I'm getting too old to pull all-nighters!

So this year I decided to go down to DC and camp out overnight with a few of my mom friends to get tickets to the White House Egg Roll. I went with 6 gals and we are all egg roll "virgins" except for 1 of us. Mimi went last year and camped out overnight in the snow. Yeah, I had already told her that if the weather was bad - count me out... but the weather was ok so we met up at Tracie's house and took my minivan down to DC (packed with stuff). We arrived at our place in line at 7 pm on Friday night.
Thankfully it was still light and by dark we had our tents all set up and we were psyched! Unfortunantly, we were not able to camp out on the elipse because we got there too late but we were pretty sure that we would be able to get tickets. We decided to order some Pizza Hut Pizza and they actually delivered it to our tent. The place was packed. Keep in mind, the White House gives out about 20,000 tickets to this event and it's really hard to get them even if you're on the "inside". We made friends with the people around us (well except for the people in front of us that started out as 2 adults and 2 kids and by the time tickets were given out there were 8 adults - not fair) and then sat down for a few hours of mom talk. At about 10:30 ish Mimi and I took our first walk around the area. Wow - DC had turned into tent city. I'm sure the tourists all thought, wow... we didn't realize that there were so many homeless in this city! We walked around the elipse and talked with a few of the other families. The 1st people in line arrived at their spot at 3am on Friday morning. A little down the lane was a pair of dads that had gotten there at 11am. Around the other side of the ellipse (the ellipse is the huge grassy area behind the Washington Monument and in front of the White House) were 2 families visiting from Arizona that had gotten there at 4pm. Then we met some nice moms that have been doing this since 2002 - except that back then you could still show up at 4 in the morning and actually get a ticket (no more) - they had arrived at 5pm. The line then snaked out of the ellipse onto the side area (where we were) and went on forever. Here is picture of what was behind us at 1am (and this really is just a tiny portion of it).At about 1:30 we decided to take another walk around the ellipse and that occupied us for another hour and a half. I can't believe that most people were asleep by this time. I guess we're all getting too old for all nighters! Here is a view of what we saw in the ellipse.This is what we came "home" to:
Everyone was asleep! Tracie, Mimi and I decided to keep trucking because we weren't sure what time they would come around and give out vouchers... and if you don't have a voucher you don't get tickets. At about 3:30 they gave the wakeup call for everyone to get out of their tents by 4 am to get their voucher. At 4:30 they got around to us and we got our vouchers! (this picture is obviously from later in the morning!) You can't see it too well in the picture but I got number 854 (the beginning was 1 and the end was in the 1600's).
Well, by this time in the morning the wind started picking up and it was getting COLD so we decided to hang out in the tent from 5 am to about 6:15am. At this time we started breaking down "camp". We brought everything back to the car (I got an awesome parking spot so not too far) and then the line started compressing so it moved fast.
At 7:30 they started handing out tickets and by 8:50 we were back in the car with our 1 pm entrance time!
We were told by the park rangers that a lot of people got turned away at 5am. Apparently if you were not in line by 11pm - you did not get a voucher at 5 am. So some people camped out from 11:30 pm and had to go home empty handed at 5. How much would that suck! I'm so glad we got there at 7! I'm thinking next year that if the weather is nice I'm going to go down at around 11 and let Bryce run around on the grass until Dave can pick him up after work! He'd love it.

Well - that's how you get tickets to the White House Egg Roll. I had SO much fun with my mommy friends and I had no idea this was so involved! I'd do it again in a heartbeat though. It was such an incredible experience - I mean really, how many people can say they have camped out on the White House's front lawn?! (well, apparently about 1600 people).

I'll post more on Monday after Bryce and I get back from the event. I am looking so forward to it - it's going to be fantastic!