Yippee, my camera is working again

I got a new phone a few months ago, but two days after I got it Julia used it as a teether and broke the camera with water damage. For some reason last night the camera started working again. So our day from my phone...

We headed into Washington D.C. today with no real plan besides seeing whatever was close to where we parked. We ended up going to the National Archives to see the Magna Carter, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and whatever other smaller documents they had on display. Robert said the line was the shortest he had ever seen it, probably because of the two rallies that were also going on in D.C. a few blocks away while we were there. Everyone who came for the rally was at the rally, and everyone else but us was scared away by the crowds. Since we got there after it started though there were really not a lot of people around. There were no pictures allowed in the Archives, so this was outside when we ate lunch and Julia got to run around.

Then we went to the National Gallery of Art. We will definitely be going back here sometime because the place is huge and with Julia we only got to see a small portion of it. We tried to visit the National Gallery's Scuplture Garden across the street but by that time Julia was ready for a nap, so we called it quits and headed back across the river to home.

After Julia's nap, some dinner, and playtime it was time to get ready for bed. For some reason Julia decided to line her bath toys up along the edge of the tub today. And that's it. I put her to bed half an hour ago and she is still up there screaming for me to come get her from her crib. This past week she has decided she doesn't want to sleep in her crib anymore and will only sleep with me in my bed. It's driving me nuts because I don't get any quality sleep with her rolling all over the place. I'm hoping she'll grow out of it soon because I don't know what else to do! Either let her scream for hours, or give in or let her sleep in our bed and neither are very good options.

The City of Brotherly Love

Last weekend we went up to Philadelphia to visit Robert's brother Kevin and his wife Ellen. Since we will be going back for Thanksgiving we decided to do some of the lesser traveled tourist spots this time and save the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall for November.Friday the Dodger's just happened to be in town (yeah right, they were the whole reason we chose this weekend) so we went to a Phillies vs. Dodgers game. We stopped at a little hole in the wall pub by Kevin and Ellen's house and had their famous Schmitter Sandwich. It was delicious, kind of like an animal style cheesesteak. Then we headed to the game where the Phillies came from six down to win it in the bottom of the ninth. Great game for Phillies fans, horrible for Dodgers fans. Robert said it was the worst game he'd ever been to. I really didn't care either way (shh, don't tell Robert, although I was sad for Robert) but I liked the stadium for Julia's sake because they had a playground for her to play on and the usher gave her a mini toy Phanatic and a certificate that said "My First Phillies Game."

Saturday was the Philly road less traveled day. We went to the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum (saw lots of dead stuffed animals and lots of live butterflies), Ben Franklin Museum (Don't bother trying to find the Underground Railroad Museum like we did, because apparently it no longer exists) U.S. Mint, and the Edgar Allen Poe House. We also tried Jim's Philly cheesesteaks because everyone says they are the best in Philly. I'd have a Schmitter over this any day(maybe I'm just not appreciative of the Philly cheesesteak in general though). We finished the day off by visiting the Rocky statue (originally made for one of the movies and then donated to the city) and the Rocky steps where Julia showed off her climbing endurance by climbing all the way to the top. Apparently, Rocky is a big deal in Philly.

Here's the fast version of Julia climbing the steps. Brace yourselves, it's quick.



Saturday after Kevin and Robert got back from their bike ride down to the Rocky steps and back we drove out to Valley Forge and then on to Amish country. Amish country is kind of a funny tourist destination because there's not much to do besides eat good Amish food at a buffet (which we did), shop for homemade items like quilts (did that too, but without buying a quilt, just some jam) and drive around looking for Amish people in their buggies (yes, we even did that). Ellen said it reminded her of Yellowstone only instead of shouting "look there's one!" and pointing at a buffalo, you shout "look there's one!" and point at an Amish person. It must be odd to have people driving past your house and gawking at you mowing your lawn, but then, maybe if it's all you know it's just another part of life.

Thunderstorm

One of the biggest adjustments we have had to make moving to Virginia has been the weather. It is hot and humid here with lots of thunderstorms, and from what I hear this year has been particularly bad. A couple weeks ago, the day after we came home from Utah, (I'm kind of slow about posting this) Julia and I were in the basement when a good thunderstorm came through. The power went out but that's not the first time that has happened this summer so I thought nothing of it until we got into the car to go grocery shopping and saw this across the parking lot:
Whoa, that was the first indication that this storm was worse that the usual. Then I started driving and the street was blocked by a huge fallen tree going across the entire road. So I turned around and went another way, only to be stopped by another large tree blocking the street. Driving through Fairlington (our neighborhood) was what I would image it would be like driving down the street after a hurricane with trees down all over the place.In all there were about 40-50 trees knocked down in Fairlington and two weeks later they are still not all cleaned up. Amazingly I saw no cars that were completely crushed, just a few with dents and probably a lot of scratched up cars. Oh, and after we got out of the neighborhood streets and onto a main street I took a look at the backed up traffic and turned around. I decided the grocery store could wait one more day.

This website has some more pictures of Fairlington trees down.

The Kiddos

The last day we were in Utah my cousins Steven and Katrina and their families came over to my parents house and had dinner with us. It was nice to see Katrina one more time before she leaves for Japan for three years. We're going to miss her and her family!

We tried to get a picture of all the our kids together and after some of this:
and some of this:this was the best we could come up with.

Park City

While we were in Utah we split our time between my family and Robert's family. Robert's family was staying at his mom's cousin's cabin in Park City, the same place we stayed at for Christmas. After the funeral we headed back up there the for the weekend. We had a lot of fun enjoying the outdoors and beautiful vistas.On Saturday the boys all went mountain biking up at The Canyons. The have a couple ski lifts running in the summer so they all rode up the lifts with their bikes and got to enjoy an all downhill ride! The girls decided to head up there as well and go hiking while the "grandmas" (Wendy isn't a grandma but she is sort of Julia's honorary grandma) watched the kids. On our hike we meet some cute mountain bikers and got a good view of the PC valley. Later we took the boy's lift tickets and rode the lift up and back down.Sunday we set up the sprinkler for Julia and Tyler to play with. Julia was a hoot to watch. She's had a lot of practice running through water from all the spray parks out here in Arlington, so she had no problem running straight in, squealing with delight, even though the water must have bee pretty cold.

15 Month Olds- Eli and Julia

Last week we got back from an unexpected summer trip to Utah for Robert's grandfather's funeral. While I sort through all our pictures I thought I'd post some pictures of Eli and Julia. Eli is the son of Robert's cousin Jeremy and Julia and Eli are only two weeks apart. We stopped for a visit this trip and the kids had fun chasing each other. Unfortunately it's hard to get a good picture of two fifteen month olds.Either one of them is not looking, or one is moving and making the picture blury, or both.So I'm including a video as well because pictures just don't quite capture the rambunctious nature of this age. The first part is Julia calling a picture of a cucumber a banana, I just thought it was cute. Then it goes on to show Julia and Eli.

Missed Blogortunity

Melarie Julia and Robert went for a bike ride this morning to try out a new bike stroller that we got for Julia earlier this month. Melarie has been using it often as a jogging stroller but this was our first experiment as a bike stroller.

Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera or either of our cell phones along to take any pictures (hence the missed blogortunity). Take our word for it though, it was an experience. We started out by heading north to 4 Mile Run Trail (which is actually 7.5 miles long). The plan was to continue north west (uphill) along 4 mile run trail and then take a short loop before returning home. All together the ride was supposed to be 10 miles.


Here you can see our intended path. Since it was supposed to be rather warm today, we wanted to try and finish before the heat set in. We planned on waking up around 7:30 so that we were out the door before 8:00. Julia decided that she needed more sleep this morning so we did not start getting things ready until 8:15 and probably got out of the house around 9:00. In our rush, we forgot both of our phones, the GPS, and a camera.

We did not think much of it as we continued up 4 mile run trail. We took our first break after 5.5 miles as things were going smoothly and Julia was content in her little stroller. It is actually a two person stroller so it is quite spacious for some of her books, sippy cups, and a teddy bear.

After the first break we turned North east on the Curtis Trail. Everything was well marked so the lack of a phone / GPS had not become an issue yet. Julia was still content when we arrived at what we thought was our cuttoff trail that would take us back to 4 mile run trail. It was not marked like all of the other trails had been up to that point so we were not sure. He took the trail a short distance and then the trail turned into a city sidewalk with "Bike Trail" signs. This confused us so we decided to stop, turn around, and continue up the Curtis trail till we found the next junction and hope it was marked.

At this point we probably would have checked our phone or GPS to get a better idea of where we were. Had we done this, we would have discovered that the trail continued just on the opposite side of the road. To get a better idea, all we needed to do was cross the street and ride back down one block of city streets before finding the trail that would take us south, back to 4 mile run trail.


Well we did not do that, we simply continued up curtis trail for a couple miles before deciding that we had definetly missed our cutoff trail. We knew that we could continue on the Curtis trail until it became the Mt Vernon trail and follow a much larger loop all the way back to 4 mile run trail. We decided to do that because we were already so far up curtis trail that it would be about the same distance either way (back track vs. take the full loop). All though it was not our intention at the beginning of the day, nor on our maiden voyage with Dad pulling Julia along, we figured why not.


We continued along a the Potomac River and passed the Reagen airport before finally reconnecting with the 4 mile run trail and returning home. In total the 10 mile trip turned out to be almost 18 miles and took a little longer than we expected but we still got home before it really got hot, so all in all, mission accomplished.

O and by the way, Go Cougars (Picture is from a fellow poster on Cougarboard)

15 Months

Julia is 15 months now and she has changed so much in the past few months. She is much more like a toddler now than a baby. She has recently started to go over to her books, pull them off the shelf and flip through the pages and look at the pictures in the books, all without me! I think it's super cute. Luckily she started doing this just before our road trip last week, so it kept her pretty happy in the car flipping through the books. Her favorite book is Piper the Piglet because it is about a little piglet who has a new beachball, and Julia loves balls. She is always bringing the book over to me and making the sign for ball over and over.

She is also always so busy. It is fun to watch her with her toys when she is playing alone because she seems to have a plan to what she is doing. This toy goes here, this one goes there. Pit stop to play with her piano, then back to work arranging the toys. She loves the pool and playing outside. She'll take my hand and drag me to the door when she wants to go out. But she knows she needs her shoes before she can go out, so I'll stall by telling her to go find her shoes and she goes frantically searching for her shoes.

She'll give me a kiss and a hug if I ask her, but she will only give her daddy a kiss and hug if I tell her to. When she gives hugs she'll sometimes pat you on the back. She likes to give her dolls hugs and kisses too.

She will also show you where her ears, nose, and belly button are.

She loves dance and to be chased.

Julia likes to test limits too. She knows what it means when I tell her no, but she'll just hang around right out of reach of what I just told to stay away from. Or she'll just give you a smile like its a game and see how long it will take you to stop her.

Julia also is a chatterbox. She is always talking to me and to herself. She says mama and dadda a lot. She also knows doggy (which sounds a lot like dadda), socks, shoes, (more or less) and banana. She loves banana's now, which is kind of weird because she never used to. Now she sees a banana and goes "NANA, NANA, NANA!"

East Coast Beach Bums

Last week we went on vacation out to the Delaware, Virgina, and North Carolina coasts. We went to the beach a lot. We visited beaches in every state, and since it was so hot last week it was the perfect thing to be doing. We probably would have done more land activities but it was really just so hot I couldn't stand being out walking around for long. We did make a couple history pit stops:

The old and new Cape Henry lighthouses located in Fort Story (north of Virginia Beach). The old one was built in 1792, the new one in 1881. They are near the "first landing" spot, where the Virginia Company first landed in 1607 after crossing the Atlantic (and then they moved on up the bay and established Jamestown.)


We also stopped at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills (just outside of Kitty Hawk), North Carolina where the Wright brothers made the first successful airplane flight in 1903. Here are Julia and I at the spot where the plane took off from.
On the first successful day of flight they flew four times. There is a marker for how far each flight went. The first flight was crazy short, 12 seconds, but you can just barely see the last marker for the fourth flight of 59 seconds. They chose Kitty Hawk because of the good wind conditions and sand for soft landings. Grass has since been planted on the site to make it a little more stable.
Then we headed south to the very southern town in the Outer Banks, Ocracoke. We had to drive down to the end of the Outer Banks and then take a forty minute ferry out to Ocracoke. Ocracoke was interesting. It's this little tiny town whose only industry is tourism, so the town mostly consists of locally owned inns, rental houses, and restaurant. During the day everyone is gone from town because they are all at the beach! But since the town is so small and the entire island is beach the beaches still aren't very crowded.Julia absolutely loved the beach. She wasn't afraid of the water at all, she would run straight into the water and I would have to chase after her to keep her from being swept away! She also liked to sit farther up on the beach and feel the waves lap up around her and feel the water rush back. But, her favorite part was playing in the sand and destroying dad's sand castles.