Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Our vacation - A friend's wedding

Yesterday we returned from a fabulous trip to Pennsylvania! A very good friend of ours was getting married....in a castle! How neat is that?



This castle belongs to a missionary group called WEC International, which both the bride and groom's parents work for. They were extremely gracious and had a dorm style room all set up for us, better than any hotel we've ever stayed at!


The wedding was on Sunday and we arrived there late Wednesday evening, which gave us a bit of time to do some sight seeing. Rather last minute we decided to go down to D.C. (we had originally thought we'd tour Philly)

Our first stop was at the Smithsonian zoo. Fun to see the animals, but looking back we could have skipped this stop. (lack of planning, oh well)



We then left the zoo and headed towards the landmark mall. I didn't get any pictures of it but I'm pretty sure we were passed by the president in a motorcade!! Lots of police cars with sirens followed by several black limos and such...what fun that was!



The whole family in front of the Washington Monument.



This picture shows the rest of the gang that went with us, without all their help holding kids hands and giving shoulder rides...I just don't think we would have been able to do all that we did!

Most of the kids at the base of the monument.


Theo, Noah & I.
Ian, Josiah & Noah at the Lincoln memorial.



The only downfall to our trip was that the pool was under construction. :(


Here are several of the little monkeys in front of the White House, we got a few better photos but it was dark at this point.

We also saw the Capital Building, the World War II memorial, the Vietnam Memorial and drove past the Jefferson Memorial but I didn't want to bore you with hundreds of pictures!


Theo & Mommy

They did things a bit different and hosted the reception the day before the wedding. This is a picture of my husband & the grooms brother giving a toast.



Saturday night Ian threw a bonfire party, the kids had a ton of fun that night! I was a bit worried how it would work with Theo & Kathleen...but you know what? Theo fell asleep and Kathleen sat on the little rock wall content for hours. Truly amazing. Can you see her in the middle there in her little purple outfit? After dark the kids & I went to bed and all the guys stayed (a bachelor party of sorts).

There are so many more stories I could add but I think I'll stop there for today. :)


2 comments:

Sarah said...

So fun! Love the pictures. What an awesome trip for your family.

Dawn said...

What an awesome time you all had. So glad you got to go. I grew up in the D.C. area and have seen the president go by a few times. It sounds like you all saw him.
Blessings,
Dawn