Cam & Ape go to Washington...

so, way back in the middle of April we took a little trip to DC with some students from our church and school (we were chaperones). it was an awesome time! every american citizen should take a trip there at least once in their lifetime. the trip was too amazing and inspirational to put into words, so i will share a funny story that happened the day we arrived in DC followed by some pictures from the trip.

soo... it began when we had to be at our church at 6:30 in the morning to head for LAX. Our flight left at 10:40 am - no big deal. so, we get on the plane and fly over to DC. 4.5 ish hours later we land. we get off the plane and it's about 7:00pm. we hear that our bus that is to pick us up is running a tad behind - about 30 minutes. we think, this is not a probelm, we will just think of something to keep the students entertained. 30 minutes is washington DC is not the same amount of time as it is in the rest of the country, because our bus didn't come until 3 hours later(or so). we find out that the bes had a flat tire and it needed to be changed. ok, we think, that makes sense, it must be difficult to change a tire on a vehicle of that size. so, the bus that picked us up was a DIFFERENT bus than the one we had told we were getting, so we load up our luggage and ourselves and head for the restaurant for dinner...it's about 9:30pm...oh yeah, and they didn't feed us on the plane. we are a tad famished. we are a bit excited to eat, but we find out that the restaurant is another hour away. so, we put on our brave/no-complaining faces to be good examples to the students - bad attitudes are contagious and we didn't want that. finally we pulled up to the Old Country Buffet...and we STUFFED ourselves. in the state of being fat and happy, we load that bus that we originally were sopposed to be picked up from with airport and headed to our hotel...2 hours away! we couldnt' believe it - this was the longest travel day in history! so, we pop in a movie hoping it will put the student asleep. we get to the hotel and realize that our luggage is not there yet - it was on the other bus that RESCUED us from waiting at the airport while the other one was getting its tire changed. at this point it's about 1:30 in the morning. the kids are tired, so we send them to bed and the adults wait up for the luggage. it's finall arrived at about 2:30 am. we are happy and looking forward to sleeping at this point. so, we drop everyones bags in their hotel rooms, get ourselves ready for bed, and climb into bed at about 3am. then........................THE FIRE ALARM GOES OFF! the entire hotel is evacuated. we stand outside for about 1.5 hours more, trying to entertain ourselves. cameron ended up sleeping on the grass at one point, i tried to take pictures of the firefighters. it ended up being a faulty alarm - NO FIRE! we head back to our rooms, it's about 4:45, and the alarm goes off AGAIN! this time for only 10 minutes, no evacuation needed. the sandman finally came and was with us until our wake-up call at 6:30am. it was a great way to get rested before a long day of walking...non-stop. needless to say, nothing else went wrong with the trip. and in total we walked about 30 miles in 4 days. not too shabby.

from top to bottom, left to right: 1)atop the lincoln memorial w/ washington memorial in background; 2)lincoln memorial; 3)iwojima memorial; 4) mt. vernon w/ potomac river in background; 5)space underpants (hehehehehe); 6) standing in the very center of washington dc - capital building; 7)FDR memorial (awesome!); 8) in front of the white house - the pope was coming that day, security was high; 9)wwII memorial; 10)george washington's house - mt. vernon; 11)pretty flowers that were all over washington; 12) arlington national cemetary; 13&14) how tall we are in $100 bills; 15)national cathedral; 16&17) the lovely fire truck from the first night; 18-20) colonial williamsburg