Now that we’re safely back in Illinois the task of sorting through all of the photographs and videos of our time in the District of Columbia is at hand. I wanted to take a moment, however, to expand upon something that Becca and I went a little nuts over on Twitter: we met Cookie Monster.

On July 3rd we had worked our way down to the Capitol building for the ‘Capitol Fourth’ concert dress rehearsal. We were really early and had secured a spot pretty close to the stage behind a group of people standing around looking impatient. Two men arrived a few minutes later with a small entourage. A woman removed some puppets from duffle-bags as the two men sat on a couple of short boxes.

It turns out these people were there to do an interview with Elmo and Cookie Monster.

The two men, David Rudman as Cookie Monster and Kevin Clash as Elmo, took up their respective puppets and were immediately in character. I could go on, but perhaps it would be easier just to show you.

You can see more photos from the day here.