Inauguration

The morning after we our beach day was President Obama's inauguration for his second term.  We decided since we lived in DC now we shouldn't miss the opportunity to go see it and take part!

Avery had to take Goofy with us on the Metro so he could see the ceremony too 

We had no problem getting down there, there were no delays of any kind!  Once there, we walked out to the National Mall where there was quite the party atmosphere!  Volunteers were everywhere giving directions and answering questions, and even giving high fives to everyone thanking them for coming.  We ended up on the Mall right behind the CNN and CBS booths!

We kept getting closer and closer, that silver haired guy is Anderson Cooper, he kept turning around and waving at us, neat!

Even the broadcasters were taking personal cell phone shots of the crowd:

They handed out flags, and Avery was very patriotic waving it strongly!

They also were handing out stickers and Avery said we needed to put them on our heads, he he

The crowd grew large and the Capitol building looked neat all decked out for the ceremony

View from 1 mile away:

They had gigantic screens up and down the Mall with giant speakers so you could see and hear exactly what was going on:

We met so many people from all over the place.  A nice lady (a teacher too), drove from Milwaukee just for this event was kind enough to take these nice family shots for us:

 After awhile, Avery looked over and saw the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum and said "I don't want to see the President anymore, I want to see dinosaurs!"  What a smart kid.  We are very fortunate to have lots and lots of museums, many of them free.  The Natural History museum is one of our favorites.  Avery got to see all kinds of giant dinosaur skeletons and even called them out "triceratops!" "T rex!" "Brontosaurus!"

Then we went back outside to see the parade (which starts with the president going from the Capitol back to the White House, followed by bands and floats.  The line to get in was really backed up due to the Secret Service checkpoint, but Avery was a good sport waiting it out and enjoying the neat architecture around us

Eventually we realized the pace of the line moving forward would put us into the parade when it was halfway over.  (Guess you need to get to the that early!).  So we took the Metro home, and that's when we hit delays we didn't have on the way down.  The line just to get down into the Metro station was a 30-45 minutes long, but we made it eventually and watch the rest of the parade at home comfortably on the couch.