"I cannot live without books"-thomas jefferson

OK. I am utterly exhausted from our exertions of this one day. We woke up at 6 o'clock DC time (4 o'clock Utah) so that we could make it to our first tour of the day. We had a crappy motel so we made a mad dash across the street to a nicer hotel (with all of our luggage, at rush hour scary) I'm sure that Shelley will tell you all about that though. Anyway, Our first tour was the library of congress. Every book, movie, cartoon etc. WHATEVER you want is at the library of congress or within easy access. If you want your work copywrited you have to submit a copy to the library of congress. So you can imagine all the works that they have there. From there we went to the supreme court. The pictures are backwards so start from the bottom and go up. I started to describe the buildings but then realized that I started every description with, "It's the big tall white one with columns and stone carvings/statues." Not helpful sorry. The Supreme court is the one where we are sitting by the columns. (shelley is particularly impressed with the SC as you can tell in the picture of her by the column). from there we went to the Botanic Gardens my mom calls them botanical and my dad was not happy that we were in DC looking at plants. (that is where I snapped the lovely picture of sara with a leaf in her face. still cracks me up) Sara will have the pictures of those on her blog. From there we proceeded to lunch with our congress. the building was packed full of people in suits who were willing to pay horrendous amounts for a simple meal. However, we were starving so we did what we had to. We then walked across the street to the Capitol of our Nation and our next tour. Sara will also write about that. Our next destination was the National gallery of art. Let me just say that at this point we were flagging and we only got through half of the west wing before Lizzy collapsed on a couch and refused to go any further. We left her there with dad and the bags so we could at least get through the last 5 points of interest. One of these being shelley posing as a statue and josh showing the beautiful works of monet. We staggered to the Metro to try to comprehend the mess that is the public transportation in DC. we made it to the Union Station before we gave up to rest our tired legs. after a brief respite we got up most of us limping and gimping our way to the train. (we looked like a herd of grandpas playing it up for the greatest dramatic effect.) We made it to our NEW hotel even though it seemed as if we couldn't even make it across the street with a walker let alone half way across town. After josh had a slight skirmish with the desk clerk about the "hottub" (a utah word apparently) we made it to our room and ordered some great Chineese delivery. That is the sumation of our day and I look forward to the rest of the week. More pics and adventures to come I'm sure!