DC trip with Ryan

 I knew that the 5th graders at Ryan's school take a trip to DC but in year's past it has been in the Spring.  It was a surprise that this year's would be just before Thanksgiving.  In spite of craziness at Greg's office and Ashley being sick we got there and had a wonderful time.  Here we are at Mount Vernon

 beautiful views of the Potomac River

 Washington's tomb

 In the museum

 We drove by the Pentagon

 National Cathedral

 Very beautiful!  The lady who was giving us a tour told us that Billy Graham had prayed in this pulpit after 9/11.

 Driving on Embassy Row-we spotted the Philippine Embassy

 We got to ride to the top of the Monument-one of our favorite parts of the trip!

 our first view of the White House

 crazy face!

 There are 50 flags-one for each state around the base of the monument

 views out the window from up top

 Lincoln Memorial at night-the statue inside is one of my favorites-I thought it was so cool because it is so large!

 We took group photos out in front of the White House

 Below is Ryan's class

 In Ford's Theater

 In the museum/gift shop-all these books are about Lincoln!

 We had an afternoon for the Smithsonian Museums and I had a hard time getting Ryan and the 2 other boys I was watching out of the Air and Space Museum!

 We did get to the museum of Natural History

 the boys had fun with this magnetic rock and paper clips

 Jefferson Memorial

 MLK memorial-the memorials are beautiful to see at night but sometimes it doesn't make for good pictures taking.  We also saw the Vietnam Wall, FDR, and some others in the same area but I didn't have good pictures of all of them.

 On our last day we stopped at Arlington Cemetery-I read that over 400,000 soldiers are buried there.

 We saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

 The trees were more fall colored here in DC than in SC when we left

 We saw this beautiful yellow one near Kennedy's grave

 President Taft is the only other President who chose to be buried at Arlington instead of in a hometown or family cemetery.  We saw his grave too.

 Our last stop before we began the bus trip home-the Iwo Jima memorial-really neat!  We had a great time and saw a TON of things considering the length of time we were there!  We left on Tuesday morning and returned late on Friday night.  It was a great trip and I am so thankful to have had special time with just Ryan doing this.  I remember going to Washington with my mom and hope that he will have good memories of our trip too!