A Day at the Museums

We're in DC for the weekend and have had a wonderful time so far. Me and my 3 boys met up with my brother (who lives near DC) and his 3 girls for dinner Thursday night. It was great to see them again and the cousins had a great time playing together.

On Friday we went into the city to visit some of the museums. We saw the Air & Space, Natural History and American History. We really wanted to see the Art museum too, but didn't make it Friday. (We thought we might try to visit it Saturday after the rally, but that was a crazy idea - with 200,000 people around the mall after the rally, it was impossible to do anything). Charlie didn't actually see the Natural History Museum, but that didn't seem to bother him too much.

Carter was also very comfortable while visiting the museums.

My brother from NY came down on Friday and joined us for some museums, hanging out and the rally on Saturday.

It was fun to get to see 2 of my brothers and my nieces. The boys did a great job exploring the city and we all had a great time. We are already plotting everything we would do if we came to visit for several days...

Fine Print = Fine Lashes

On a commercial for mascara that adds length and volume -

"Lash inserts were applied to this model's lashes to add lash count before applying LashBlast Fusion"

I expected better of Drew Barrymore....

10 Year Reunion

We had a great time hanging out with our college friends again! On Friday night we met up with our old roomies and their two kids. We were staying in the same hotel and went out to dinner together at Isaac’s, one of our local favorites from the college days. Both of their kids are a year younger, respectively, than our 2 older kids. They took a while to warm up, but by the end of dinner, they were running all over the restaurant and causing general mayhem like old buddies.

Saturday morning we went to the reunion. It was nice to walk around the campus. It still looks beautiful and they’ve added some nice new buildings, but there were also a lot of things that were still the same. We met up with another old roomie of mine, Anne, and her husband and adorable little girl. Casey and his roommate and Anne and I have all been friends since the first week of college and their spouses-to-be joined our group of friends the following year, so we all have a lot of fun memories together. There were a few friends that couldn’t make it to the reunion, but we’re hoping to get together next year for a girls’ weekend (and maybe the guys and kids can all get together for their own weekend?) It was a great time and I’m so glad that I had such great friends in college!

Playing by the Yellow Breeches

The Roomies!

The boys goofing off!

Coulson was impressed by the massive college library.
So many books, so little time - must start right away!

More Pictures from Natural Bridge

The Sound of Silence

When Charlie gets too quiet, you should always investigate. If he's not into the Nestle Quick, he's eating spoonfuls of sugar. But he's so cute about it!

Natural Bridge

On the way to PA, we decided to take our time and break up the trip a little bit, so we stopped in mid-Virginia for the night and visited Natural Bridge on Friday morning. It was an easy diversion and pretty amazing. It wasn’t too much walking for the kids and Carter did great in the backpack carrier - even though we had to wake him up about 10 minutes after he had just fallen asleep for his morning nap, so our timing wasn’t great for introducing a new method of travel, so I was concerned as we were putting him in it. But he loved it, being up high and being able to look around and see everything. Although the backpack carrier puts him right behind our head and this baby loves to grab hair! So I quickly learned to wear the hoodie on my jacket to protect my mane. It looked weird, but it was effective.

It's a small world after all...

This past weekend we traveled to Pennsylvania to attend our 10 year college reunion. We took our time getting there, leaving Thursday afternoon and driving to Lexington, VA for the night. Along the way, we stopped for dinner and encountered a wonder of probability –

So if a woman leaves Winston-Salem at 3:30pm traveling to PA at 70 mph, and another woman leaves Knoxville, TN in the afternoon traveling to NY, what are the odds that both women will eat at Cracker Barrel off some random exit in VA and that those women will be related and haven't seen each other in 10 years?

I was facing the entrance of the dining room and I watched as the hostess led a woman, holding a small baby, and a man to their table. The woman looked at lot like my cousin, and my cousin had just had a baby shortly after Carter was born, and the man following them looked just like her husband. It took me a while to process since I wasn’t expecting to see anyone I knew at some random Cracker Barrel off I-81, but I decided that yes, that was definitely my cousin. So I told Casey, “that was my cousin who just walked by…” and I got up and went to her table to say hello. They joined us for dinner and it was fun to catch up on life in person (she blogs regularly at Raising Olives and we’re facebook friends, so we had a vague idea of what’s been going on in each other’s lives, but face-to-face is always much better.)

So what are the odds? Casey wasn’t hugely surprised since I have over 50 first cousins, so I’m bound to run into them sometime, right? It reminds me of when my brother was walking down the street in Nairobi, Kenya and saw someone wearing a shirt with my alma mater on it. So he stopped her and asked her if she knew me. Turns out she was one of my hall-mates in college and lived right across the hall from me. Also in college, one night my roommate and I were talking about our parents growing up and it turned out that our moms went to the same church in New Jersey when they were teenagers and her mom often spoke of my aunt and uncle who were her age, but we had never known of the connection before.

So maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe a Divine appointment. Either way , it was fun!

A sweet moment caught on video

I don't think Casey knew I was watching them...

Carter sits and blows raspberries

Carter is getting much better at sitting. I took this video 2 or 3 weeks ago. If the video posts at all, it's wonderful (I'm posting from my cell phone). So if you have to adjust your computer screen to view the video correctly, just bear with me and be amazed that there is video at all.

Hey, it worked and you don't even need to rotate your computer monitor! I like this new feature from my phone. Speaking of my phone, I broke down and let Casey get me an iPhone a few months ago, despite my ridicule of AT&T's service reputation and a general loathing of all things apple. I kept protesting because I rarely used my cell phone, so why did I need a fancy phone? After having the phone for about a week, it finally clicked. It's not primarily a phone. It's a mobile internet device! I do use the internet all the time, so my new phone has been very useful. But I don't think I should call it my phone, I think I'll call it my "internet thingy."

Charlie and Carter

If I can figure out how to blog and upload pictures from my phone, I
might start posting again. If you're reading this and admiring a
picture of 2 of my fabulous boys, then I've had success!