In a VERY cold Washington, DC

The very first picture is a statue by Alan Houser, the most famous Native American Sculptor and from New Mexico. It's in the National Native American Museum. We saw the original in Houser's sculpture garden outside of Santa Fe, earlier this fall. Next is a picture of a man in front of three Native statues. This man was going all around DC. and having his picture taken with this pic of Obama "for my grandchildren," he said.
Next pic is of one of the temporary Cell towers mounted all around DC. to handle the HEAVY traffic expected by cell phone calls, pictures and text messages being sent by the millions on Inauguration day. And then you have the Obama cookies.

We arrived in DC on Thurs. the 15th without any incidence......but almost the first news we heard was of the miraculous plane landing in the Hudson River off of Manhattan.......what incredible images and stories of full blown humanity in action.,.......
Yesterday, Friday the 16th we went down to the Capitol area to meet our newly elected Representative, Martin Heinrich. He was recently elected to take the seat vacated by Heather Wilson from Albuquerque. We applied and won lottery tickets from this office so we had to go and pick them up. Here is a picture of Steve Haro, senior staffer, Michael, Me and Elizabeth Hill, receptionist. While in the office we met Martin (very briefly) and Steve offered us tickets to the New Mexico Inaugural Ball. It's in the DC Convention Center, only 4 blocks from where we are staying. The convention center is also the site of the Hawaii AND Illinois balls, SO it's a very good chance the Obamas will be in the area..........camera ready, we'll be lettin' ya know......

Our host here, Patrick has enough tuxedos to spare (this is DC after all), so this afternoon we are trying on outfits for this black tie event. My brother David will be joining us also.

Walking around the Mall we found where we will be standing on Inauguration day. Here's a pic of about where we will be......(I'm learning how to post pics on this thing and they aren't coming in the order I'm talking about them.....)

While scoping out the situation for inaugural day we were interviewed (very briefly) by some Arabic film crew. And of course DC is going Obama crazy......you can go to the local Safeway here and have your picture taken with a life-size wax statue of Barack Obama while munching on Obama Cookies. Pictured here (?) NO, pictured above, some where........Im just gonna add some more pics and then comment on em......

Gonna sign off for now...............We'll have to leave our house on Tues. at 6 AM, to walk the mile and 1/2 to the mall, pass through several layers of security, stand in line for the gates to open at 7 AM, to get a good spot for viewing.............the entertainment starts at 11 am, the ceremony at 12 noon (constitutionally the out-going pres. leaves the office at 12 noon, on the 20th of January after the federal election.) By then the temp is supposed to go up to about 33 Degrees....and remember it's a damp cold.......Right now it's hopefully going up to 29 degrees. These are supposedly record lows.......Yikes!!!