Tops on my husband’s list of things he wanted to do while in D.C. were to tour the White House and the Capital building where Congress meets.  Shortly after starting to plan this trip, I found out that we could only do that if our Congressman lined this up for us.  I emailed this information to my husband at work on a Monday morning.  On his way out of the office, running in a hurry to an appointment at the Mayor’s office, he grabbed my email.

Fifteen minutes later he entered the Mayor’s office, and guess who was there?  Our Congressman.    (Is that amazing, or what?!)  After being introduced, my husband told him that his family was going to D.C. within six weeks, and could he line up a tour of the Capital building and the White House?  Yes, he assured him, he could certainly do that.

Within a few weeks, we had a letter from the office of our Congressman, giving us a date and time of the tours we requested. Our family was awed! We’ve been looking forward to this ever since.

Today was the day we were to meet in the office of our Congressman for the tour.  We were told that an intern or someone like that would be meeting us and giving us this tour.  We were amazed when we were introduced on the steps of the Capital building, our Congressman.  Our family had a personal picture taken with him, and then,  we walked with him into the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives was in session, a swearing in ceremony of a new member.  Nancy Pulaski, Speaker of the House, was residing in her usual place behind the podium.  Just a few months ago we were watching the State of the Union speech, given by President George Bush. It seemed much grander and larger when we had watched it on TV.

Our Congressman explained a lot of things to us about how the House works and what life was like within the Capital building.  After a spoken vote that was rather loud and enthusiastic, he compared Congress to being in high school.  Cliques, committees, and conversation among them such as, “So what are you doing this summer?”

He took Ruthie, Jacob, and Joshua to the main floor (we were seated in the balcony) and let them cast a vote in the ballet box.  Then he gave them some “important” paper work to save as a memory token. 

Afterwards, an intern took us through the rest of the building.  This is an amazing building.  There are marble stairs, walls, and ceilings everywhere.  There are hand painted murals on every ceiling.  There is colorful mosaic tile art on some entire ceilings and walls.  It is its own art museum – in fact, I think I enjoyed this art more than I would have than at any art museum.  Every picture was historical in nature and told its own story.  There was a chandelier that had 14,000 crystals in it; a statue that weighed 6 tons; and a statue that was completely made out of bronze. Others were 100% of ivory, copper, or granite... Every statue and painting is representative of someone important in history and the creation itself has become history.

At one point in this tour, I came face to face with Speaker of the House, Nancy Pulaski.  I’m not sure of the circumstances that caused her to do this, but she actually lingered right there beside and in front of me for several minutes.

When our tour concluded, we were led to an underground subway in the Capital building itself.  I never knew that was there!   We took a train ride back to our Congressman’s office.  It was a very special day!