We were so fortunate this weekend to have my good friend Crystal visit. We are friends from college and she was one of my bridesmaids. She is recently engaged herself so I was super-excited to visit so I could ooh-and-ahh over her ring and talk all matters wedding! Crystal is in the area until Monday, but she has another close friend in Baltimore, so we had only until Saturday afternoon together, but we made the most of it!
Thursday evening I picked her up and she joined our bowling team for the night. Michael had pre-bowled as he had a previous engagement (and his pre-bowl was awesome! 199, 205, 158 for a 572 series!). With Crystal's help we were able to take one game - something we couldn't have done with only 3 bowlers.
Friday morning was spent catching up and wedding shopping. We were looking for various items for the wedding day including shoes. She's found an awesome wedding dress that doesn't require any alterations (!!!) but it does require flats. Neither the options online or in the stores were particularly inspiring, but we did find a plain white pair at Payless that we thought she could paint. Like
these, only less detailed and less costly! Unfortunately, we weren't able to do the painting while she was here, but I know they're going to look awesome!
Friday afternoon we headed over to Manassas to visit the
Manassas National Battlefield Park site of (surprise!) the First and Second Battle of Manassas during the Civil War, also known as the Battles of Bull Run. Side note, I was in a one-act play in high school called
The Battle of Bull Run Always Makes Me Cry. I was Amy. In the play Amy mentions seeing a Civil War documentary where a gentlemen who knows he's going to die writes a letter to his wife and how watching that documentary makes her cry. I don't know if there was a specific documentary the playwright had in mind, but let me tell you - the documentary they showed at the visitors' center had just such a scene and I certainly cried!
All crying aside, the documentary, vistors' center and park were all pretty awesome. There was both a short walking trail and a longer driving trail to visit all the important sites. We didn't do the walking trail because it was a) cold! and b) getting close to dark. We did do the driving trail. Crystal was a far better picture taker, but I did take a picture of the
stone house!
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| Hmm, my photo looks almost exactly like the one in the link, only not as good. See, this is why I firmly believe in using postcards as the trip photographs! ;-P |
Second side note - on the way to Manassas, we passed a sign saying "Entering Prince William County". I have passed that signs many times, but maybe because a close girlfriend was with me, it was the first time that it clicked that Michael grew up in Prince William County - so I did get me some Prince William after all - Beca will be so jealous! ;-P
Saturday was spent in DC, visiting the
U.S. Capitol,
Library of Congress and
National Air and Space Museum - in that order, which meant we were pretty worn out by the time we saw the space stuff! Still, we had fun visiting all three spaces while trying to stay inside as much as possible. Like I said, it was COLD - even Crystal thought so.
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| Money shot of the US Capitol on the gray snowy day |
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| What we looked like most of the tour |
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| Our first attempt cut off his head |
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| Our tour guide had no idea what this putti represented - I, of course immediately noted the gear and declared he must be an engineer. The LOC website says he's a mechanic - I say pfft. |
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| Had to get a picture with the baby engineer |
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