Home from Washington DC!

I'll bet you were beginning to wonder about me!  LOL... maybe not.  Anyway, I went to Washington DC with my daughter's marching band for an extended Memorial Day weekend.  They marched in the National Memorial Day Parade in the heart of DC.  WOW ~ what an experience it was for all of us!  The trip was JAM PACKED with activities ...which left time for very little sleep!  I'm still trying to get back on track.

I thought I'd share a few pictures from our trip...

Day #1 included: A tour of the US Capitol Building; Lunch at Union Station and a performance of music and precision marching at the Marine Barracks Evening Parade.

The dome...inside

The Parade grounds with the Commandant's House in the background.

The US Marine Band

 The mascot of the US Marines

One Day #2, we drove to Baltimore, MD and visited Ft. McHenry.  We saw a fabulous presentation about the inspiration for writing the Star Spangled Banner.  Then we toured the fort and the band had the honor of helping raise the morning flag at the fort.  It was stunning to see the kids lined up around the enormous stars and stripes.

Some of the guys tried to see if the cannon would still work, but no luck.

Next up that day, we drove to downtown Baltimore and then hung out for a few hours at Harborplace ~ everyone would have loved to spend more time here.  We all loved it!

We boarded the buses and headed back to Washington DC to tour the monuments in the city.  The first stop was the World War II Memorial.  The girls found the Indiana section right away.

This was a stunning monument, but...

heartbreaking too...

We also stopped at the Korean War Memorial...

The Lincoln Memorial...

The Washington Monument...

The Vietnam War Memorial wall.  Since it was Memorial Day weekend, everything was packed with people.

The next stop on our busy day was Arlington National Cemetery.  It was quiet, peaceful, and much cooler with all the shade trees.

The changing of the guard at The Tomb of The Unknowns

The grave site of President Kennedy

After we left Arlington National Cemetery, we stopped briefly at Pentagon City Mall for a very quick dinner and then finished up touring more beautiful monuments ~ The Martin Luther King Jr. Monument, The FDR Memorial and finally The Jefferson Memorial at night.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Monument

My favorite picture from the trip!
These are my DC Chickas ~ Ashley, Sammie, Heather, Tori, Megan and Hailie!
I loved spending time with these amazing young ladies!

Megan and Heather hold up the Washington Monument! 

So that's just the first two days of our trip!  YES ~ just TWO days!!!!  I'll share the rest of our trip very soon.