I'll toast to that! If you've read my previous blogs, you'll remember how straight up exhausted I've been. So when it comes time for the weekend, I'm ecstatic! It's a time to relax, catch up on work, and experience D.C. This weekend in particular was going to be special... Presidents' Day was Monday so it was a three day weekend AND my family was coming to visit me on Saturday. I haven't experienced everything the city has to offer yet - I don't think I ever will actually - so I couldn't completely show off to my family. Even better than that I'd be able to see new places and build memories with my family. I was really excited.

7:50 a.m.

My phone rings. I groggily turn over in bed and search for that little box that the obnoxious sound is coming from and answer the call. Mom: "Good morning! We're getting ready to leave." I remembered that the night before I had asked my mom to call me before my family embarked on their 3-hour journey so I could get up, work out, and tidy up the apartment. Me: "Can you call me back in an hour?" Yea... I was NOT going to be working out today.

10:20 a.m.

I was throwing out some last minute trash when my mom called back to let me know my family was here! I rushed outside to watch my dad struggling to parallel park the car in front of the Residential and Academic Facility (the RAF for short). My parents and younger brother got out of the car and hugged me hello, then popped the trunk revealing 5 - yes FIVE - giant boxes full of food. It was probably enough groceries to put off another trip to Harris Teeter for weeks... thank goodness!

11:00 a.m.

After we put all of my groceries away and my parents caught up with the Katies (2 of my roommates), my dad, mom, brother Jake, and I headed out to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I forced my parents to buy passes and take the Metro to the museum. My brother - a Philadelphia resident - thinks the Metro system here is whack. See, in Philly you can buy a token and that token will get you on the subway and to your destination. It's known to be the country's simplest subway system. No worries about paper cards and the associated fees or making sure you have enough money on your card/pass to get to your destination and to allow you to exit the gates once there. Here in D.C., the Smart Card helps this quite a bit, but for one-day travelers, the system can get complicated and confusing.

11:50 a.m.

Exit the Metro at the Smithsonian stop to sunlight and the Department of Agriculture buildings... plus a pretty cool view of the Washington Monument! Hungry as heck, we start a search for food. Google Maps was NO help here really! After a 30 minute search and an inquiry with the security guard at some random building near L'Enfant Plaza, we discover the food court at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station and SCARF down some Five Guys. Some delicious Five Guys. Safe to say I will be making adventures to one of the many D.C. chain locations in the future...

Cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, mayo, ketchup, mushrooms, and pickles.

Don't judge... but I TOTALLY finished that monster!

1:00 p.m.

And we're off! Full bellies and warm bodies, we're finally on our way to the Holocaust Museum. It wasn't too far of a walk, and along the way we passed the Department of Agriculture (again) and the Department of the Treasury Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Outside of the Dept. of Treasury vents you can actually smell money!

Once we got to the museum and passed through security, we grabbed a brochure and started the adventure. The main focus of the museum is the permanent exhibit, which is a three floor arrangement that takes you through the stages of the Holocaust. You start by taking an identification card which represents a real person that went through the Holocaust. It tells the person's story, which you can follow as you walk through the exhibit. You start on the third floor and work your way down. It was such a humbling and eye-opening experience to walk through the exhibit. There's so much to see and read that if you read everything there it would probably take you an entire day (or more) to get through. I tried to look at everything and just read about things I didn't know much about and my family was still in that museum for about 2 and 1/2 hours. I was fascinated by the very pieces that the museum was able to obtain.

Above: This is just a fraction of a piece of the exhibit which displayed thousands of shoes that were confiscated from Jews and other victims brought to the concentration camps.

Flags of twenty U.S. Army divisions active in liberating Nazi Concentration Camps.

3:30 p.m.

We headed over to The National Mall to visit some of the memorials there. My parents hadn't been to D.C. in quite sometime and my younger brother and I had never been, so we figured it was another set of memories we could make together.

Mom, me, brother Jake, and dad. We made fun of my dad for being so far from us!

I should also mention that we're missing my older brother Chris. Otherwise, this would be the perfect Christmas card photo!

We got to see the World War II Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and the Vietnam War memorial. When we were walking from the Korean Memorial to the Vietnam memorial it actually started snowing!

Korean War Memorial. My mom reminisced on how she saw this shortly after it opened when there was no green shrubbery.

The statue at the Vietnam War Memorial. We have a framed photo of this hanging as in our apartment!

One of my favorite parts of the entire day was visiting the wall with all of the names of the fallen and missing soldiers of the Vietnam War. I was intrigued about the arrangement of names on the wall, so I asked one of the guides to explain it to me. Firstly, I would like to point out that the guides are veterans and soldiers themselves who volunteer their time to talk to visitors of the memorial to explain the design, the arrangement of names, the meaning behind the symbols next to names, and such. How commendable and inspiring! The guide first asked me how I thought the names are or SHOULD be organized. I told him alphabetically by year of death. He told me I was close but that it was even more specific: the names are arranged by the DAY of death or disappearance of the soldier, then alphabetically within the day. He went on to explain the reasoning behind this by telling me a story. He walked me to the section of the wall shown below and pointed to the names William R. Finn and Timothy M. Tucker. On Christmas Eve 1971, the two were flying in a plane together on a mission. Their plane disappeared and was never found, their bodies never recovered. The two men - comrades in war and good friends - are not close to each other alphabetically, by age, state, or any other means. With any arrangement of the names on the wall, the two men would have been separated. But with the method of arrangement that was chosen, the two men will forever be next to each other.

Try not tearing up when a veteran tells you that story. I can't really tell you how I felt in that moment... it was definitely heart-warming and in that moment I had more pride in my country than I think I ever had before.

A close-up of some of the names on the wall of the Vietnam War Memorial.

Needless to say, my day was full of adventures and experiences I'm not likely to forget. I'm so glad I got to experience them with my family!