it seemed to be a little thin - but neat all the same!

 

embracing the Washington monument!

the White House!!  I am pretty sure we saw President Obama, but perhaps I am wrong :-)

 

I took this picture entirely for Charli's benefit, she is super into Ninjas now!

 

while at the air & space museum we watched a 3D movie on the Hubble Aircraft -- it was neat!  We followed it up with a neat show in their planetarium, which made us both sick to do back to back!

on our way to meet with Senator Nelson's office, this is the Capitol Building behind us!

The Supreme Court.  There were a ton of security guards around, though we later found out we would have been able to enter...had we tried!

Oh...good ole President Lincoln!!  On this day we made a last minute decision to make the "short" walk from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.  We were told it was 'maybe' a mile.  It was after 5:00pm and it had been raining.  But, since it was only a mile we figured we would be there in ten minutes and all would be well.  Well...the rain didn't let us, the sun went down, and "maybe one mile" turned into over 2.5 miles -- in the dark, in an area under construction, and took us an hour.  I am still not sure how or why it took an hour, but it made for a good story!  The girl I went with was looking forward to this the entire trip...so we couldn't pass up the chance to see him! 

on our way to see Mr. Lincoln...catching the beauty of the "wind" this night at the Washington Monument!

as you can see here...we were still getting rained on! 

the kids helping to make muffins the weekend before I was leaving for my trip!

most exciting last week was the 8+" of snow we got for the kids to play in!

Chad and Charli made these Valentine Robots for her school party this week!  She was so excited she wanted to make them for her daycare party later this week too!  They had a lot of fun and executed some excellent teamwork on this project!

I am posting this with Chad's permission, by the way!  I thought it was too cute to capture this moment...Harper is looking up to his dad, even if it is in the simple things of life!  ;-)