D.C.

So, I'm kind of playing catch up here with this post and maybe a few others but I wanted to document mine & Karl's impromptu trip to D.C. last month!  My parents+Maddie & Emma knew they wanted to take a long weekend trip after mine & Callie's weddings as a little celebration of getting back to normalcy and just a time to relax, especially for my two younger sisters and all they put up with living in wedding la la land for over a year.  Well, within like 48 hours they decided they were going D.C. and the next thing I knew, they were there!  I then took it upon myself to google map the distance from D.C. to Sumter when I noticed that they were a mere 4 1/2 hours away... my mind began to tick.  Well, I took the next logical step and invited Karl & I to crash their weekend as a new family of 4 and the Cuppett's seemed OK with it!  Woo hoo!
(details on getting there that you can choose to skip if you would like)
So Karl & I decided that financially we should just plan to stay 1 night but wanted to be there first thing in the morning on Saturday so our options were to either a) leave crazy early Saturday morning or b) leave Friday night and sleep in a hotel about halfway there.  Well, option "b" doesn't make much sense because that defeats our "save money and just pay for a hotel for 1 night" thing and option "a" isn't pleasing to Karl because he just got home from work and he is super tired... what to do, what to do?  Then Karl comes up with this idea..."we'll drive about halfway and then stop at a rest stop."  What did I just hear?  All I heard was, "we'll drive about halfway and then sleep in your car and risk our lives because someone will most likely kill us when we are pulled over on the side of the road because we are young and in love and that's what happens and also you won't get to brush your teeth or wash your face and your standard of living will immediately drop 100 points."  Wow, does my husband know me at all??  Is he seriously suggesting that I, Hannah K.C. Burton sleep in the car?  So how did I respond?  I agreed with one stipulation: Karl had to bring his hand gun.  Crazy town USA.  So we are approaching the halfway point and it's getting really late.  My parents are starting to call to make sure we are safe and to try and plan our day for Saturday.  I panic: I know that I cannot possibly let the words, "Dad, I'm sleeping in my car,"  come out of my mouth but I also know that I can't lie if he asks where we are staying the night!  I need a new plan.  I start begging, BEGGING Karl to let us stop at a hotel.  I even concede and say I'll stay at a motel. Ewwww (more on this later).  It takes a lot of begging and we even get into deeper issues like how I am innately a Hyatt girl and he is a KOA guy (I learned what KOA is on this roadtrip) and he says that I need to lower my standard of living but I say I can't because I have glitter in my blood... OK anyways, we stopped at a motel... the sickest motel ever.  Better.off.in.my.car.  I blame my mother for my high hotel standards.  As a child, we were never barefoot in hotels and she uses her own sheets and pillows... now I do too.
OK back to the actual vacation...Karl and I got to our hotel bright and early and ended up on the same floor as my family (yay!)!  We paraded around D.C. in a double-decker bus all day Saturday & Sunday enjoying hot dogs from street vendors and absolutely gorgeous historical sites!  We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, The Capitol, The White House (unimpressive, sorry), went to the national museum of Air & Space, Museum of Natural History, we walked and walked and walked, had starbucks for breakfast each day (definite luxury for this country bumpkin), and had a blast.  The weather was gorgeous, the days were long, and did I mention how much we walked?  It was great... I would say that all that was missing were Jeremy & Callie (which they were) but technically Karl & I weren't supposed to be there so it wasn't really a family vacay... well, it was fun regardless.  Karl & I wouldn't have gone & crashed their vacation if it weren't for the fact that I had just vowed to myself to be more spontaneous.. yep.  One of the main perks to living out here and on the east coast is the accessibility to the northeast and all the fabulous states & cities that I've not visited before.  I love to travel and am dying to see more of the northeast so I just couldn't turn this opportunity down!  OK, enjoy some pics now!

Love the travel bug (which I got in our nasty motel room... not really but maybe)
Hannah K.C. Burton