Restoring Honor - the post some of you have been waiting for and the one some don't want to hear about.

My mom, sister and I have been trying to plan a girls weekend for quite a while now.  Between having babies, and my parents mission, they have been few and far between.  This is only our 2nd one in probably 6 years.  Anyway, since we are all Glenn Beck fans and slightly leaning toward "activists" we decided what better way to spend a weekend together with 500,000 other people.  DC is only about 5 hours from us so we drove up and spent a few days. 

Here I am with a photobomber behind us.  He was making cute faces when we realized what he was doing.

Here's my cute sister as we crossed the bridge to the Lincoln Memorial and the Mall.  We took the metro into the city the day before to do a "dry run" so we'd know where to go.  (I won't mention the "dry run" we did the night before when we got into town and ended up talking to strangers on bikes and security guards, getting lost and finally making it back to our hotel room at 2am.  All we kept saying as we were laughing so hard was that our husbands would have been pretty annoyed at this point with our situation.)

One of the greatest part of the trips for us was catching up with our dear friends, the White's.  They were our neighbors growing up and Maren and I both used to babysit their darling daughters.  They are like family and we just picked up where we left off.  We all went to dinner at Chevy's and had a wonderful time talking about the old times.

After dinner and a little relaxing at their hotel room, the White's went down and stayed the night on the mall to get good seating.  They were kind enough to save us a spot and in return we brought breakfast.  (We so got the better end of the deal but that just goes to show you what great people they are.)  We got up about 4:30, got ready and headed over.  I have to mention that we met so many great people.  I have never been in a place where EVERY SINGLE PERSON is so friendly and kind.  And in DC of all places.  As we walked we talked with so many that were going to the rally.  We stopped to take pics for them and they stopped for us also. 

Here we are in front of the Washington Monument.

We were all a little pictue happy.

Just had to get a shot of the crowd.  I still can't believe how many people were there.

Here is some footage of the happenings.  It was such a great experience.  You could feel a great spirit there.  Glenn Beck talked so much about just bettering ourselves.  Restore honor in our own homes.  Be a person of principle  Have Faith Hope and Charity.  It was no different than the things we stand for and I try to teach  my children.  It was nice to be in the precense of so many like minded people to know that we aren't alone in this country. 

Here is my sister, Maren dancing to the music.  Since she let me take the footage I'm assuming she's ok with me posting it. 

There was lots of music and singing.  Here is Amazing Grace being played on the bag pipes.  (I thought I'd post this for my sis-in-law who also plays the bag pipes - which we'd love to see her play sometime.)

I loved this.  There was a darling family in front of us with a daughter and 2 boys.  They were so young and did great for having to sit in the hot sun for 3 hours.  At one point one boy said he wanted is gun book.  I first chuckled at that - and then his dad gave him the book.  It wasn't drawings or stories it was a book with pics of different types of guns and explanations of them along with pics of them taken apart.  He was loving looking at it.  I just wanted to say to them, "Way to go, don't worry about what other people tell you - do what you think is right for your family.  If you want to teach your kids about guns, go right ahead." 

It's too bad I couldn't post this earlier.  I can't remember who this is speaking.

Here is Alveda King.  She is the niece of MLK, Jr.  She took a lot of heat for coming to this rally.  Her life was even threatened but she felt this was where she was supposed to be.  Her speach was incredible and inspiring - talk about bringing people together.

After the event it took FOREVER to get moving - there were so many people, but again, no contention and people were so polite and considerate to one another.  I tooIk this shot for documentation of how clean everything was.  I saw everyone taking care of their own stuff, picking up and leaving it nicer than we came.  I noticed when we walked in before the event that all the trash cans were full and hadn't been emptied and I thought, oh great, the media is going to have a hay day with taking footage of all the trash.  But they couldn't because the trash was put in bags and set next to all the trash cans.  We found out after that there were a few people that had talked to the park police who couldn't believe how clean everything was.  They said that the last rally that was there was done by some environmentalists and it took the park 2 weeks to clean up after them.  Hmmmm.

 We had such a great time.  Being together and being so uplifted by the speaches and people around us.  We were also exhausted.  That night we came home and crashed at the hotel.  We ordered chinese and went and sat in the hot tub.  At the pool we were able to meet a wonderful woman who is in the military and a bunch of teenage girls from her church that she mentors just on her own time.  They lived nearby but the woman was moving and wanted to have one last fun activity with the girls and so they came to swim, paint nails and sit and talk together.  They were all such sweet girls.  We so enjoyed visiting with them.  I am in awe of that woman to be so willing to give of her time to be a good example to these girls.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.