dc trip:: we also went to maryland

we woke up tuesday morning and headed to kensington, maryland to go to the washington d.c. temple. my parents (with their only three kiddos at the time) were sealed here in 1983 so i was really excited to get to go to this temple.

 

the temple was beautiful and huge! it did feel strange with its lack of windows though, orlando is still my favorite.

by the time we came out, the rain had started so i didn't get to take excessive amounts of pictures with my fancy camera. drats. we ran to the car and snapped a couple phone shots before hitting the road. that picture on the left is so hilarious to me cause it really captured that frazzled moment well.

we ate lunch in the car and made our way to georgetown. we parked on the cutest townhouse side street and checked to make sure the coast was clear because what trip is complete without changing in the car real quick. brett didn't change out of his church pants so i laughed at his saggy slacks/tennis shoe combo all day. he said he was sacrificing style for comfort since it was cold. touche.

we stopped in at the old stone house then went up the street to sprinkles.

the vegan red velvet did not disappoint. sooo delicious.

we shopped (unfortunately mostly just window shopped) at stores we love/don't have/can't afford.

we got back in the car and explored the georgetown university area (via brett's freestylin') then headed to the kennedy center for one of their nightly free performances. we saw circus performers from columbia.

this was at the end because i was too scared to take their picture during the performance since they said no cameras. they mostly did things (like jumping/flips/balancing on each other) that i would imagine a street performer in columbia would do.

after the performance we went back to georgetown and ate at das ethiopia. it was our first time eating ethiopian food and we loved it! we had the perfect corner window table looking out on a busy intersection so we talked, and people watched, and talked about the people we watched. our food came out on one large platter with endless spongy pancake bread that you unroll and use to pick up your bites. it was our first time eating at a nice restaurant without utensils. lots of fun. sadly, the waitress misheard my spinach order as chicken and split until it was time for the check so we couldn't even tell her. we finally decided it wasn't worth bringing it up since it was only a two dollar difference. multiple busboys asked us if we needed more bread to eat the chicken and the owner even came over to see if we needed any bread to finish it. we're pretty sure they were all judging us as wasteful, ingrate americans. believe me, if i could send that chicken to the starving children in ethiopia, i would.

after dinner we went to see the monuments and capitol at night. so beautiful.

did i mention lincoln is my favorite memorial? so awe inspiring.

just imagine there is a beautiful reflecting pool there living up to it's name.

brett videoed me being an excessive picture taker as usual. we spent a lot of time on the trip manning both cameras.

the end. (of dc)

we said goodbye to the city and headed back to our hotel. we ended up driving straight past it and up into maryland again because brett decided he wanted to see the famous view of the dc temple from the highway at night. as we drove northward, i noticed the south bound lanes were backing up pretty badly. we hoped it would clear out and laughed at how bad that stunk, especially since we both had to pee! after we saw the beautifully lit temple, we turned around and got stuck in crawling construction traffic. it was frustrating but funny at the same time, good thing we had that sirius radio. 

and just for the record... once we finally made it to our room, brett won the bet about who had to pee worse.