National Christmas Tree-White House-Washington, DC
This is the National Christmas tree outside of the Whitehouse in Washington, DC. Richard and I ended up here on a night of adventures and twists and turns.
The night started out as the night I was home and washing clothes and packing clothes and Christmas presents for our trip to Illinois for my brother's wedding. Richard was working late down in Arlington, VA trying to get things ready for being away for a week. I was chatting on the phone with my friend while washing dishes and when I got off the phone I thought I would check the voice mail to make sure my family or Richard hadn't tried to reach me. Sure enough Richard left a message telling me he was going to ride the subway to Greenbelt station right outside of DC becuase he missed his usual train. So I quickly put on my shoes and coat and ran out the door to meet him down there (it takes about 25 minutes to get down there from our house) I get to Greenbelt and I'm sitting in the car and waiting and waiting and am very surprised that Richard is still not there. So I check the voicemail at home again and sure enough Richard left another message saying "I know you're not at greenbelt already and I'm waiting at Union Station for the late train to Baltimore since I haven't heard from you to confirm the greenbelt change." well, of course I'm at Greenbelt because I wanted to make sure I was there on time. so I'm fuming at this point becuase I'm 30 miles from home and 10 miles from downtown DC and don't know what to do. so I decide to race down to DC and see if I can meet Richard at Union Station before his train leaves to take him to the station 5 seconds from our house. I race into town, find Union Station and park in the creepy/scary parking garage race down two flights of escalators and see my husband sitting on one of the benches and I'm yelling his name, but he doesn't hear me because he has his iPod headphones on and he's reading a magazine. So I walk over to him and sit down next to him. It took him a second to realize that I'm sitting there next to him in DC!
We walk back to the car and decide that since we are in DC we should drive past the capitol building and see what the decorations look like, they were very pretty and the national conservatory was so pretty too, lots of Christmas lights everywhere and looking so nice. Then Richard says we should go see if we can find the National Christmas tree. We head over to the White House and there it is! It was so gorgeous, it is a HUGE tree and every spare inch of it is decorated full of bright lights and pretty decorations. around the big tree are huge garden toy trains running around and around the tree and around the whole area are little trees for each US State and Territory with decorations meaningful to each state. There was also a Nativity scene with Mary, Jesus and Joseph and some animals and a huge Yule fire that had been going since Thanksgiving and will continue to burn until New Years. There were Christmas Caroles playing on the loud speaker with actual Chrisitian Christmas songs. I loved how there was no mention of any other religion in the area. I'm a HUGE believer in the spearation of Church and State and freedom of religion, but as a Christian I sure was thrilled to see such a display of a Christmas tree, a nativity scene and Christmas songs being played. It was breath taking how pretty everything was that night. All the pretty lights from the White House, across the way you could see the Washington Monument all lit up with the flags flying around the base flying in the wind. I love DC, it is my favorite city and it is always fun to be there at night.