HOLY CRAP!

WOW! We've had a BIG day!

We arrived at our hotel last night at 1:30 this morning. After getting to bed around 2:00am, we woke up this morning at 7:00am to get across town and pick up our ball tickets. We bought them from someone on Ebay and were excited to pick them up- but when we got there, we opened the envelope to see that we had tickets to the Texas-Wyoming Ball, not the Independance Ball where the state of Colorado is to gather. Just FYI - there are 9 different balls and your ticket is for a specific ball. Several states gather together at the assigned balls, but Texas/Wyoming obviously only has Texas and Wyoming at it! Now - in the Ebay auction, the seller listed these tickets as "Independance" Ball Tickets. When we mentioned the difference, he said he thought they were the same thing. Poor guy didn't seem to know the difference. So - we considered our options and offered a "discounted price" for the tickets, considering we weren't getting what he advertised. He accepted and we took them not knowing what we would do with them.

In the meantime, we took the metro over to the Capitol building for the public Inauguration. We waited in line for over 2 hours (not counting the 45 minutes waiting just to GET OUT of the metro station) and when we were about to cross the street to enter the security tent that only "gold ticket holders" were allowed to enter, the security told us they were shutting down the entry. No more people. Thanks for playing. The end.

So - we didn't get to see the event itself - just were able to listen to the loudspeaker. So we immediately left to go to the hotel that had the will call window for the ball tickets. Somehow or other, Jimmy worked his magic and we walked out of there with Independace Ball tickets (swaped for ours). I'll give you the long story later, but let's just say Jimmy apparently looks like a scapler, while I apparently, do not.

Then, off to the parade which was part of the Ebay package. We had fabulous seats - only 3 rows up in the bleachers and we were less than 50 feet from the President and First Lady as they got out of the limo and started to walk to the viewing room. Talk about wonderful! They looked right at us as the people sitting in front of us yelled "we're from Texas" and we got the Thumbs Up! Laura is stunning and she had great shoes:)

I'm running late for the ball now, so i'll catch up everything else later -

It's been wonderful so far :)

Carrie