the song of my heart: soul food

This past weekend Rachel came up to visit and we had quite the fun time. Friday was spent hanging out with my friends here in D.C. for Lauren's 24th birthday where Carrie cooked a fabulous meal...followed by heading out to listen to an 80's cover band.

However - around 1 a.m. after exiting Re-Ra...we come to discover that both mine & Eric's cars had been towed - awesome, right? So after about an 1.5 hours of getting to the tow lot and then having to wait for the tow truck to come and move the 5 cars blocking me in, Rachel and I finally made it back home around 2:30. Definitely a later night than we were both intending for!

Saturday was a rainy day...therefore we headed to the Leesburg Outlets. While it wasn't the "touristy" thing to do...it was really great just to get to hang out with each other in a relaxed setting. Recently when we've been together there has been a lot of people - so it's not as easy to actually talk and catch up on each other's lives.

Sunday - our day of fun. We went to church at the National Cathedral and then headed to Annapolis, M.D. for a 2.5 hour cruise along the Chesapeake Bay - which was absolutely beautiful. The weather was perfect and the 'fall foliage' was just so colorful. We also got to see three old lighthouses which proved to have a lot of history as well as a U.S. Nuclear Submarine (way cool!!!).

EDIT!: I left out a crucial part of this story. MONDAY MORNING. We had reservations to go up to the top of the Washington Monument at 9:30 a.m. We should have left the house at 8:30, however, due to other circumstances didn't make it out until 8:45 and lost a crucial 15 minutes. Already running a little behind, I decided to park where I was certain there were spaces - this was about 9:10. So we had 20 minutes to run from the Potomac to the Washington Monument...and when I say run, we power-walked and ran occasionally - needless to say, I was exhausted by the time we got there - though we made it, and obviously - the views were just wonderful as depicted in the picture below!!

I'm so thankful she got to come to and visit again...even if this time was a little more low key than her previous trip up in March. Admittedly, I wasn't too excited about her coming to visit the week before she arrived - mainly because I wasn't excited about anything...just part of what I was dealing with. I wanted to be excited, but couldn't find it in me. However, thankfully - she did come on this exact weekend....because here again, the Lord is faithful...and I truly needed this weekend with a great friend.