Zoo and National Cathedral

 Saturday we rode the metro and walked to the Zoo.

Rainforest

Watching the Lion

This was so cool! They had an Orangutan exhibit with a huge pole in the center. This pole connected with thick cords to other poles throughout the zoo. There were signs on the path that said Orang crossing...who would have thought they actually DID! Lucky for us right when we were looking at the monkeys one of them decided to climb the pole and scale the cords right above our heads to the other side of the path. It was pretty stinkin awesome! 

Cute panda eatin bamboo

After the zoo we walked to the National Cathedral.

 

Pictures do not do this beautiful building justice. Plus the sun was shining straight down on us. (Also, on the largest tower there is wood and things they are using to repair it-the 5.8 earthquake they had when we first got here messed it up. Because of this we could see the outside but were not allowed inside. I am SO sad about it, but the outside was truly amazing to see anyway.)

More school buildings

 

We heard what an amazing view it is from the cathedral. That you can see all of D.C. Even though we were not able to go in we got a little bit of a view around the other side. The Washington monument is on the left.

After the cathedral we decided to walk to Five Guys. One, cause it was the only place we knew to look for, and two cause it is super amazingly good!!! The road we walked down was lined with many of the Consulates, and it was so cool to see the different buildings and what countries were represented there. 

Yay for fall and pumpkins!

This house had a guy made out of wire or something,...anyway he is on the side of the house and looks like a burglar! Ha ha!

Fun bright doors.

Sculptures and shrubbery.

 It was a good day, but very exhausting. I knew we wanted to do the zoo and the cathedral in the same day because they were relatively close on the map and I did not know if we would make it to that area again. Because we took the metro there was no option but to walk everywhere. We ended up walking over five miles mostly uphill, and it probably would not have been so bad if I had not made such a poor choice in the type of shoes to wear that day. My wedges did not serve me well...

Date Night

Jennie most generously offered to watch the kids while we went on a date. Friday night we went out to dinner at P.F. Chang's and then to the D.C. temple. It was absolutely wonderful! What a truly amazing and breathtaking temple. We had not seen this temple at night before and it was an awesome experience.

It was so cool to see the moon right above this building! Just being able to stop and take in this view is enough to make one reflect on life and those things that are truly important.

Air and Space Museum

This week Jennie was gone to Florida for a little vacation. We missed her, but we were so glad she had a good trip. I am sure it is not easy to go from living a quiet life to having loud little boys running around all the time. We cannot be more grateful for what a wonderful person Jennie is and for the kindness she has shown in taking us in. We love her very dearly.

We took Jennie to the metro last Friday so she could get to the airport. On the way she needed to make a stop. During that time she came out with a dozen roses...for ME!!! Sweetest ever.

We love General Conference. So wonderful to be able to hear our prophet and leaders give us revelation and direction for our lives. It has been interesting with the different places we have lived and how that changes conference times for us. I think China was the hardest. We had to wait for awhile to watch it there. In Nebraska it is just an hour later, but here it is two. So since conference did not start until noon we spent the morning at the Air and Space museum.

There were a few planes and rockets that were open so you could walk through them. Damon really liked that!

This was really cool. The scale of the different planets together with their moons.

You can't really tell, but it was raining really hard.

Our plan was to go down to the Capital, but the boys (and I) were very wet, cold, tired, hungry, and getting sorta ornery so we went home. Loved the museum though.