Program, Pumpkins, Costumes...

On Saturday morning Damon and I got up early and drove to the church for his Primary Program practice. There was a pancake breakfast for the kids and then they went through the program a few times. Damon has been practicing his line for a few weeks and was so excited to be able to stand up at the microphone and say it.

Of course we are loving the fall leaves and changing of things all around us. Jennie's yard is just beautiful with all the different plants and trees she has.

This tree used to have white flowers and they have slowly turned pink. I love how it is so droopy.

Intent on winning his 'Cat in the Hat' game. When Damon obeys he earns pennies. After five pennies he gets a privilege. Lately he uses his pennies to earn time playing games on PBS kids or NICK jr. Jonas is good to just watch and enjoy :) 

Saturday afternoon we got snow. It did not stick, but fell for a few hours. We got some pumpkins for carving and made some yummy treats. (BTW, the pumpkin butter and pumpkin cream cheese from Trader Joe's is FANTASTIC! ) Pumpkin pancakes, roll, roasted seeds, frozen yogurt, soup, truffles, cheesecake,...never knew I could LoVe pumpkin so much!

Fun Halloween cookie!

Getting dirty carving!

Kyle and Damon's pumpkins!

Superman and the ferocious Dragon! We went trick or treating at the mall since we are not sure where would be the best place to take our little guys otherwise. It was fun to let them walk around and not be worried about which houses to go to. And it was fun to see lots of other kids in their costumes.

Showing those muscles!

So funny. Love that he is flexing and jumping in the air :)

Happy Halloween!

Pentagon

The boys and I took the metro down to the Pentagon today to meet Kyle after work. He is able to escort up to 3 visitors with his pass inside the Pentagon. It was really amazing to walk through the halls of this building, see the displays from past wars, watch people who work there walk the halls, and feel such gratitude for those who work and fight to keep our country free. There is no picture taking inside, but they had a 9/11 memorial out on one side of the building.

On the right side there are dark tiles laid in the ledge which are engraved with the birth years of each person who died at the Pentagon in the 9/11 attack. On the left each small monument that comes out of the ground and curves into a ledge is engraved with a name. 

 

I was so glad that we were able to meet Mr. Burger (Kyle's boss) and friends he works with in the Office of General Counsel. He really enjoys what he is doing. It is fun to be able to see these people in person after hearing so much about them these last few months. 

We walked to Pentagon City afterwards. There is a HUGE mall there that we walked through with pretty much every store you could ever want. Four levels of fun!

Searching for Treasures...

We went to the park this week and reveled in the sweet cool air, beautiful trees, and leaves. We have not gotten out much lately (besides the weekends) and it was a needed outing. 

After the park we went searching for the boy's Halloween costumes. We found some that they are very happy with...and good for me they were actually on sale! It did take some digging though. The first few places we looked were ridiculous...meaning everything was way overpriced (if you know me you know I HATE paying full price for anything!) But after finding out what Damon wanted we did some online shopping and searching other stores. I was pretty amazed that even after my procrastinating till almost the week of Halloween I was able to get the costume he wanted at a reasonable price. Just needed some extra searching. I ended up getting both of their costumes for less than the price of one at the first Halloween costume stores we went to. Insane. 

 

We decided that since we have really pushed ourselves to see so much every weekend, we were going to take it easy this week and have a relaxing day close to home. The last few weeks have really worn us out with all the walking. I had looked up a few used book and antique stores that I wanted to take a look at so we gave them a try.

It was fun to see some crazy cool old stuff. Of course it is not easy to deep search for anything when there are two little monkeys hanging on and running around you. :) But we had a good time and found some good stuff.

We spent the rest of the day at home eating yummy food and watching the BYU game. Good day.

Capital, National Archives, Memorials...

What a busy day! Saturday we got an afternoon start. We took the metro to Chinatown first and had lunch at the amazing place we ate at before. It was so beautiful outside so we ate out on the patio. We tried their famous made noodles and dumplings which were fantastic by the way. We were full and happy, ready to start walking! (Kinda funny, Kyle still does not know what to ask for when ordering the special dish he loves. He just has to ask the waitress in Chinese for what he is looking for and they get it right away. While he ordered a random Chinese woman walking down the street got caught up in the conversation. At one point in the conversation the waitress and woman turned to me and started going OFF in Chinese. They asked Kyle if I was Asian or could speak Chinese and he said I could not. I was surprised how many times they kept looking and seemed to be speaking right at me. Kyle said they kept saying that I really looked Asian. I got this many times in China. They were amazed that the white man could speak Chinese and the Asian looking woman could not. Kinda silly...hope I can speak it someday. I can recognize and understand a little. It is just SO hard to get those tones right!) 

We were walking down toward the Capital and saw this Newseum. There were glass cases around the outside of the building with the printed front page of the newspapers from all over the country and the world! It was so cool, I am super glad we stumbled into it.

The closest one is from Nebraska

And this one of course is the Salt Lake Tribune from UT. Pretty cool!

Statue in front of the...

United States Court House.

Walking up to the Capital

Looking from the Capital out toward the Mall and memorials/monuments

My sweeties

We headed to the National Archives. I was super excited about this one, and it did not disappoint. This is one of the places here where you can't take pictures inside.

We did not venture around everything in the archives, but we went up to the Rotunda and saw he Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights.

Our last three stops were the Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and Korean War Memorial.

This was a beautiful memorial. I thought it was cool that you could see the reflection of the Washington Monument in it.

Lincoln Memorial

Gettysburg Address

Lincoln's second Inaugural Address

Sleepy little guy

There was a beautiful ceiling on this building. So amazing.

May be hard to see but the trees were all cut and conditioned to be the same size and shape. The water and stone walls made it so cool to look at and very peaceful.

We did lots of walking again, but it was so great to be able to see these amazing pieces of history and enjoy the sunny day, cool breeze, and true feeling of lovely weather. Lets hope it sticks. We feel like it has rained most days since we have been here so any glimpse of good weather is something to celebrate. Damon loved being able to run everywhere since we have been cooped up because of sickness and rain. And even though Jonas is cutting six teeth right now I think he had the best day possible! What an amazing place this is...