On our last day we headed out early from to the hotel. We had to be to the U.S. Supreme Court building by 9 am for the gathering and then the swearing in ceremony at 10 am. We got there right on time. Well, that meant that it was time to line up and go sit and wait in the court room. The guests were escorted out first so I missed the chance to eat anything. We made it to the court room and had about 40 minutes to sit and wait. The building was beautiful inside, but since we couldn't take any electronics with us there are no photos. After a while they escorted the attorneys into the room. Then we all waited. It was very quiet, and when the whispers became a hushed buzz in the room everyone was quieted again by security.
Right at 10 am the court was brought into session and the Supreme Court Justices entered into the room. We heard two opinions on cases and then they did the actual presenting of the attorneys and swearing in. It was really neat to be there! Afterwards we got to go back to our room, eat and visit. Then we all met outside for pictures.
Here is the outside of the Supreme Court building.
Jeff and I inside after the ceremony.
The group photos!
Close up! Jeff is on the top row right side ;)
He's so handsome!
After we were done at the court house we headed over to the Library of Congress. The inside of that building was so amazing! The ceilings and floors were probably the most ornate of any of the buildings we visited! Here is the view into the Library of Congress. It was kind of sad that we weren't allowed into the actual library part of the building.
The Capitol building is undergoing some renovations/restoration work. It will be a 2 year process. It was sad to see because then there weren't any really good capitol photo shots :(.
We went on a tour of the capitol building. While on the tour we learned that there is a state collection of statues. There were lots of them around and one room held almost half of them. These are the two statues I took pictures of:
Sakakawea - not how I thought it was spelled ;)
Sam Houston :)
The tour was great and I feel like we learned so much! Some of my favorite facts were about the crypt inside the capitol (it was supposed to hold President Washington), the old Senate meeting room with really bad acoustics, and the history fresco around the lower part of the dome.
We really had a great trip. We are already planning a trip to take the kids. Traveling around DC isn't bad at all and most everything is free too! I think the kids would love it! We would probably do more kid friendly stuff, but the kids would love a lot of the museum stuff too. I'm glad we made a weekend trip out of it and that I was able to join Jeff! We are also so grateful that Tiffany was so willing to watch our kids for us while we were gone! Having 9 kids is stressful enough I'm sure, but it was also Nathan's finals ... really she is a sweetheart to have been so willing to help us out!
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