The Rally to Restore Sanity

This past Saturday George, Jude, and I got to attend a great rally in Washington DC--The Rally to Restore Sanity.

I'm beginning this post with the end speech by Jon Stewart. If you only get this far into this post,  I want this to be what you see. This is why we went--to show that we can all work together for the greater good, despite our differences of opinions/faiths/ideologies/political platforms.

Fantastic speech.

So... the day of the rally, we accidentally slept in and didn't get on the road until after 9. Seeing as the rally began at 12, it didn't bode well for us. Apparently, we were not alone.

This is us in a line of cars from several different states trying to get TO the Metro station.

Once we got to the Metro station, we had to wait in a line to get INTO the Metro station to buy fare cards. Jude was a great sport.

It was cold!

A long, long line.

(You can see the lines on the opposite side of 66, also waiting to get into the Metro station)

We finally made it into the Metro station just to wait in another line to buy the fare cards.

Apparently, even Captain America had to wait...

Yum?

Waiting in line to get ON the Metro...

Finally ON the Metro (around 1:00 p.m.)

While on the Metro, we saw a good friend of ours from High School. It was fun to run into her!

Tired boy.

And... OFF the Metro to get in another line.

We finally made it to the Mall for the last hour of the rally. It was REALLY crowded!

I, of course, had to video tape our adventure, and George took off to take pictures of the various signs people made. There were a few inappropriate ones (that will no doubt make their way to news stations), but most were fairly "sane".

Just a few of our favorites. :)

While we were there, guess who we found?

After the rally was over, we walked around the Mall for a couple hours while people cleared out and then walked to Union Station to attempt the Metro ride back to our car.

We had a great time! It was a neat experience to be there with so many people who feel the same way we do. Several of our friends from Charlottesville and Ashburn were there as well, but with the crowd being so large and the cell phones not working, we were not able to find any of them. It was still nice to know they were in the crowd with us supporting the cause! Hooray for Sanity!

Carving our pumpkin

Wednesday afternoon, Lance and I carved our family pumpkin. I asked Lance what he wanted to carve, since last year we did the Transfomer "Autobot" symbol. We decided this year it would be fun to carve a "Decepticon" symbol.

Lance helping to cut off the top. 

During the course of the cutting, his clothes magically disappeared, as they usually do whenever we do things like this. 

Scooping out the "guts", as Lance likes to call them. 

Not a huge fan of being sticky. 

Mom finishing the clean-up 

You can see our pattern on the table. Lance wanted to help carve, so he and I carved a few lines together... 

...but he soon got bored and decided watching "Phineas and Ferb" with his friends in our living room was a better idea. So, I finished it up with Jude watching on. 

I think it turned out pretty well!

Trunk-or-Treat!

Our ward had a Trunk-or-Treat this Tuesday. George was in Roanoke and missed out on the fun, but the boys and I had a good time dressing up. Lance was a member of the SWAT team, I was the "bad guy" he was catching, and Jude was dressed as George--an ER resident. 

Making his "serious business" face. 

Happy boy, as usual. 

Our neighbors were nice and took this picture of us all together.  

I've been caught! 

Trouble...

We enjoyed a nice night of chili, friends, and--of course--candy!