Call To Congress

What an amazing 4 days we had! I did narrow down the pictures to only 43! :)

Now, let the story begin!..............................



We left here at 5:45 am on Tuesday morning, thanks to a very nice friend who came over at that time to read on our couch while the rest of the children slept. Thanks Jen!



We made it to the Boise airport an hour early and everything went VERY smoothly. Let me just say that going through security with one independent responsible child was so easy, NOTHING like going through security last summer with all 4 kids by myself, with all the bags and all the shoes, and the double stroller....... the flashbacks are still painful.



We switched planes in Salt Lake City and had an OK flight all the way to Maryland. It got pretty turbulent at the end. Collins ears were really hurting, his number was high and I think he was a bit dehydrated as well. That combination made for his first bought of car sicknesses ever. Thankfully, I had put the air sick bags in my backpack to keep (hey, I paid for the airline ticket, so it isn't stealing), because riding in the car on the way to DC, let's say, was NOT very enjoyable.



Our great friends, Ben and Traci picked us up at the airport, and took us straight to the Mall area with a picnic supper so we could walk around and see the monuments.



After a 30 minute, non-moving nap on a park bench, Collin woke up and was almost back to normal. I felt so sorry for him I didn't even take his picture.



So we had a little picnic, and off we went to explore!



Here is the first picture, AFTER hunting a place to park for a long. Traffic was unbelievable and stressful.

NO THANK YOU. I think I am an official small town girl and I NEVER want to live in a place like that.



This is as close we got to the Jefferson Memorial.



We expected warmer weather, but it was FREEZING. Bone cold wind. I am so thankful Traci thought to bring me a jacket and Ben let Collin wear his sweatshirt or we never would have made it.

We loved this unique tree we passed on our walk.
He is still a bit pale, but the excitement won out and he perked up and really enjoyed everything.
I did make it into one picture!! Being there at sunset was really pretty. The sky was gorgeous and the soft sunlight on the monuments was really pretty. This is the new World War ll monument.

See what I mean about the lighting! So great for photos.
Collin was surprised at how big Lincoln was. Reading about it in a book this year didn't give him the impression of how big it really was.

Corny picture, but he thought it was really cool. :)
Here is little Joshua! He was only 6 weeks old when they moved away from Idaho, now he is an adorable 2 year old, who fell in love with Collin! Collin taught him how to climb trees, I am sure Traci is thrilled about that!

The Youngquist family!
I haven't seen azaleas in years. They were so pretty! And so much green everywhere. Trees all around, trees with LEAVES on them!
We checked into our hotel room Wednesday afternoon. Collin liked the view.

Whoever the detail people were for this event, they did awesome. Everything was planned for and ran smoothly. They covered all our meals and even provided us a Capitol Hill credit card to work all the vending machines and the cafeteria so we didn't have to spend any money on food at all.

For one session, the youth were separate from the adults. There were probably 20 type 1 children there. The majority were teenagers, there were 3 eleven tear olds, including Collin, and one 6 year old girl who was diagnosed 10 months ago. The rest are siblings as lots of families came together. Here they were writing out their stories, then they practiced giving them to each other.
I told him to pack his swimsuit, and if we had one free hour he could swim. He did not let me forget that promise!
This was dinner the first evening. Total, there were about 250 people present, including all the guest speakers and the family members.
Thursday morning was the BIG day! They provided transportation down to Union Station, gave us our speaking schedule of times, person and place, and SET US FREE!

WHAT!?!??!

Nobody told me we would be on our own. I was under the impression this would be a group thing.

Me. Alone. Loose in a major city, and expected to find my way around for the next 8 hours all by myself.

Can I say STRESS! For those of you who know me well, you understand how this would obviously scare me to death. For the rest of you, I need to explain that as I was forming in my mother's womb, and as my brain was developing, the cells that were supposed to come together and form that part of the brain that has to do with directions and finding my way around places, failed to form. Thus resulting in decades of severe stress, lost hours, wasted gas, extra wear and tear on vehicles, not nice words and severe consequences to my self esteem.
And the people there, so rude!! Everyone was to busy to help me. I would stop and ask people for help and get the brush off. Finally, a very nice street cleaner got us started in the right direction, from Union Station to the Senate buildings. many many times throughout the day, we would leave one meeting to get to another (we had 6 total) and I would argue with Collin about which direction needed to go. I was only right one time, and that was probably a lucky guess. Thankfully, he got his Daddy's sense of direction and the mutant brain gene wasn't hereditary. I seriously think we walked about 10 miles that day. Two of those were probably lost miles that didn't need to be walked. :)

Everyone that was there had appointments to meet with both their state senators advisers and one of their state representatives advisers. The ADA still had Collin listed with his Mississippi residency, though we registered from Idaho. So we had BOTH states. We were the only ones with 6 meetings!!

Our first meeting was with Mississippi State Senator Thad Cochran.
Our next meeting was a mile away in the House of Representative buildings in the office of Mike Simpson. Our Idaho Representative.
Then is was a mile walk back to the Senate building to meet with Mississippi State Senator Roger Wicker.

Then it was back over to the house side to meet with our representative from District 3 in Mississippi, Chip Pickering. We like him. We have met him before in Louisville and he is wonderful and has a sweet family of 5 young boys.

Then it was back to the Senate to meet with Idaho State senator Mike Crapo. He spent a lot of time with Collin and asked him a lot of questions after Collin was done talking.
Here is Collin explaining to Senator Crapo how his insulin pump works and what supplies he needs for it.
Our last meeting! And we were so thankful is was also in the senate. I don't think I could have walked that mile back to the house side one more time. :)

We met with Idaho State Senator Larry Craig.

He was very friendly and encouraging to Collin. He listened, asked questions, then spent time talking with us about our Idaho adventures. He discovered we were military and excused himself for a minute...

...came back in and shook Collin's hand...

......and coined him.

An honor in the military. Collin knew that and he was SOOOOO excited.
The last bus back to the hotel left Union Station at 5:00 pm, and it was 4:35 before we left Craig's office. So I trusted Collin, he looked at the map, and he got us there just in the nick of time to get the free ride back to the hotel. If we had missed it, we would have had to get a cab, because there was NO WAY I was going to try and figure out that metro system by myself.

Collin did comment on the bus, "Well, at least everyone we met with today was a republican."

I thought that was really funny. :)

Here are some pictures we took during our long walks back and forth. We only had about an hour or so between each meeting, and we were instructed to show up for each meeting early, and we had to go through security EVERY time we entered a building, so we didn't have time to go in any, but we did stop and look at the outside.

This is the US Supreme Court building.

This was the Library of Congress.
I can not remember what this was at the moment. :)

The Capitol.
Our first meeting that morning had been at 7:30 am. Then we were on Capitol Hill for 8 hours, then the evening session took place as soon as we arrived back. When the ADA people found out that Collin had met with each senator and representative IN PERSON, they were floored. Most pepple met with the health aid representative for each position. The fact that we had 6 meetings versus everyone else's 3, and met with all 6 in person, was amazing to them. They want copies of all my pictures of Collin with them. So who knows how they will be used???!?!

Every year the ADA picks one National Youth Advocate. They do a lot of traveling and speaking and they love it.

Below is this years advocate, Tesch West. Collin really liked her. She is a 16 year old junior and was very friendly, and cute too! I told Collin about her position on Thursday morning, told him he was eligible to apply next year, and he said NO WAY. Thursday night, after speaking all day long and gaining confidence, he said he wanted to apply. "I can do that," he said. :)

That was it for the conference. We are very glad we decided to go and thankful it all worked out to make it happen. Thank you to the friends here who helped watch the kids, fed Sam homeade pizza and took Kaitlynn on the field trip. (Thanks Jen, Michelle, Jean, Carolyn and Jennifer!!!).

Ben and Traci picked us up at 11:00 am Friday morning, and back we went to finally go in some museums.

This was in an outdoor art garden.

We really tried to get into the Archive's building so Collin could see the original documents he has studied this year. But both times we went, the line was over an hour long. And we were so short on time, we gave up and went to the one place he really wanted to go... The Air and Space Museum.



He chose to go to an IMAX movie, a 3D documentary about the Sun. To bad the fighter pilot movie wasn't showing until the afternoon, with Sam's ride still fresh in our minds, that would have been fun to see.

I loved this origianl Smithsonian building. Traci called it the castle.

I am just so thankful for all he got to learn. He saw first hand how our government works. He now understands the branches of our government , how they work, what it means to be an advocate, a lobbyist, a constituent. Also public speaking experience, and just so much more. There were so many life lessons here that I don't think I could list them all.

How do you completely wear out an 11 year old boy?
Have a fun filled, jam packed, first hand D.C. experience that he will never forget.

I am sure I have forgotten some of the stories that I wanted to tell, I will add on later when I think of them.

I was gone all day yesterday, 9 am to 9 pm for a PWOC conference, and I am TIRED. I rescheduled both photography jobs I had this afternoon. You know I am exhausted if I cancel taking pictures! And 3 of the kids have birthday parties this afternoon too. Also, I needed to at least see my husband before he leaves for a month tomorrow night.

Hope that gave you a bit of a picture of our experience. Collin has already asked if he got any comments and I haven't even posted it yet! :)

Love you all and thanks for all your help and prayers as well!

p.s. The spell checker is not working today on blogger, so excuse the typos until I can try again later and see if it is fixed. :)