Chance of a Lifetime

Today at work, a teacher friend offered up tickets to go to the Lighting of the National Christmas tree. I jumped at the chance and even pushed another teacher out of the way to take them. (OK not really...but I did feel bad for taking them until she told me she is going to the Inagural Ball)
Nate even rearranged part of a briefing to go! We knew it was going to be a tight squeeze to get to the White House by 4:30. I met Nate at his work and we RAN to the metro. When we got to the metro, I grabbed my wallet for my smartcard and took off. The escalator at Rosslyn is super high. Half way up, Nate says, "Can you hold Link? I'll grab E and we can walk it up." I put my wallet in my pocket. I am sure you can guess where this is going. I loose it on the train. We realize this a second after the train takes off. We decide to go on anyway. We run to the White House and make it!
These are secret service agents on top of Santa Workshop! Hmmmm does that make them Secret Santas?? The ceremony starts at 5:00, but they want you in your seats at 4:30. I brought tons of snacks for the kids. We sit down and I start dishing snacks out. By 5:00 we are out of snacks and the boys are already getting restless. For a full 45 minutes they squirm and whine and cry and pout and wiggle and you name it. I felt so bad for the people in front of us and behind us. About 2 minutes before the President speaks, Lincoln loses it. I mean FULL on cry...LOUD! Nate grabs him and takes him to the back. About a minute after Nate leaves Ethan looks over at me and says, "Let's go Mom. We can see the tree from the Metro." We had not gone through all of this to not see the tree. While Nate was in the back with Lincoln (screaming), a lady looks at Nate and says, "ahh...he must be a Democrat." It was great!! As soon as Bush was finished speaking, they asked that we all stay at our seats until he was gone. Nate came right over and stood at the end of the aisle. A lady a couple seats behind me says, "Your husband is behind you." hint..hint...get the heck out of here! :)
So, besides the lost wallet, screaming kids, and Bush speaking, it was a chance of a lifetime!

Daddy, do my trick.

Usually I put funny videos of the kids on, but this one is all Nate! AND...for the record...I did not put Ethan's outfit together. He spilled milk on his pants at dinner.

This is the life...

sitting in your underwear, eating rice krispy treats, and watching the Polar Express. It can't get much better than this.
I worked a full two hours before daycare called with a sick child! Lincoln got sick at school. As a friend of mine said, "your kids are sick all the time!" It's VIRGINIA!!!
By the way, Lincoln said, "Papa" today when looking at pictures. Of course, it's a day too late!

Trip Highlights

Our Friday/Saturday plans came to a drastic halt when everyone in our house became sick! Thank goodness we did so much Sunday-Thursday. We went to Target to get a few things tonight and went to a Chinese Restaurant for dinner. We figured since we started the trip with Chinese we would end it with Chinese.
These are a few pictures that didn't make the blog earlier in the week.Papa and the boys at the Metro station.
Nate and Dad at the FBI building, Monday.
Mandy and Dad at one of the Smithsonian Museums.
Dad and E at church last Sunday.We hope you have a Good/Uneventful flight home.

Change in Plans

Our plans to see Mount Vernon changed about 1:00 am when I heard Nate in the bathroom throwing up. This continued until 8:00 am. So, we all stayed in and played today. About 10:30 we took a walk down to the creek. The boys rode in the jogger while Papa pushed them. I warned him that there was a massive hill on the way back, but he volunteered to push them the whole way. Luckily, we took several breaks early on to let the kids throw rocks in the creek. After a quick lunch, the boys went down for a nap, and Nate and I headed up for a nap, too. I thought Dad was going to nap as well, but I learned when we woke up that he went back to the creek and did the walk again. I guess it was little easier without the kids and stroller. We decided to head out to Panera for some soup. I didn't bring my camera and Dad was charging his batteries, but here is a picture from our Chinese dinner Saturday night. That restaurant was great!

Happy Turkey Day

We hope you and your family had a Happy Thanksgiving Day. It was such a stress free day for us. We made sure that everything was super easy with exception of the Turkey. We knew that would be the main event and everything else was gravy...no pun intended. Our friends Shelley and Josh joined us for the day. Ethan did his usual flirting and Link warmed right up to both of them. Dinner was great! We ate too much.After naps, we took a quick bath and jumped into the car. We decided to do a moonlight tour of DC. It was the perfect night. Traffic was nonexistent. We were able to park on the street and get as many pictures as we wanted.



After the tour, Nate put the boys to bed and I headed off to see Twilight with Shelley. Nate and Dad watched every football game that was on today. Tomorrow we are off to Mount Vernon.

Wintery Wednesday

It was picture day! We got a late start this morning in the hopes of making it a relatively stress free day. Papa got some snuggle time in this morning.
We took a metro ride to the Capitol. The metro ride took us about an hour. Lincoln was a Momma's boy today (which is typical). Today he wanted to be in my lap all day!
The construction in front of the Capitol is for the inauguration. We walked from the Metro to the Capitol. We had to take everyone's coats off and snap quickly. The boys did very well considering the wind and cold! We left the Capitol and walked to the Old Post Office. They have a food court. I wish we had looked at metro map, but I think the cold made our brains shut down. We left after lunch and walked to the Museum of Natural History. We looked quickly at the Dinosaurs and headed home!
It was so cold today! Everyone was so bundled up today.
Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!