A Week On The East Coast

I have this awesome friend named Janae that I've known since 5th grade, or something like that, who is the craziest person I've ever known. But crazy in a good way. She (8 months pregnant), her husband, Sam, and 2 kids lived in a nice home in Utah. Within 6 weeks of their first consideration of the idea, they had sold their home, Sam had quit his job, and they moved to Baltimore, MD for him to pursue a master's degree. This is just one of many examples of how brave this chick is. She's an amazing writer, too and even though she has not as of yet published anything, her blog is followed by, I don't know...um thousands. Ok, maybe that was an exaggeration, but there's a lot. So for a very entertaining and interesting read you're welcome to get to know her here. Anyway, Jason and I decided to go out and visit them, sans our own kids and check out the coast. It was an intense week, but a very fun one.


We dropped the kiddos off with Jason's parents on the 16th and headed down to Utah. We slept at my mom's house and flew out on St. Patrick's Day. It was fun to see all those who actually had some fun with the holiday. We arrived in Baltimore that evening and headed off to New York the next morning (Wednesday).

Ok, what they say about New York drivers being out of control...times that by three! I had to drive right through the center of the city and almost had a heart attack multiple times. Really, besides stopping at red lights (which doesn't always happen either), none of the driving rules you learned in driver's ed. apply....at all. I was much happier and relaxed after we parked the car and traveled by foot. We were able to take a ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty and later that night we went to the top of the Empire State Building and visited Time Square, among many other things.

Jason & I in front of the Statue of Liberty

View from the top of the Empire State Building

Jason & I in the heart of NYC: Time Square

The next day (Thursday), we jetted down 5th Avenue and checked out FAO Schwartz and caught a glimpse of Central Park. But we didn't tour that because it was cold and rainy. Later we visited The Cloisters. If you'd like to read about what that is exactly, try the link. It was amazing though. One of those fairly-unknown-to-the-mainstream-tourists places in New York.

Of course we had to get a picture of Jason
in front of the Star Wars Lego people

Friday: Next it was on to Washington D.C. for part one of a two part tour of the city. In the morning, we went to the D.C. Temple, which is gorgeous. The rest of the day we mostly walked around and saw the monuments. They are even bigger than I imagined and pretty amazing. It was lots and lots of walking and weather at the temple was fantastic, so Jason left his jacket in the car at the parking garage. The weather in the city wasn't so kind...it was windy and quite brisk. Poor hubby wearing short sleeves. I was cold with long sleeves and a jacket!

This is us trying to get a picture of ourselves
at the D.C. Temple. As you can see, we're
not very good at that.

Saturday found us in Philadelphia. It was a much more laid-back day than our others thus far, which was really nice. We were able to see the Liberty Bell. Honestly, it was a lot smaller than I had imagined, but it was really neat to read about how it got it's high ranking and popularity. We got to take a tour of Independence Hall and hear about how the formation of the country came about. We got to tour a lot of old colonial buildings and it really was amazing how much they could do without all the technology we have today. There was this building called "The Bourse" which was more like a food court/shopping area. It was not colonial, but the thing that makes this place stand out in my mind was the name, for sure. I have no idea of any story behind it, but this is my story behind it. So, Andrew does really well with his vocabulary and enunciation, esp. for a two year old. I guess that's why it's all the more amusing when he pronounces something incorrectly. He says "w-orse" for horse and used to say "barse" for spider (I have no idea how you get that mixed up...but it was pretty funny). So Jason & I couldn't help but think of Andrew when we saw this building with a big "The Bourse" at the top. It's like a spider-horse building. (Ok, that sounds really weird, and I'm not even sure if all that made any sense, but we got a kick out of it). We tried really hard to find a philly cheese-steak place so we could say we got one in Philadelphia, but we waited too long and after the government buildings closed @ 5pm, everything, I mean everything else closed. Oh well, I've since heard that, strangely enough, one can find better philly cheese-steaks outside of Philidelphia.

I love old fashioned cobblestone roads

On to Sunday. It was nice to not have to get up and go. Church was at 1pm so we took it easy all morning. After church, Janae & Sam took us to a park for a picnic. We sat on a hill overlooking Baltimore's inner harbor area. It was a great view.


Monday was back in Washington D.C. for part II of our excursion in that city. This time we hit the museums (well, not actually "hit" them cause we'd probably have been taken off in hand cuffs if we were standing there hitting them, but you know what I mean). The first one we saw was the Holocaust Museum. Now, I knew that terrible things happened during that period of time, but this brought it to life in a rather overpowering and disturbing way. It's almost too much. I don't think I'd ever go back there again, but I can understand why they did it that way: to make certain that anyone who sees that will make sure he/she never lets that happen again. Next, we saw the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, and then the Air and Space Museum. All of which I would definitely recommend. Really, there is too much to tell, so I just won't even start. I must say this though, you could easily spend a week in just D.C. and still not see everything. But it was all very cool.

The US Capital

Abraham Lincoln's Top Hat

Jason just had to get a picture of this disgustingly
ginormous spider.

This is one of the Apollo Somethings. You can actually see
The burned up bottom caused by atmospheric friction
when it re-entered the atmosphere. I don't know about you,
but there's no way anyone could get me to go to Mexico
in something that small, let alone outer space!
Talk about claustrophobia!

We went to Gettysburg on Tuesday. There is a new visitor's center with a really neat show about the battle and a painting that goes all the way around a huge room. It's pretty amazing. Their museum had an unimaginable amount of information and relics from the battle. The outcome of that battle had to have been God's doing because, seriously, Gen. Robert E. Lee should have totally kicked the North's trash. The turning point was when part of Lee's plan of attack was not communicated correctly to the entire army and one line of troops didn't advance when they should have. Coincidence? I really don't think so. After the museum, we went on a self-guided tour of the whole area in our car. It was set up pretty slick. Most of the area looks very much like it did back in the day. I was really glad I got a chance to see it.


Wednesday, we traveled home and got into the SLC airport at about 6pm. We then proceeded to drive back to Aberdeen to pick up the kids in a terrible snow storm. So we didn't get home until around midnight (which felt like 2am to Jason & I because of the time change). But we were very glad to have made it home given the wonderful(sarcasm) weather. It was a tiring, but very nice break from everyday life. However, it's nice to be back.