Moving in--and Arlington National Cemetary

We arrived in Arlington, Virginia and moved into our apartment on Saturday, March 28. The apartment is very nice and is in a kind of "yuppy" neighborhood--if you can call it a neighborhood. Just around the corner from the complex is a place called "Shirlington Village." You can drive down the street, but it is definitely made for pedestrians with very wide, brick sidewalks and lots of shops. The street is lined with restaurants of every ethnic variety and most exciting for us, is a branch of the library less than a block away! There is also a nice grocery store, but we can't do our regular shopping there. I don't think that the people who shop there regularly have to carry five gallons of milk home every week! Maybe they'd let us borrow a shopping cart to push back to our apartment! :) I haven't seen many kids. It really isn't a family kind of complex--too expensive!
We spent Sunday checking out the local LDS church options. We really should be attending the ward whose boundaries we live in, but since we are "visitors" for a few months we have decided to try to find a congregation that has some kids in it. It might be a challenge in this part of the city. It is very expensive to live this close to downtown DC. Larger families live farther out in the suburbs. The ward we went to on Sunday was mostly adults. There were some young families with small children (students who live in apartments), but only a couple of teenagers. Neil and I drove around to some other buildings later on and found a ward that I think we will attend. There are more families with older kids and Senator Bob Bennett from Utah is a Sunday school teacher! :) I don't have pictures of our neighborhood yet. But the following are pictures from our first day as tourists.

Monday we ventured to the National Mall. After driving around and looking for a place to park, we ventured across the bridge to the Arlington National Cemetery. My guidebook said there was parking there--Neil and I are too cheap to pay for parking in the garages in the main part of the city. The cemetery was a perfect way to start though. The rows and rows of white headstones are stunning and humbling. The kids had lots of questions.

We were all so impressed by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is probably the only place I have been with a big crowd of people from all walks of life, where there was total silence and respect. That kind of respect is so rare anymore.

Every step, every movement is a practice in precision. We tried to walk like the soldiers on the way out. We failed.

This is John F. Kennedy's memorial--the site of the eternal flame. The kids hadn't really heard of him. We have so much to learn!

It is spring! This is a dogwood tree. They are everywhere and they are stunning. The flowers are as big as a hand.