Finally!

Surprise! I am finally updating our blog! Work started to get incredibly busy in the middle of November and it didn't let up until this week. The two biggest projects that I had was to coordinate moving our office to a new building and also to take care of all of the Inauguration details for my office. Without going into details, it consumed my life. I even started to talk in my sleep about work, how sad is that!?!? But, it is finally over and I feel very relieved.

My boss was incredibly nice and gave all of the staff in my office a seated ticket to the Inauguration. There was a very limited number of seated tickets so Ryan couldn't be in the same section as me. :( Instead, my boss set aside a few of the best and closest tickets we had in the standing area for our family and friends. Both Ryan and I knew that Inauguration Day was going to be crazy, but neither of us was really prepared for how it really was.

For security reasons, they shut down all of the roads and most of the bridges coming into DC from Virginia. Luckily, every congressional office received two passes to get across the bridge and to Capitol Hill. My boss used one and my co-worker Missy and I were able to use the other one. We had to be into DC early in the morning so on Inauguration Day, we woke up around 4:30 a.m. and got ready then headed to Missy's house to carpool with her and her husband, Jason. One of the best parts of the day was when we arrived at the entrance to the bridge and there were police cars blocking the entrance. Jason pulled up to the blockade and pointed at the pass that was clipped to the visor and the cop car moved and waved us through. I am not going to lie, we felt pretty dang cool...and we were the only ones on the bridge, which was awesome. It was smooth sailing until we got into DC and then we got delayed because of all of the law enforcement vehicles and thousands of people on the sidewalks and streets. It was insane! My co-worker Megan captured a picture to prove the insanity.

After all of that, we finally got to the office and then went out to brave the crowds and the cold. Ryan and his friends went with Jason and a few others and I went with my co-workers to our section. We ended up waiting in a line 5 or 6 blocks long for 2 and 1/2 hours until we finally made it through security, with only about 30 minutes to spare before the program started.

The seemingly endless line to get through security

The Capitol looked amazing and regal. I always love the Capitol Building but with all of the flags, it looked even better.

Missy, Nate, Megan, Me

Another amazing sight was to look behind us and see all of the people on the Mall. From where we were standing to the Washington Monument is just over a mile and you can see below that the people completely covered that area plus they went past the Washington Monument all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. So crazy!

We found out when we got in that Ryan and those with him didn't make it in because there were huge issues at their gate and no one knew why. It was really ridiculous and sad because thousands of people with tickets didn't get in. We don't know if there was a problem with the actual security or if too many tickets were given out. I felt so bad that they didn't make it in! They ended up just going back into my office and watching it on tv. There are a lot of really unhappy people that came a long way to DC to see the Inauguration, were lucky enough to get one of the extremely limited number of tickets and then got the shaft. It really is sad and I felt horrible.

But, it was an amazing experience and I am grateful that I got to be there. President Obama gave an awesome speech. Whatever party you lean towards, it is incredible to witness a president being sworn in, especially such a historical Inauguration.