Weekend Bliss. Wish I'd brought a camera.

Yesterday morning was slow. 9 a.m. wakeup slow. Ooze into the living room slow. Get out the door at noon slow, when the plan had been a 10 a.m. departure slow.

The goal was to brighten up Ian's office. His awards and plaques have been cluttering up hunkering down in the living room since we unpacked the boxes, and it was time to give them a new home in their rightful place. The walls already had nails from its last occupant so within minutes his little corner was decked out.
Ten minutes in an empty office building is plenty. We walked down to the Lincoln Memorial since Katherine claimed she'd never been. The boys remembered it right off from "National Treasure." We read through the Gettysburg address and tried to avoid the small throng of tourists. It wasn't as bad as a summer Saturday would have been, not by far. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is right near by, so we followed the wall (made of granite brought from Bangalore, India) west to east towards the Washington Monument. There are laminated books at either end of the memorial to check for a particular name out of the 58,261 listed and its location. Rebecca asked if there were women on the Wall, and indeed there are 8 of them, all nurses. According to the book, there are no Beaulieus listed, and about 8 Hoppers, though none from Indiana or Ohio.
We continued our walk to the Declaration of Independence Memorial, an island just past The Wall.

Silly me still can't find the charger for the portable Canon camera, and didn't bring the big camera, or any camera for that matter, so the junky little cell phone had to fill in. Being a cool gray day, the phone camera didn't do a good job so I don't have images of the signatures of all the Declaration signers. Am I the only one who didn't know Josiah Bartlett was a real person?
The boys ran around and got quite muddy. They couldn't help it, the ground was water logged from the past week of rain, and what little boy can resist running through all those open green fields? Not mine. I'm really hoping the weather forecast is right and this coming weekend will be hovering around 60 and partly sunny. I want to go back downtown while the temperature holds at perfect and the tourists are minimal. Jonathon has a field trip to the Natural History Museum next month, so we'll skip that one, but what to choose instead? American History and Air & Space are good and our normal spots, but there are so many more. Suggestions? What has a great exhibit right now?
I wanted to stay longer, but we had kids to pick up. Some friends from Chennai are in town for language training, the girl is in 8th grade and the boy is in 4th, so it's a perfect match for us. They came to the house for a sleepover. These two are good kids and never a problem so it's easy on all of us. The girls did a little Rock Band while the boys played soccer outside, before I took the girls to the ice rink for a couple hours of freezin'-the-butt-off fun. The Express was playing a game so for a while I got free ice hockey adrenaline. It was better than the Caps game on TV where they lost brilliantly to the NJ Devils. Oh well. I figure if we can't go see an actual Caps game (the 40% off coupons from the Entertainment book aren't being accepted) then perhaps local junior league can fill the gap? OK, probably not, but it's still fun to watch. Speaking of the Entertainment book, there was a B1G1 for the ice rink too. Has the address on it and everything. But the rink changed hands last year and even though the coupon is in the book, with the rink's address right there, they wouldn't honor it. I'm wondering as to the value of this book when items are outdated the day you buy it and/or aren't accepted. The Caps reduced tickets were a huge draw to even buy the book.
The girls were up way too late, the boys were up too late too, but that doesn't stop Sunday morning from rolling around. Everyone made it to church and Rel Ed, followed by a quick stop at the farmer's market and some afternoon football, on TV for Ian and outside for the boys. Katherine, Rebecca and Meghan visited some friends in the neighborhood and ended up bringing another kid, Kevin, back to the house. It was Rock Band time again, the windows were open, the sun was shining, multicolored leaves blanketed the lawn. I wanted to freeze that afternoon, but couldn't figure out how. Our sleepover kids were picked up, we shooed Kevin back to his house, Katherine plunked down with her long-delayed homework (enough of it that she missed choir practice at church), pizza came and was eaten, kids were ushered off to bed and the adults settled in to watch the season 2 finale of "True Blood." No spoilers here, just in case you haven't seen it yet. The season seemed to drag a bit in the last 3-4 episodes but the finale was a pretty good wrap-up with plenty left open for season 3.
Things are good. Things are really good.