The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception...

A cool name for a cool place.



The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (hereafter known as the Basilica) is extra cool because it's the largest church in North America and the eighth largest "religious structure" in the world!! And as a side note, it is also the tallest building in DC at 329ft (not to be confused with the tallest structure in DC, the Washington Monument: 555ft 5in, which we visited without our camera...tragic, it was awesome, did you know that you can ride an elevator to the top? I didn't. Or that the stairs are now off limits because too many people decided to graffiti the inside walls including the commemorative state stones?? True. Anyways, back to the basilica...).

We gave ourselves a self tour of the place starting down a long stone corridor with lots of little rooms with cool statues and altars in them. Including this guy who I think looks like the "Camerlengo" from Angels and Demons, played by Ewan McGreggor.







There are several different chapels inside the main Basilica building, each with it's own amazing artwork, most noteably incredibly large and intricate mosaics on almost every wall.







And this HUGE mosaic on the inside of one of the giant domes in the main chapel which I like to call "Angry Jesus"...somehow this just isn't quite how I imagine him...



Here's a picture of the main chapel, it was stunning, in a totally overwhelming and echo-y way.



And my personal favorite mosaic, Adam and Eve.



A note about the name of the Basilica...I wondered as I was walking around why there were so many different "Virgin Marys" of every race and nation depicted, including this puppet Mary and Jesus in a plastic tube hanging from the ceiling...



...then I read in the brochure that Catholics consider Mary to be "immune from all stain of original sin", in other words, they believe that Mary was free from temptation, and never sinned, making her perfect, possessing a "fullness of virtue". Anyways, the emphasis on her, especially in this Basilica makes much more sense in light of that information, since the LDS church believes that she was just a very righteous and special, but imperfect, mortal. The Basilica is amazing, and I highly recommend it if you enjoy beautiful artwork and incredible architecture. Go see it!

Last DC Post...

Just kidding! One more after this. Probably.

So, the National Arboretum. I think it might have been the hottest day of the year...other than that it was great! The best part (maybe the only part we saw...) was the Bonsai Garden. Bonsais are basically mini trees that live for millions of years in tiny pots. If not for my harp teacher's bonsai's that I had to water ocasionally growing up, I probably wouldn't have known what they were. Anyways, some of them acutally are really old. Like this one:





1625!!! I'm not the best at math, but I think that means it's like almost 400 years old. There were some that were pretty young too, it's hard to tell just by looking at them, but they all have little plaques, very helpful.









Just across from the Bonsai Garden is a collection of Columns that used to hold up the Capitol Building. Apparently they were getting kind of old and instead of sending them to the dump they brought them out to the Arboretum so people could appreciate them for all eternity. They're kind of cool/random standing up there not holding anything up anymore.



While we were standing up there Brent suddenly went ballistic and started jumping around and spitting...apparently something bit him on the tongue! Hahaha....he didn't think it was funny, especially since I was taking pictures.





The other cool thing at the National Arboretum is the koi pond. I don't know why koi are so funny, maybe it's because they're so gullible. All you have to do is stick your hand out over the water and they swarm immediately. FOOD FOOOOOD FOOOOOOOD!!!!









Ok last thing, they also had this really pretty pitcher plant, which you will recognize if you've seen Planet Earth (if you haven't you must see it asap). Pitcher plants trap insects and other delicacies in their "pitcher" that usually has a lot of water in it, the insects fall in and drown and then are dissolved and absorbed by the plant. Nature is so creative sometimes.

American History and Potomac Trails...

I know, I know, more DC, but there was just so much to do! One day we drove downtown by ourselves and checked out the American History museum which has a lot of cool random old stuff in it, including C-3PO!



And Brent appreciated the old medicine cabinet display which included a fine selection of "female bitters", the only guaranteed cure for female weakness:





We also looked through the First Lady gown collection which has pieces going all the way back to Martha Washington, and most of the recent First Ladys' inauguration dresses, including Laura Bush's sassy red number (which looks tiny btw, I wonder if some of them have the dresses taken in so they look smaller on display?? haha). Somehow we didn't get any good pics of the dresses, but here's me in the exhibit:



On the way home I told Brent to pull off the George Washington Pkwy to one of the scenic outlooks so I could try to take a picture of the river, which I did.



Then he saw a little trail that we thought might take us down to the river so we started following it but it was really scary, weird, muddy and covered in trash so we turned back! This picture actually makes it look kind of cool, but it wasn't.



However, the GW Pkwy itself is one of the most beautiful highways in the world if you ask me:



Later that night we actually did make it down to the river bank, on a much less sketchy trail that starts just about a block from the McNaught's house. It was a fun little walk and we made it to the river just in time for sunset.













For all you single ladies out there, Garrett is one fine bachelor ;)

Paddle Boats on the Potomac, and stuff.

This time around we got to stay in DC for a whole week inbetween Virginia Beach and Columbus. There is so much to do in our nation's capital that a week can seem short but since Brent's dad will be working there for at least another 6 months (possibly a year and a half...) we don't feel like we have to see everything all at once.
It was super hot pretty much the entire week we were there (I think every day was above 90) which made walking around a lot somewhat miserable, so we tried to stay inside as much as possible. Except for when we went paddle boating on the "poo-tomac" as we like to call it. It's pretty gross, but we had fun! You get to paddle around right in front of the Jefferson Memorial, which is pretty, and there are lots of ducks that like to swim around the boats.







Oh yeah, and the Washington Monument was on the other side of the river.





About five minutes after we got off the boats it started pouring rain, which was acutally quite refreshing after strenuous paddling in the 95 degree weather, seriously, I know it doesn't look hot, but Jane and I were dying trying to paddle those fatsos around. But we decided to take the party inside and the Natural History Museum was close by so we went for round two (round one was in July). I like to take it one wing at a time, so we focused on mammals.



For those of you enlightened people who believe in the theory of evolution, behold the mother of all mammals, Morganucodon oehleri (affectionately known as 'Morgie' at the museum):



Doesn't that make you proud to be placetal, lactating and hairy?? haha.

Anyways...
For those who don't know, Brent is deathly afraid of BEARS. He frequently has nightmares about being dragged out of his tent at night by one, or being surrounded by many bears and having to fight them off with sticks...or some variation on that theme. So I try to tease him about it whenever I get the chance, because he really isn't scared of too many things.



Somehow we ended up running into part of the 'world history' part or something...ok I have no idea what it was called, but they had some cool stuff, like this skull with a hole in it that I really thought was the work of a shotgun...until I actually read the explanation on the wall behind it in one of the photos I took. Turns out, it was a man made hole, but it was done on purpose, it's called Trephining or Trepaning (those of you who have read The Golden Compass may recognize the term) which was basically an old skool method for relieving intracranial pressure. Apparently there was very little sign of healing on this skull, meaning he died very shortly after his "treatment".



And last but not least, the COOLEST thing in the whole museum by FAR:



A Giant Squid!! Supposedly this was actually here the last time we went to the museum, but I must have walked right past it! Anyways, I did not miss it this time, and I can only hope that I get to see a real live one some day! I miss diving.