We finally made it!  We got up at the crack of dawn and somehow made it successfully on the Metro to D.C.  (I was NOT happy with the Metro.) and 1/2 hour early to our appt. at Rep. Sandy Adams' office for our Capital tour.  We came up from the Metro station and were met with this incredible view:

Here we are, at Rep. Adams' door!  It was so fun walking through the office building, looking at the names of the Representatives on each door.

Here we are, behind Rep. Adams' desk!  The intern asked us if we wanted a picture here, and of course we said YES!  Oh -- an important disclaimer is needed here: Reese has a shaved head because the week before our trip, he went to wrestling camp and ...well, that should suffice as an explanation.  The kids got kind of crazy...  I wasn't too happy about the shaved head, cause we were going on this trip, but what could I do??  The boy simply wouldn't wear a hat...

Here we are with Sam, our intern.  He personally gave us a tour all throughout the Capital building.  Nice guy!  He said he'd put in a good word for Reese with Rep. Adams about Reese working as an intern one summer.  Neat, huh?!?

This is a 2X replica of the statue that sits on top of the Capital building.  It's in the new Visitor's Center in the Capital Building.  (I think she looks a bit lost...!)

A neat, and rather artsy view of the dome from the Visitor's Center.

Speaker Boehner's door.  No, we weren't looking for it, but when we passed by it, I thought I'd take a picture.

I just LOVE the Capital rotunda!!!  (Inside the dome)

Here's Reese, directly under the rotunda in the "crypt", standing on the spot that is the exact center of Washington, D.C.

Here is the original Supreme Court room, where famous decisions like the Dred Scot Decision, were made.

(I'm too tired to figure out why I can't move this photo up)  Here is a closer shot of the inside top of the rotunda.

Sam, our intern, took this in the Capital Rotunda.

This is for my Iowa and Illinois family.  At the top of some of the columns were ears of corn, and the stalks of the corn made up the length of the columns.  (Others had tobacco leaves at the top.)  This was to honor those who supported our country with agriculture.

After our tour.  The future Congressman (President?) in front of his future office building.

Moving on, we went to the Supreme Court.  Unfortunately, it was under construction of some kind, so it was FULL of scaffolding everywhere and was not at all beautiful.  :o(  Still, we went in of course, and it was really neat inside.  We did not want to wait the 1/2 hour for a new tour to go into the courtroom (we'll go back another time, hopefully) cause we didn't want to miss the Senate session about to go and we still had to go to the Library of Congress.

Reese, heading up the steps to the Library of Congress.

The architecture in there was incredible, as is so many of the buildings in D.C.  The mosaic ceilings were unbelievable and the names of the greatest poets were inscribed as well as some really neat quotes along the borders of the ceilings.

All of the color and designs you see are all tile mosaics.




That, in a nutshell was our day!!  We had fun exploring the tunnels under the buildings, and exploring the House of Representative's offices, looking for names we knew.  The weather held up (it was supposed to rain, but didn't) and it was all and all a VERY good day!!  Tomorrow, we think we'll do the Smithsonians mostly, as it's supposed to rain, but Wednesday is supposed to be really nice, and we think we'll "do" the monuments/Arlington Cemetary on that day.  Not sure.  We're playing it very much by ear! 

I hope you enjoyed the photos!!  Glad I was FINALLY able to load and post them!  Whew!!