President's Day Weekend

We are really going to miss my brother and sister-in-law when they move. It is so nice to have family close by to spend time with and to visit on long weekends, who live somewhere with lots of great places to visit, and who even watch our kids so we can have a mini get away while we are visiting.

With no school for B on Friday and only a half day of school for the girls, which we decided they could miss, we loaded up Thursday night and drove to D.C.

Friday morning while my brother and sister-in-law were working, we headed in to D.C. with the kids, to check more things off of our D.C. "to do" list. We started with a stop at the White House visitor center followed by a tour of the White house. It is a self-guided tour so you get to walk at your own pace, but there are people in every room that can answer questions you might have.

Sorry, no pictures...you can't take cameras into the White House. (Here is a link to an online tour though where you can see pictures of what we saw. ) We entered the White House on the ground floor, the level the president enters on if he flies in on a helicopter that lands on the South Lawn. We only saw a few rooms. Dividers were set up about 1/3 of the way down the hallway since the opposite end of the hallway is where the kitchen is as well as the exit that takes you over to the West Wing. We did get to look into the China Room, the Vermeil Room, and the Library. There was also a display of several of the China sets in a hutch in the hallway. I enjoyed getting to look at the China.

Next we climbed some stairs arriving on the 1st floor at the end of the cross hall. We walked through the East Room (which we learned Theodore Roosevelt's Children used as a roller skating rink), then through the green room, the blue room, and the red room. We saw beautiful art work and furniture and enjoyed the view out of the blue room windows. They just roll the carpet out of the way and move some of the furniture so you can walk right through the rooms. (You can see that in the virtual tour picture of the red room.) The kids loved seeing the beautiful silk on the walls. They thought it was cool that instead of painting the wall, they put fabric on the wall. We would have seen the dining room but it was under renovation. Then it was back out into the cross hall and we were now at the other end. The cross hall is that long hallway with the red carpet runner on the floor, that you will often see pictures of the President walking down. In the middle of the cross hall on the north side is the portico and entrance. We got to see the stairs that the President and guests use when they come down for State Dinners and are formally announced. (You can see the same thing in the virtual picture of the north portico.) It was fun to get to see these famous spaces in person. Now when we see them on T.V. we will have a greater appreciation for what we are seeing.

After we finished up at the White House we hurried back to the car and got our cameras so we could take pictures the rest of the day. We stopped back at the White House to take a couple of pictures of the north side. (We'd taken pictures of the South side on our last D.C. trip.)

Then we walked the whole length of Pennsylania Ave. from the White House to the Capitol Building. That was a hike. We stopped mid way to have lunch at our favorite lunch spot, the cafe in the basement of the National Archives.

On our walk, we passed this statue that P found fascinating and wanted her picture take in front of.

Finally we made it to the capitol building. Originally we were to have a guided tour by staff from our Representative's office but something came up last minute so they had to send us on the general tour. We still got to see some pretty interesting things though.

Each state has been invited to send two statues to the capitol building. Many of these statues are in the Rotunda and in the visitor's center. Others are scattered throughout the capitol building. While we were in the visitor's center, waiting for our tour to begin, we saw one of Alabama's statues...Helen Keller. I had to take a picture since I was fascinated by Helen Keller when I was a child.

The Rotunda was amazing. There was so much to see in that beautiful space, but we were kind of hurried through everywhere. We did learn that if the Statue of Liberty was placed in the center of the Rotunda, she wouldn't even reach the top. That is how tall the space is.

We also saw the old House Chamber ...a beautiful room containing several statues from the states.

Scattered around the floor are plaques. Each plaque marks the desk location of a former representative who later became president. We found Lincoln's plaque.

Then, in the basement we got to see the compass rose that marks the center of D.C. It is from this point that the 4 avenues begin, dividing D.C. into 4 sections.

Our last stop was back in the Visitor's Center where we had fun quizzing ourselves on government facts and capitol building trivia. P was fascinated by the size of "Freedom", the statue that stands on the dome of the capitol building. She wanted her picture taken next to the life size replica so that you could see how big it really is.

After a long day and lots of walking, we returned to my brother's place for dinner. Then, we left the kids and R and I headed off for some couple time. Usually we would have filled Saturday with a ton of our own sight seeing but I was so tired, we spent half the day sleeping. We finally made it back into D.C. to visit some of the Art Museum and eat some yummy Mexican food for dinner, then walk around a shopping mall.

Meanwhile, the kids got to watch a movie in the Apartment Building's movie theater (a tradition for when they stay with Uncle B and Aunt L...complete with a bag of their favorite candy, thanks to Aunt L.) The next morning they played the Farming Game, also one of their favorite things to do with Uncle B. Then they headed out for a picnic at Gravely Point where they had great views of planes coming in to land. C took these pictures and she said she didn't even zoom, this is how close the planes were. She also said it was really loud.

They also bowled, got in a car accident (they were rear ended but everyone seems fine), and then spent the evening playing Guitar Hero. Uncle B and Aunt L know how to treat their nieces and nephew to a good time.

We all met back up on Sunday to spend the day together before we headed home Monday morning. Thanks brother and sister-in-law for a wonderful weekend!

The Evacuation Story

Okay, so when I talked to Mom yesterday and she said to do a blog post about this, I told her there wasn't much of a story to tell. That was at about 1:45 yesterday afternoon. By the time we had everyone in bed at 9:00 last night, there was a story. So here goes...sorry no pictures...but that is actually a good thing.

Because we live at a military installation that used to once be a Revolutionary War fort, all kinds of things have happened around here over the years. Today, when the cadets blow things up, they do so several miles away from here. (Close enough that in the summer it sometimes still sounds like we are under attack and is a fun little reminder of the unique place in which we live, but far enough away that it presents no danger to our lives.) But, at one time, the area where we live used to be a range. Consequently, last summer there was a big "to do". After several years of studying the land, etc. etc. an unexploded ordnance team came and tromped all over a huge area on our side of post, looking for unexploded ordnance. There were precautionary evacuations as well as evacuations when they actually found some things. Most stuff was small, removed from the area, and detonated somewhere else.

Now, 6 months later, there is an expansion happening over at the middle school as well as at the hospital. The middle school has already been evacuated once due to them finding something during the excavations. Currently, they have been digging up the parking lot just above our back yard. Yesterday at 11am they found something there.

I drove up to my house at 11:05 with a trunk full of groceries to find an MP knocking at my back door. I was told that they'd found an unexploded ordnance and that we had to evacuate. He couldn't tell me how we would have to be evacuated. They were flying in a team from Ft. Drum to dispose of the ordnance. At the time, it was just our row of houses being evacuated. So, I drove around to my neighbor's and put stuff in her fridge and freezer. About 45 minutes later the MPs were knocking on her door because they now needed to evacuate a larger area. By this time they could tell us that they thought it would be about 6pm before we could return to our houses.

At this time, all I was really worried about was the inconvenience. I had gotten up yesterday with a long list of things I needed to get done, was already worried about being able to finish it all and now realized that I was going to spend my whole day just "hanging out". I was frustrated but not worried about our safety.

R and I went out to lunch since we couldn't go home and then I wandered around the PX for an hour before I had to start collecting kids from the school bus and school. Then it was off to the band building to hang out in the commons room. Meanwhile, some friends from church invited us for dinner so we went over there at 5:30. And this is when the story gets interesting.

On the way to our friend's house I stopped at one of the road blocks to talk to the MP stationed there and get an update. All he could tell me was that the team was still in route and they were now estimating that it would be 7:30 before we could get back into our house.

Shortly after arriving at our friends' house, my friend got a phone call from her neighbor who was in the hospital because she had just had a baby. They evacuated everyone from the hospital that they could, and then moved all of the patients to the far corner which is actually outside of the evacuation radius. Since she was still in the hospital, she had heard people talking outside of her door. They were saying that the bomb was so huge that it was going to have to be exploded in place and that the band housing was going to lose all of their windows. That was not good news.

For the next two hours we had dinner and sat around waiting to hear/feel an explosion but never did. At 7:30 we got a call that all was clear and we came home to find our windows and everything still in tact.

Then at 8:30 I got another call from my friend who had again spoken to her friend in the hospital. According to one of the security people that her friend had spoken with who was on duty in the morning when it was found, and then had just come back on duty that evening, the bomb was 18 inches in diameter and over 2 feet long and weighed around 25o pounds. (We had heard early in the day that it was 8 inches in diameter and over 150 pounds.) The rumor about them exploding it in place was the hospital staff speculating because it was so large, they couldn't fathom that it would be able to be moved. But, EOD are professionals and when they showed up they didn't seem phased at all my its size and where able to take it and explode it out at one of the ranges (far from post.) At which point they found that it was filled with a bunch of metal pellets, like ball bearings.

That news was very unsettling. I went to bed last night very grateful to be alive with my house still standing and my windows in tact. If all of the jack hammering they had been doing up there would have exploded that while I was sitting at my computer, I would not be writing to tell about it, my windows would all be blown out and part of my house might not be standing.

Now, prayers for the safety of our family have taken on a little different urgency. I wonder how many more things will be found in my back yard, or over at the middle school over the next couple years of these construction projects. Today, I am grateful that everyone was safe. I pray that we continue to be that way.

Before, After, and After

By: C.

(it's not long!! :-) )

Before...This is me with long hair!!

After......
This is me with my hair cut by my grandma J. and I donated it!!

( We are almost to the end DON'T FALL ASLEEP!!!!! )


After...After...This is me WITHOUT braces, but those are my retainers!!!!!!


( I told you it wouldn't be long!!, wait are you ASLEEP!!! )

Thank you for all those who read my blog
THE END

Christmas Vacation in pictures

We decorated cookies.
We sang Christmas carols.
We got to dog-sit Hinckley
Christmas day the weather was cold and windy.
Everyone received wonderful gifts.
B let everyone take a turn with his gift.

We danced.
And danced.
And tried to find hidden pictures.
It was a wonderful vacation!!!

Finished

We spent our Saturday after Thanksgiving taking our last hike so that B could complete his hiking merit badge. The weather was perfect, a little overcast, and not too cold.

For this hike we drove down to the Bear Mountain State Park and set out on one of the many trails that cross through the park. Our destination was just 1 and 3/4 miles and 1100 feet of elevation gain away, but in order to get the mileage B needed, we took the "scenic" route. This was probably the toughest hike we've done. Not only was our destination 1100 feet above where we started, but we had to go up and down a couple of other hills to get there so we climbed a lot more than 1100 feet.

We discovered that the great thing about hiking in the fall is that you can see a lot more without the leaves on the trees. The bad thing about the leaves not being on the trees is that they are all on the ground and that made portions of the trail a little more dangerous than normal. We had to be extra careful not to slip on rocks and we had to watch out that when we stepped on hidden rocks, we didn't twist an ankle.

On this hike, we learned the value of carrying extra socks (we always do) because both C and P got wet feet. Many sections of the trail were muddy and swampy due to the large amounts of rain we had received earlier in the week. In some cases the trail was a small stream and we had to pick our away along the sides and back and forth across it.

Here are the kids taking a break.

Our destination was well worth the effort. Although it was a bit hazy, we could still see NYC from the top of the mountain. P had the good idea to bring our binoculars on this hike and with them, we could even pick out the Empire state building.


We also climbed the tower that now stands where a fire tower used to be. Inside the tower are pictures and history of the park. We didn't take the time to really look at them or read them since we had to keep hurrying along so that we could get finished with the hike. But, since you can actually drive all the way to the tower, we can do that another time with very little effort.

There is also a very beautiful and relatively flat 1.3 mile loop at the top that will be beautiful when the bushes start blooming in the spring. While we were hiking this loop, we got a great view north. The flat, cleared area with little houses on the top of a hill in this picture, is the new housing area that was built here.

Our route down was a newly restored section of the Appalachian Trail. It was pretty steep and incorporated many stone steps to help combat erosion. We gave C the job of counting the steps as we went down. After a 1.7 mile descent, she told us that we had gone down over 670 stairs. (Not all of the trail was steps.) There were even complete stairwells in portions of the trail. Here is P in one of them.

If you want to read more information about this portion of the trail, click here.

With the leaves off of the trees, there were lots of views that would have been obstructed other times during the year. We had several views of the bridge and river as we came down the mountain.

The required hikes for the merit badge have been a little bit long and strenuous for the shorter legged people in our family. So, we kept telling the kids that as soon as we are done with the required hikes, that then we would take shorter hikes and just hike for fun.

Our hike on Saturday ended with this wonderful comment by P. "Now can we hike for fun?"

I thought we had already been having fun! :-)

Almost Forgotten Halloween

Clearly life has been busy. It wasn't until I was uploading photos from our most recent hike (post to come later this week) that I realized that I hadn't upload, and therefore hadn't blogged about, our Halloween.

So, here are a few pictures from our Halloween activities.

Of course, we carved pumpkins. B still hates to take the seeds and "goop" out of the inside, but loves to do the actual carving.

C doesn't mind the goop so much and also loves getting to carve.

Thanks to all of the great pumpkin carving tools, the process is safe and easy enough that even P can carve a pumpkin. Hers was her own design.

Here are our glowing pumpkins.

P got to dress up twice for Halloween. First as a cowgirl for her class's Fall celebration and Hoe Down. Here she is demonstrating her hat swinging "Yee Ha" (minus the hat that was at school).

To go trick-or-treating, P dressed up as a mouse using parts of her own items and the ears from C's long ago dance costume. The orange shirt underneath was not part of her costume...just an extra layer to keep her warm as this year it was a little chilly on Halloween night.

C was a robot of the Tron variety. Being her usual, creative self, she came up with the idea all on her own and her costume turned out pretty cool.
Here she is with the lights out.

B chose not to dress up this year. Instead, he volunteered to man the door and pass out candy. After observing R do this job the last few years, he realized that this was the best way to get candy with very little work. So, he sat outside and visited with his friend until they got too cold, and then they came inside and played video games, answered the door, and had all of the candy they wanted to eat, without having to walk anywhere to get it. (I should have taken a picture. Oh, well.)

All in all, it was a good holiday!