Ken and I drove down to the cities and stayed at my sister's on Friday evening so we could head to the airport at 4 am on Saturday. We got to DC before lunch and had fun doing a bit of sight seeing the rest of that day.
The last time we were in DC we didn't visit the Smithsonian Castle so I wanted go there this time. We enjoyed looking around a bit but didn't spend much time there.
We ended up spending most of our afternoon at the Postal museum. There was a lot of fun history there and we truly enjoyed it.
Then we went to a hotel where they were holding a sign making party for the TEA party the next day. We had fun making our signs and visiting with some others there. After that we headed to the Natural History Museum to see a documentary on Mt Everest (and one of its' first climbers, George Mallory) in the IMAX theater. When we got there we were carrying our signs as we hadn't been back to our hotel yet. The guards wouldn't let us in with them and told Ken to just throw them away. Ken thought maybe we would just leave but we decided to stick them in the bushes outside and they were still fine after the movie (which was pretty cool by the way.)
On the 12th we woke up to a rather grey and rainy morning. We headed over to the Washington Monument where they had a church service of sorts. There was a lot of neat scripture reading and many prayers for our nation. We also sang "God bless America".
We had fun meeting some people there and looking at everybody's signs and outfits. We weren't able to take a flag pole on the plane so Ken decided to wear his "Don't tread on me" flag as a cape. We soon discovered that he wasn't the only one with that plan. I got a picture of him with this man but later saw quite a few more people doing the same thing.
At noon we started marching down the roads from the monument to the Capitol. We certainly caused some traffic jams as they had to wait an hour or so for us to all get by. I felt kind of bad for the long lines waiting but I hope we were able to share our message in a friendly way.
The crowd was quite a bit smaller than last year when Ken and his dad went (in 2009 there were anywhere from several hundred thousand to a million people there) but there were still thousands and thousands of people. It was fun to see so many others who also feel passionately about our country going back to our founding principles where we honor God and have a limited government.
This was a group from Indiana. Indiana had a very good showing there.
I thought this sign was pretty creative. It was actually a bunch of signs put together and they were trying their best to stay straight.
There were a lot of people dressing in clothes of the time period of the Boston Tea Party. I enjoyed seeing all the costumes.
This lady had her own special Sam I am sign. She had found the poem online and then her husband drew the picture. I think this is what she had: ( I found it here)
I do not like it Uncle Sam, I do not like it Sam I am.
I do not like these dirty crooks, Neither how they cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like this Speaker Nan, I do not like this "YES WE CAN!".
I do not like this kind of hope, I do not like it, nope, Nope, NOPE!
So you do not like this Uncle Sam?
Would you, could you for free health care?
Would you, could you here or there?
He’ll sweeten the deal and buy you a boat. Anything it takes to steal your vote.
Just pay your taxes higher, higher, higher while our Constitution is set on fire.
Now Uncle Sam knows what’s best for you, knows more than you think you do.
So just hush up and pay and everything will be okay.
Ken and I.
This was probably the most creative sign we saw. Ken thought I should post it on here.
There was a rally on the Capitol lawn. It was fun to listen to people (most just ordinary citizens from across the country) speak on the importance of sticking with our values and holding our elected officials to following the constitution and if they don't, we will not elect them again!
I think a couple of the most moving speeches of the day were from a couple of immigrants (citizens now) that told why they had left the socialist countries that they were born in and why they want to see America stay away from Socialism.
As we were leaving the rally we saw these quotes on a nearby monument. They totally went along with the theme of the day and so I thought I would share them here with you.
I am curious, are any of you politically involved? Have you ever attended a TEA party?
5 comments:
Its a quite amazing experience u had from my point of view.I don't attend TEA party but want to join it next time.Thanks for such a nice post.ope i will attend this party next time and also travel the places near the Washington, DC.
Interesting...but I have no idea what a TEA party stands for (I see from your pictures and writing its like a political rally). Maybe it has something to do with the Boston tea party...but I can't say I really know much about that either...but forgive me as I am not American :) so maybe thats why the general confusion for me! LOL
Other than voting, myself and my family aren't involved in political things like this, it looks very interesting.
Nola~ Sorry for the confusion. I should have explained better. TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already and it is in the style of the Boston Tea party. TEA parties have been held all over the US for the last couple of years in a way of protesting the way our government is going so deeply in debt and trying to be more heavily in control of our lives. We want to stay away from higher taxes and think there should be less government interferance.
The people that come to these TEA parties are generally conservatives that want to raise their children w/out the governement trying to take over (many homeschoolers are involved) and people that are opposed to government bailouts and the large entitlement programs and goverment run health care.
Now it makes sense! Thanks! :)
Great post. I enjoyed it a lot. I think you did a good job of explaining it to Nola.
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