Ten on Thursday

1. I don't have nearly as many exciting things to report this week, but I am in DC and having a great time with my colleagues doing my lawyer gig.  DC is so beautiful in the spring. I will always love it more than NYC.  It is just more my city and more my style.  NYC definitely has DC beat on things to do in the evenings though. Couldn't find a dance or theatre performance I wanted to see this week ending my streak.

2.  While in DC, I try to run at least on Wednesday, if not more.  Last night, I made sure to run past George as E requested a photo.  It was a beautiful cool evening for a run. I was surprised to find less people out than usual, but they may have been deterred by rain earlier in the day.

3.  Have I mentioned how much I love regalia? In wandering around campus today everyone was wearing fancy new navy GW regalia with the logo on the sleeves. I miss the traditional black a little, but they did look very sharp.  It is luck I'm married to a PhD who does have to wear his regalia few times a year :)

4. I had dinner with a law school friend this evening.  She is from Nebraska so we share a love of college sports.  She got to see Hamilton very early on so we talked about that as well as the presidential election, DC, and our jobs.  It was lovely.

5. My mom is sick :( (Hi mom! hope you feel better soon!) This is sad in its own right and her particular ailment I happen to know is really painful, but she has meds now and is recovering.  Brent, Audra, and Bill have formulated a plan to cover all the kid logistics tomorrow in her absence, but I suspect she'll miss the long anticipated land run.

6. I, sadly, will also miss the land run, but I did get to see B off to his day in the one room school house. I think he had a good time, but was mostly focused on his lunch.  They apparently worked on penmanship and the teacher pretended to take someone outside for swats?  B's family will have a conestoga wagon they made for the land run tomorrow, operate a little bakery set up with cookies each kid is bringing, and then after the land run and claim staking, have lunch in pie plates and play fun period games.  Should be great!

7. We went to the farm a bit this weekend, and made a group hike out to this old house my ancestors staked in the land run of 1893 and told the kids all about it. It is amazing it is still here and may not be much longer given the creek erosion, but it was a neat visit. (Much more my speed than the snake hunting......which also happened).

8.  The kids brought a variety of mother's day things home from school.  E, apparently, wrote his very own name on his for the first time, which was awesome.  B made this entire long amazing book full of poems, drawings, and other memories. It twas incredibly sweet, well-writen, and with such beautiful hand writting.  I will keep it forever.

9. Our strawberry crop is amazing.  We get a couple dozen small berries every few days almost.  The ants are certainly getting some too.  One day E and I came home and had to run off a squirrel from our strawberry patch as he clearly wanted some as well.  It is great fun to pick them and eat 1/2 of them in the front yard in the afternoon.  I so adore this new house and the strawberry bed is such a random fun bonus.  It makes me happy.

10. The Wainrights are some of our very closest friends and we love getting to do things together. In a miraculous turn of events we got to go on a double date with them to the Pentatonix concert in Tulsa last Saturday.  (This is amazing as between us we have six kids).  My sister took our kids to the farm for a slumber party with Grandma and the Korenaks while Chrissie's sister watched their kids. It was amazing.  Brent and I spent almost 22 hours together sans kids which may be our longest kid free vacation in awhile.  We started it with a nap, as one does.  The concert was good - very high production value and great singing from the main group (the first act was... not so good?).  Dinner was quite delicious and we loved getting to spend some kid-free time with some of our favorite people.


Tomorrow I fly home and it is back to the flurry of the last week of school.  I'm amazed it has gone so quickly.  This week, Ali did week in the life, but I want to do it when I'm home. The last week in the life was the first week of school so it seems somewhat fitting to do the last week.  We shall see how that goes as my big camera is broken, but my iphone should do the trick. 

Family Vacation 2015: DC Days 4 & 5

 So what we're calling the 4th day of the vacation actually fell on the 4th of July, which is a very exciting time to be in DC.  (Although, in fairness, most of the locals leave and tourists take the city for a big, high security celebration on the mall).  We knew our kids would be getting tired at this point and had zero ambitious to take them to the National Mall.  We had planned to go to a smaller local festival, which rained out.  Instead, we took them to the National Cathedral, which was beautiful as always.

The Cathedral sustained damage in a 2011 earthquake so various sections were under construction.

 When we arrived there was an organ concert going on.  We listened to it mostly from below in the gift shop and through the catacombs and small chapels underground.  I really wanted the kids to see the inside of the cathedral, but clearly they were going to need to run before the concert ended so we went back outside to look around on a surprisingly cool day, with the rain largely at bay. (Note, I forgot to get M a patriot dress.  Heather had gotten Cleo a dress for the occasion that Cleo decided not to wear and M promptly put on.  They were deep in to sharing clothes at this point and everyone was happy).

 To my great delight, the bishop's garden was open. I don't think it was in the past and I adored it. If you know about how I travel, you know that it always involves a garden, and this trip had been lacking one.  This garden was just right for our crew. It had lots of little secret places, interesting plants that were often edible, and all sorts of paths to discover.

 We bought a few gifts in the gift shop, which B graciously carried.  He picked out a gargoyle for his bookshelf, which was extra sweet as Aunt Audra & Uncle Zach bought him a stuffed gargoyle at that same gift shop when they visited and he was only 1!

 M & Cleo

 Lilly!

Yes, despite lack of photo evidence I was on the trip too!

 Rest/Snack time with amazing views.

Love this smile :)

 My mother and this gardener would definitely get along.

 Everyone knew it was our last real day together and seemed more willing to have photos.  M & Cleo requested and posed for this one in particular.

 We spent a few minutes inside after the choir concert exploring

People were getting pretty worn out so we stopped for lunch at Noodles & Co and drove some more through always scenic Georgetown before making our way home for naps.  The rule in our house is that every single person is required to nap on the fourth of July as we'll all be up so late.  I think almost everyone failed at doing that.  Meanwhile, our hosts were sleeping soundly upstairs.  Finally, we made a break for the car to go get one more scoop from Dairy Godmother.  The moment we left it started to down pour, then moved right on to torrential rains.  We continued, undeterred, and got completely soaking wet walking across the street and down two store fronts from our car.  The custard, sorbet, and posicle were all delicious and totally worth being sopping wet.  Of course the rain cleared not long after and we enjoyed a grilled supper with our hosts before heading to the fireworks. 

 Our kids really like watching fireworks out of the back of the car.  This is our third year so now it is a tradition.  This time, we watched from the top of a parking garage at National Airport.  We arrived early to get a good spot and worried about all the clouds hanging in the air.

 Everyone was too full of excitement to just hang out so we went down in to the terminal to wander around and get a treat.

Yes, we'd already had custard, but clearly still room for frozen yogurt.  It is a national holiday, after all. 

The kids all played, ran, danced and made up games.  It is great to have memories of them here as I come through this airport on every trip. 

 Then we headed back to the car and broke out the glow sticks - much silliness ensued.

 M as "Bo on the GO" (A cartoon character)

 Yes, they watched from the top of the car this year too.  The low hanging clouds did impede the view a bit and all the smoke hung in the wet air.  It was still a great show.

And that was that.  We hopped in the car for a fairly quick ride home and finished packing our bags.  

Day 4 - Family Notes:

M- Dairy Godmother ice cream and new coloring book, watching fireworks

B - ice cream at the airport and watching fireworks

E- seeing airplanes (at the airport),  garden,  yummy ice cream & Popsicle

Brent - fireworks & blackberry blueberry cobbler

Abbey - bishop's garden & driving up Wisconsin Avenue (in Georgetown)- fireworks fun

 Day 5: - Heading Home

 The next morning, we headed right back to the airport, dropped off the rental car and checked bags, and began the trek home.  (In fairness this technically is a six day trip as they traveled a day to get to me, but you get the gist).

 They make a great travel crew. I was truly impressed at how well they did.  They took care of their own stuff, did what they were told, played together, were quiet on the plane, and did almost zero whining.  They hadn't charged the ipad since the trip out (!) so had about 6 minutes of electronics in the roughly 8 hours of total transit time home. And they didn't need it.  They were awesome. I am definitely going more places with this crew.

Finally we were back in hot Oklahoma and our next adventure of living in our new home began.  It was a great trip and I feel so amazed that we really pulled it off with all the other things going on and all the stress and logistics heaped on our family this summer.  The kids impressed me so much and I truly had a great time on vacation.  Staying with friends helped tremendously, but I think our kids are pretty amazing too, which was the best.  Hooray for great family fun and more adventures to come!

Family Vacation 2015 - DC Day 3

 Rationally, as an experienced DC area resident I knew the National Mall would be insane the week of the 4th and hot.  Also, seeing one of the space shuttles up close was a definite personal life goal.  So, we began day 3 (aka museum day) at the Smithsonian's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center out in Virginia instead.  It is a cousin to the Aerospace Museum in DC, but enormous and with a space shuttle!  It was as awesome as I'd dreamed.

 This is our crew in front of the shuttle - Brent and our three kids and Heather and her daughters (who had visited previously)

 Look how up close you get? The tiles are individually numbered and the whole experience of discussing the space shuttle and thinking about its life journey was amazing.

 Lion & E were in to the astronauts, but really, really wanted us to get back to the airplanes... and we did...

 But not until we saw the shuttle from every angle.

 Around the space shuttle were several other space type vehicles of various eras as well as the rockets that proceeded them.  (And my daughter with a penguin stuffie).

 B ended up being very interested in the rockets and missiles.   This section led to discussions about why they were developed and why most were never used, the cost, the cold war, etc... B read all the signs in this area and figured out which could go furthest, had the most strength, etc...

 We did make it out to see the planes to E's delight.

This is a mock up of an early wright brother's plane.

The planes are just in layers upon layers all through the hanger. It is phenomenal and a little overwhelming.  There are famous ones like the Enola Gay (another complicated conversation) and the Concord as well as trick planes from shows, military planes, hot air balloon baskets, fed ex planes, etc... To the right here is one of the simulators that Brent and the big kids rode in.  About this time people were tired and ready for naps.  We headed back to DC and E napped in the car.

 Brent really wanted to take the kids to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and we did.  Getting there involved a lot of driving around the mall area looking for parking and taking in the sights.  Then, there was a bit of a forced march across the National Mall, accompanied with a surprisingly small number of complaints.  We made it! And took the requisite picture with the elephant inside.

 We took a peek at the Hope Diamond and then meandered our way through the minerals and gems exhibit. It is a great place with lots of hands on and shiny things.

 I've been here dozens of times, but experiencing it with them was totally new and awesome. I wish we had had more time and that there were several thousand less people enjoying it with us.

 We also visited the ocean area, the small dino section (larger section is under construction), and a bug zoo portion.

And more of this guy.  The building itself is just gorgeous.  SO glad we made the rushed trip to see it and that our kids held up for the whirlwind adventure.

One reason we were rushing was that Heather and Evan were graciously hosting a BBQ for us back at their place for my Law School and Masters Program friends and their families.  It was a lovely chance to catch up, watch our kids play, and hear how everyone is doing.  Thanks so much to everyone who came and to Heather and Evan for being amazing hosts this day and throughout our stay!


Family notes/Favorites for Day 3

Day 3:

E- elephant, panda, lion, frogs, turtles, lot of airplanes

B- lots of pretty shiny expensive things, lots of airplanes and missiles, middle that went 700 mph, second highest 620 mph

M- making crowns, playing in a tree club

Abbey- minerals and Quartz and space shuttle, old friends

Brent - so many airplanes