A New Post of Only Slight Hilarity and Substance to Appease the Regulars (If Only for a Short While)

I graduated.

(Megan deserves at least half of the credit!)


Ali had a birthday.

(Can you guess how old she is?)

And, Max is crawling.

(Also note how Kaitlyn says, "Lights, Camera, Action!" throughout.)

Mr. Awesome Goes to Washington

A man from New York drove to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. Near the rim's edge he stopped at a local gas station in a one-stoplight town to fill up. The attendant noticed the New York tags on the car and said, "You've come a long way to see the Grand Canyon." Expecting to hear an insider's opinion of the best parts of the Canyon by a local who had never left the town the visitor said, "I bet you know the canyon like the back of your hand." To his surprise the attendant responded, "I've never been down." Almost beside himself, the New Yorker ranted about taking advantage of life and not seeing the wonders that are right in front of your own eyes. When he had finished, the patient attendant said, "Tell me about the Statue of Liberty." "I've never been to it," admitted the visitor. "I have," said the smiling attendant.

We've lived here on the East Coast for almost two years, and although we've been to D.C. several times, we had never before visited any of the historical sites. Since we're moving in about three weeks, we dediced to make a last ditch effort to see our nation's capital before leaving.

We got off to a good start on Friday afternoon. We found a free parking lot near the river and walked over to the Washington Monument. Unfortunately, it was a little cooler than we had planned so we didn't take very much time at any site to learn the important history and facts. So, we decided to either guess or make it up: there are 50 flags surrounding the monument--one for each state; the color-change in the granite stone part way up was a delay in construction due to the Civil War; George Washington was Abraham Lincoln's father, which is why the two monuments face each other.

Next, we walked over to see the White House. When we explained that the President of the United States lives at the White House, Alison asked, "We're going to meet the President?" Later, she said, "I am going to be the next President." Megan said, "How did you get elected?" Ali responded, "I was selected (correcting Megan for saying "elected") by the old President."


Our next stop was the World War II Memorial. I didn't remember this site even existing during my last trip to the Capital (which was 13 years ago). It turns out that it was just built in 2004. Each column has the name of a state, a future state, a US Territory, or Guam. Near a fountain there were hundreds of gold stars. We continued to make up the facts (but check on them later). We estimated 2,000 gold stars and concluded that that was how many days the US was involved in the war. It turns out that there were 4,000 stars each reprenting 100 US soliders who died in the war. So...we were only off on our calculations by about half. Ouch!


We considered where to head to next: the National Archives, the National Gallery of Art, the National Aquarium, the National Zoo, or the National Cemetary. However, we ended up just going to the National Bathrooms, which are located just behind where we were.


Then, on the walk to Lincoln, Ali's arms fell off and Max's arms turned blue.


Lincoln (Washington's son) was pretty cool. The tall ceilings and detailed artwork were most impressive. We were even more impressed with Lincoln's contribution to freedom for all Americans.


As we walked through the Korean War Memorial, Max warmed up.


Having seen all of that in about 2 hours, we returned to the car to grab a snack and then drive over to Jefferson--my personal favorite due to his neverending pursuit of knowledge and truth as evidenced by his fine, MBA-granting institution: The University of Virginia. Megan stayed in the car while Ali, Kaitlyn and I ran in. I wanted to see the statue and inscriptions under the dome, but the girls just wanted to see the bathrooms again. On the way back to the car I had the girls practice reciting, "That was the most incredible thing I've ever seen" over and over as their response to Megan's question about how it was.


As we left to drive to our hotel and get dinner we drove past this little monument, which was tucked behind some trees and didn't appear to have any special plaques or explanations, and which looked a little less maintained than the other monuments. We christened this one the Memorial of Unvisited Monuments.

After Quiznos for dinner, about a dozen strange looks for being the only 3-kid family in the city, and 2 hours of laying down with the girls until they fell asleep, we called it Day One.

The next morning, we drove to Arlington National Cemetary and walked up to the JFK Memorial and saw the eternal flame. The weather was significantly more pleasant and I felt bad for forcing the girls to wear long pants.


We then walked the stroller down, and then up, a whole series of stairs to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to witness the changing of the guard. This was probably one of my favorite experiences of the weekend. The sentinel takes exactly 21 even-lengthed steps, and then turns, pauses for 21.3 seconds (give or take 0.3) and then takes 21 steps back, turns and pauses. There has been a soldier at the Tomb every minute of every day since 1937--day or night, rain or snow--each one taking 21 steps, turning, pausing 21 seconds and returning. It was incredible. The sense of patriotism and love of country was almost overwhelming.


Seeing the seemingly endless rows of almost 300,000 headstones was almost more overwhelming.

I know this picture is a little blurry, but doesn't Megan look skinny?

We then went to the National Archives (no flash photography). Alison called it "boring", Kaitlyn slept in our arms, and Max screamed. Incidentally, we found out we were standing next to another LDS couple as we stood in line for 25 minutes to see the Constitution for 7 seconds.

Megan really wanted to see the Holocaust Museum, so I took a look at the map and managed to drive us straight there without getting lost at all (unlike the previous day when I kept taking wrong turns at the National Golden Pegasus and going back and forth across the Memorial Bridge). As I looked for a parking spot I was explaining to the family why such a feat should qualify me to be heralded as "Mr. Awesome." But, suddenly the road we were on turned into a I-395 freeway entrance and we found ourselves going across the river yet again! Pride truly goes before the fall. When we finally made it back Megan was able to enjoy seeing the kids exhibit for 15 minutes before the building closed.

We wrapped up the day with a quick drive around the Capital Building itself and the Supreme Court (which is not in New York, that's Wall Street) while the kids watched "The Incredibles" on DVD in the back of the van, totally exhausted.

I'm glad we were at last able to see the sites in D.C. Now, we have to get online and look up the real facts and details about everything we saw...

Making It Up

For those faithful readers of this blog who were disappointed, heartbroken, distraught, or indifferent about the fact that we missed posting last week, we offer the following collection of posts in an effort to make it up to you with quantity.

Nathan: In Concert

For Christmas Megan got us a pair of tickets to see Van Halen in concert on February 22nd. Megan is, admittedly, not as big of a Van Halen fan as I am. So, my buddy Paul from D.C. came down to see the show with me. About 30 minutes before he arrived his boss called him and asked him if he had heard that the concert was cancelled. He hadn't. He pulled in and asked me if I had heard. I hadn't. We double checked and, sure enough, no gig.

The rescheduled concert was set for something like March 21st. But, by this time, I had sufficiently guilted Megan into coming with me. Sadly, the concert was cancelled yet again and rescheduled for this past Friday night, and it actually happened!

The show was amazing! Ever since I started playing electric guitar in high school and discovered Van Halen, I've been a fan. And, now I've seen them in concert fronted by both Sammy Hagar and now David Lee Roth. On Friday night they played only Roth-era songs (covering 1978-1984), of which Megan knew only one song. I, on the other hand, not only knew the words, but also knew the guitar parts as well; after the concert I felt like I had just played the whole show (although only on air guitar from 100 rows back). Edward is still an incredible guitar player and was totally fun to watch.

Megan's Marathon

So many people were so supportive of Megan while she trained for her half-marathon. Even more asked about how it went when it was all over. At the risk of having to post another recant, I decided to post a great picture of her during the race--which she finished in a little over 2 hours.

I'm so proud of her. She's an inspiration.

Alison The Genius

I was typing the title of this posting, and Ali requested that I add the "The Genius" part. Let's see why.

I've heard all this about how kids grow up so fast, and how technologically advanced the kids of today are. I've heard it. But, I didn't really think it applied to me right now. Let me share a conversation I just had with Alison.

I was sitting here at the computer and Ali walked in and said, "Dad, can I get on the computer? I need to post to my blog?"

"What?" I said, thinking that I must have mis-heard.

"Yeah," she said, "I need to tell everyone that my dad is crazy."

...

"I have my mp3 player."

"Do you even know what an mp3 player is?"

"It's like a music player."

"What is an mp3?"

"A little XBox?"

I don't even know how she picked up any of this terminology. She says she's seen us post on our blog, and Megan does have an iPod, and there is an XBox at Megan's parents' house. So, I guess it's not totally unreasonable that she's heard about this stuff before. But, wow.

Earlier this week Megan was doing her daily ritual: checking the Indiana real estate postings for any new developments. From the other room I heard her gasp loudly. I yelled to Megan, "What? What happened?" Alison was walking by and said, concluding what had happened, "It sold!?" Ali is incredibly perceptive.

Alison has been reading along as I've been typing. I now quote her:

"I know what you need to put now. Write: Alison is a real genius."

"I want to post a picture of me doing a genius pose."

Kaitlyn: Little Sister

Kaitlyn has been especially clingy to Alison this past week. She relies so much on her older sister. It is very cute. Today in Primary at church, Kaitlyn refused to sit with her Sunbeam class during Sharing Time. Instead, she insisted on sitting next to Ali with the CTR 6 class.

Here's a nice little video of Kaitlyn doing some crazy dancing, like she loves, to Alison, her sweet older sister's audio soundtrack:

As you know, we've been in the process of finding an buying a house for several weeks now. The other day we were asking the girls what they wanted in a new house. One of the homes we were considering had some smaller bedrooms and we thought we might have to put each kid in his or her own room. When we asked Kaitlyn about it she cried and said, "I don't want my own room!" I'm glad we're recording this now so we have it on record for future use.

Earlier this week Kaitlyn made a picture for her best friend, Blake. Every day she wakes up and asks if today is the day that she'll be able to give him his picture. Hopefully we'll be able to give it to him soon!

Max the Mover

Max is officially mobile. Sort of. He's able to push himself up on all fours into a crawling position. He then is able to move his arms and knees in a coordinated fashion provided he has a goal he's reaching towards--which is usually something that we have put just out of his reach that we don't want him to have. He reaches it. We repeat the process.

He is also starting to eat real food--if you can call baby food "real food."

He is such a happy little boy. Whenever we take him out he smiles at people. He is developing quite a cute little laugh. Megan is able to get him to laugh just by looking at him and starting to laugh.

Footnote

By the way, we bought a house.

What's that you say? It looks eerily similar to the first house we made an offer on--the house that I had posted a picture of and then had to post a recant because we didn't come to an agreement; the offer we made 2 offers ago. Well, it is the very same house indeed. We were negotiating on a third property when we decided that the one we liked best was the one we liked first, and we figured out how to make it work.

We are very excited.

Oh, and it's a long story...