Virginia and Washington DC

The day after Christmas we loaded up and headed east to see my brother, Blake in Richmond, VA, and his wife Suzanne. We had debated whether to fly or to drive, weather and cost being the primary concerns. We ended up driving, which was the right choice for the direction we headed, we avoided all the snow storms of the mid-west/west, enjoyed books on tape, saw some country we hadn't seen, and made it in pretty good time. We stayed at Blake and Suzanne's house, which as you can see from the picture is pretty nice (Guess which one).














We spent time seeing the sites of Richmond, including a fancy house and a friendly goat. We played "Settlers of Catan", "Cluzzle" (pronounced like puzzle), "Scrabble, Slam" and played basketball.

We also spent a couple days in Washington DC. Our first stop was the Washington DC temple. It really just pops right out of the forest as you are driving along the freeway. It was neat to worship there with Blake and Suzanne. I thought it was neat how everything (White House, Capitol building, Washington monument, Lincoln monument, Jefferson monument, and all the museums) is so close to each other. We tried driving around the first day and that was a mistake. The second day we took the subway from our hotel and that worked out great. Of course we didn't get to see everything we would have liked in so short a time, however, we're glad we got to see all the buildings, visit the American History Smithsonian, see the Hope Diamond, admire the art gallery, and walk into the Space museum and see all the planes. I was hoping to see a space shuttle, but there wasn't one. Have any of you ever seen a space shuttle in person?Brittney was in a play on New Year's Eve, but she'll have to tell you about that. We left Blake and Suzanne's house New Year's Day at 3pm and got home at 2:30am the next morning. We drove straight through listening to "Digital Fortress" a Dan Brown book on tape. It kept me awake and alert so I could drive the whole time. We stopped twice for gas and got a pizza one of the times we stopped. It actually didn't seem like that long of a drive listening to a book the whole way. We had a great time and are glad we went.