A Perfect Weekend

This past weekend I drove down to our nation's capital to visit my dear friend, Katie, who just bought a new condo.

(the Capitol...not her condo!)

Friday night we enjoyed a nice dinner at her place, baked cookies and watched a chick flick.

Saturday morning we took a free walking tour of some of the monuments and then had lunch at this delicious restaurant near the White House. That evening I had my first introduction to Ikea! What a great store. I got a new trash can for my office, some glass jars to store craft stuff in, and some giant boxes to hold my current craft projects. I think I'm in love with Ikea! We had delicious Swedish meatballs there and then rented "Made of Honor" on the way home to watch as we enjoyed our McDonald's sundaes.

Sunday morning we always pick a different church in town to explore in the morning because her regular church meets in the evenings. This time we toured the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary Immaculate (or something like that). It was a beautiful building, but I couldn't help wondering how all the money spent to make it so beautiful could have probably helped a lot more people had it been given to the poor.

After that, we drove to the nearby monastery to tour the gardens because they're ranked amongst the Top 10 gardens in the country. They were very beautiful. We stopped in to listen to their sermon and it was very interesting.

The monk/priest was talking about the parable of the workers where the guy who worked for an hour got paid the same amount as the guy who worked all day. He then went on to extrapolate this to mean that we may all get in the door of heaven, but how far into heaven we get depends on how much we work and how saintly we are on earth. Then, they closed the service with a song singing "Hail to Mary". Very interesting. Sad. But interesting.

Thanks so much, Katie, for a wonderful weekend!