Washington D.C 2015

Robert works for a pretty awesome company. Each year they reward their best employees with an award called The Ring of Excellence. Robert was awarded for outstanding customer service (and the fact that he completely turned around a failing branch). Not only do these employees get a ring for their achievement but they also get a free trip. Not just free airfare and hotel, but everything completely free! How awesome is that! This year the company took them to Washington D.C. Robert was excited because he's never been. I was excited to go anywhere. We had a tough start to our year and I just really needed a break from everything. This trip was the perfect thing for that. Our first night to arrive was the awards dinner in the hotel. This was also Robert's birthday!  Each employee received their ring and gave a small speech while we enjoyed a pretty fancy dinner. It wasn't too bad, but definitely not our taste. The next day we met for breakfast and were broken into groups for a scavenger hunt of the city. This was a quick and great way to see a lot of the sights of D.C.  Of course for dinner and the scavenger hunt we were paired with the owner of the company. At the time Robert was up for a promotion but had not heard if he got it or not. He must have made a great impression because he got the well deserved promotion!

After the scavenger hunt, we went back to our hotel room for lunch and had the afternoon to do whatever we wanted. We did so much that morning that we just ordered room service and took a nap before getting dressed for dinner. We had no idea what dinner was. It was a big surprise. We loaded up in this awesome bus and drove to the Capitol. It was after hours but the company had arranged for an after hours VIP tour of the Capitol! Our tour guides were current and former Senators. We also were taken to places that the regular tours were not allowed to go. We even got to sit in the Senate chambers. It was pretty awesome. After the tour we went to eat at Johnny's Half Shell. It was nice to have our own room with our own waiters to make sure we had everything. All the food was amazing.

The next day we were free to do whatever we wanted to. We were given an all day bus pass so we could see more of the city faster. We were able to see everything we wanted to except for Arlington and the tomb of the unknown soldier. Thankfully our flight home the next day was late so knew we would be able to go before we left. We also got to see the President's helicopter land twice. I'm not a fan of our current President but it was still pretty cool to see.  After seeing all the sights, we had another surprise for dinner. We had dinner on a yacht on the Potomac River!

Sadly the next day was our last day. We had a late enough flight that we were able to do a little more sightseeing before we left. The first thing we did was go to Arlington to see the tomb of the unknown soldier. It had been so long since I've seen and Robert has never seen it so it was something we both knew we had to do before we left. It was amazing to watch. It took us a while to do that so we did not have time to go anywhere else so we just rode the tour bus back to the hotel. It was sad to see our vacation come to an end but we were both ready to get home to see Bryson. It was the longest we had both been away from him. Thankfully my parents were able to watch him and have a lot of fun with him while we were gone.