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July 4th is more than Independence day around here

We know that it is way past July 4th now but this month has just been so busy that I am just now getting around to blogging about our July 4th.  Matthew's birthday is July 4th and for the longest time when he was a child he thought that everyone celebrated his birthday with fireworks and parties!  It is great to be able to celebrate the independece of our country right along with the birth of one of the most amazing men in my life!  For this year, Matthew's 23rd birthday we had many different ideas about what we wanted to do.  We changed our minds many times before finally settling on going to Washington DC to watch the fireworks. 

We were able to drive up to a nearby town called Alexandria and settle into our Marriott hotel room!  Yeah that's right we stayed at a Marriott!   We actually got an amazing deal for that hotel and we were definitely blessed.  After settling in for a little bit and getting our blood flowing again from our long drive we took the metro into the capital and met up with our friends Andrew and Tianna. Most of the rest of the afternoon was spend walking around the Smithsonian mall and seeing some of the different museums. 

We saw many different historic sites that we will never forget.  We walked and walked and walked some more!  From the capital to the White House back to the botanical garden by the capital and back to the Washington Monument.  We were treated to a lovely early dinner by Andrew and Tianna at a little pub off the beaten path.  Then we had some alone time to relax and walk around together which was great because we had a chance to talk to each other about how we were enjoying the blessing of how everything was working out for the better the entire weekend.


When the main event came around it was time to find a good location to settle down.  The fireworks started at about 9:15 when the sun was just about set.  The four of us settled infront of the Washington Monument so that we would have a good view.  I was able to use the fireworks function on our new function to take many pictures.  Here are a few of them:



After our spectacular light show we had to book it to our metro station to be able to get back to the hotel.  Well at least that is what everyone else there thought!  The metro that we had to take to get back was packed!  At first we were going to wait until the line went down to get on but then we decided to just face the crowd and after standing in line for about 10 minutes we were rushed though the lines and onto our train in less than 30 seconds!  It was all very fast paced!

The next morning, Monday morning, we went up to Maryland to visit Matthew's grandfather for a little bit.  It was great seeing him and his wife and their lovely house.  Matthew's granddad is a cute old man and Matthew looks a lot like him!  So I guess that means that Matthew will make for a cute grandpa too!

Overall our weekend excursion was definitely blessed by God because the whole thing went so smoothly without a single hiccup.  I think that for the first 4th of July that I was able to spend with Matthew I would have to say that it was a definite success!

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