At the Baltimore Inner Harbor, and the Science Museum there, during
"Hurricane Weekend." Yes, that is Elizebeth on a Segway and Susie
on a bed of nails.
"Hurricane Weekend" we drove up and visited the Karney's in
Princeton, and then went to Long Beach Island for the day (obviously
after the hurricane had passed!)
We had cousin Steve and his wife Marcia and cousin Lisa and her daughter
Julie visit for a few days in early September. Lisa and Julie actually stayed
with us and that was very fun. They are extremely easy guests and
appreciative. Cris picked them all up from Reagan National Airport and
drove them around the city at night. That is quite beautiful with the
monuments etc. The first day, I went into the city with them and we
got their tickets to go to NYC for the weekend and met Cris for lunch.
We dashed into the Portrait Gallery for a second and then I ran home
to pick up the kids. Cris took them through the National Archives (the
Constitution and Declaration of Independence), the National Gallery of
Art, and sent them off to the Capitol before he went back to work.
Lisa and Julie had dinner with us. Friday, Cris took Julie and Lisa in
to the station very early and we had a nice weekend here at home.
Monday evening they all got back and I had cooked Chinese for everyone.
It was all good except the rice. Tuesday they toured around themselves.
Wednesday, we went to the National Cathedral which was just lovely.
Such a great idea, a building that everyone can use. I rode a bus
(first time in DC) through Georgetown and hopped off at Foggy Bottom
and ran home to pick up the kids, while the cousins headed for home.
The next weekend we did the Kennedy Center Open House. We took the metro to Foggy Bottom and the shuttle bus over, and got there early before too big of crowds. We got into the Symphony Hall and heard about 45 minutes of "popular" music (Copland, Richard Rogers, Grofe, and the like). Elizebeth admitted she liked the music, but found sitting and listening to it boring. We ate our little snack while listening to Latin dance band, then got upstairs in time for the girls and I to get into the ballet concert while Cris went to hear a famous zydeco fiddler "lecture." Music from the Gulf Coast was the theme, but I mostly took the family to hear the classical music! We then went to the experimental dance show about memories of Katrina, but snuck out part way through the boring show. By then, the crowds were totally there and one could hardly move. Cris and the girls bailed and left for Georgetown to look at the fashion stores, while I stayed to listen to the opera apprentices do scenes from Blackbeard's Castle. I then walked over to Georgetown and met them at Leopold's Kafe, an Austrian restaurant recommended by the Washingtonian.com. Another really good meal! We walked down M street on a Saturday night back to the Foggy Bottom metro, and home.
Cris bought a cheap world map the next day and stuck it up on the wall, and he and the girls are now putting stars up on every country we have "eaten at" here in D.C. At first I hated the messy map on my clean white walls, but Cris taped it down better and I do like seeing how the girls are figuring out the world geography. It is good they know when Lebanon and Ethiopia are.
Then at the end of the month Sean came to visit. I picked him up and brought him back to the townhouse to drop off his luggage. Then the girls and we took the metro and met Cris and went to an Ethiopian restaurant in the "Little Ethiopia" section near Howard University in the District. They have the spongy bread that you use for a fork and you pick up all of your food with your bread. That was a fun way to start. Friday, we went to the Holocaust museum--it was very intense and I'm glad I could do it with Sean. I was reading everything on the top floor but Sean then said we have to go faster, so we popped out and had lunch and then headed back in. it was not crowded so we could just get another ticket and go back in. The 2nd floor is the worst with some very intense pictures depicting the torture and the mass killing but then there is hope on the last floor as they tell the story of how many people worked to save the Jews and the hero stories. Our little friend, Selina, has always been interested in the holocaust so we will take her and her family when they come for Thanksgiving. We got the kids and had nachos and watched the first Grey's Anatomy on TV. Then the three adults went back into the city to see some improv called "Son of a Bush." It wasn't very good so that was disappointing, but it was a night out in the city.
Saturday, we headed up to Crownsville to the Maryland Renaissance Faire.
It was awesome. There were hundreds of booths selling food and crafts.
The kids bought crowns and had henna paintings drawn on hands or body
art on their arms. There were lots of free performances, and we saw real
jousting and a wonderfully funny Midsummer's Night Dream.
The kids really enjoyed it too and said maybe it wasn't so bad to be
dragged around by their Mother to all of these events. Lots of great
trash food to try.
By mid-afternoon the place was jammed and my claustrophobic husband was happy when we decided to leave. He drove us over for a quick tour of Annapolis. He was proud that without a map he remembered from Paul's graduation in 1988 how to get around.
We came back home and went to the Cheesecake Factory in Clarendon for
dinner. Sean had never eaten at one, and graciously treated us all.
We had lots of leftovers, the portions were so large! Sunday we went
to the new opera of Sophie's Choice at the Kennedy Center.
There wasn't much visual so Cris had a hard time keeping his
attention, but it was more melodic than the Tempest that we
saw this summer so I liked it and it is such a terrible/wonderful story.
Sean enjoyed it too. We came home and played Apples to Apples, a
new game that Cris' cousin introduced us to at the Barnes reunion in
August this summer. We had played it with the cousins at the reunion in
Portland, Cris bought a copy in Princeton to play with Jane and Charles
over hurricane weekend in early September, and we played again with
the cousins when they visited. It is a favorite for the girls now, too.
Monday, Sean and I went back into the city and got little tastes of the Air and Space Museum (saw a 3 D movie about the moon) and had lunch with Cris at the Native American cafeteria. Then we popped into the Natural History museum to see the elephant and the dinosaurs and then back to get the kids. E had a meltdown about her Algebra that night so we didn't get to Hand and Foot but Sean did some e-mail and we just had leftovers for dinner all watching a DVD together, "Zathura".
Tuesday we went to Tyson's Corner Mall (the girl's mall) and I bought a new dress and some black cords. We rushed back to let the Comcast guy in to give us another DVR setup, had a rather bad Chinese lunch at a local place, and I took him back out to Dulles. He was awfully early but a very good sport about it. Sean has been on the board of his condo association and they have had some really bad things like leaking of all the buildings from the monsoons (it's raining in Santa Fe finally--our $10,000 new roof is working, yea!) and so it has been very stressful. His job continues to be more and more pressure so hope Sean's boss will finally get off his patubee and hire another person. Anyway, Sean really needed a break and I think we did just about the right amount of rest and fun. it was so wonderful to have him here. We really miss not having him in our daily lives.
We had a very fun day yesterday. Cris took Elizebeth and I to the Library of Congress to look at history of fashion books. (E wants to become a famous fashion designer). It was very fun. The building (the old Jefferson Library building) is just amazing and the reading room, octagon in shape, is so beautiful. We had to each fill out forms and have a special library card made with our picture on it to get access. E was to be excluded as you have to be 18. However, when we got to the reading room, Cris politely asked if his daughter could accompany him and they let her right in. Cris found 4 books to ask for and we went to Union Station to have lunch while they go to one of the warehouses and bring it in. Union Station at Columbus Circle is quite beautiful and I felt like we hadn't done it justice when our Oregonian cousins were here visiting and we went there for tickets to New York on Amtrak. After lunch, I headed down to the mall to see the National Book Festival hosted by Laura Bush. They had over 70 authors there to sign their books or to give lectures. I didn't get to buy a book and do the whole routine because by then there were huge lines. (We are learning to go early in this town -- go early to the Renaissance Fair, go early to the Kennedy Center open house, even early to the Library of Congress: Cris said there were lines to get in in the afternoon.) However, it was thrilling to walk around and realize all of these people were here because they love to read. We saw E's English teacher. Cris and I thought we had never seen the Smithsonian Metro Station so crowded. We did manage to find each other there using our cell phones (Verizon works well underground at the stations at least). They picked me up on their way home, hopping off the train, waving at me, and then I hopped on their metro as they went sailing by. Today, Cris ordered copies of the two best books they found, so we'll see if this really interests and excites Elizebeth.
When we got back, we picked up Susie (she had practiced her flute, worked on her homework and done chores for us while we were gone -- aren't almost adult children wonderful?) and we were off to buy bikes. We ended up getting E a brand new bike (it's orange) and Susie a slightly used bike but bigger and better (with shocks on the front). Then came helmets and bike locks, so quite an investment. I have found that I am really enjoying riding again with all of the wonderful bike paths around here to ride on. Also, try to ride to our local library -- there are some wonderfully puff puff hills to go up and down on to get there. After we got home, Cris helped Susie scoot around with her seat low and pedals off (somehow she never learned on our hard hill at home) and E and I rode for about an hour. Cris and I did a little ride this morning in the other direction, so I know how to ride to Ballston and beyond now.
That evening, we had an errand to run in Fairfax and ran into traffic on I-66. We are driving away from DC and it's 5:30 PM on a Saturday. Where are all of these people going? Thank goodness for the metro. And we have a great map of Northern Virginia now, and Cris navigated us off the freeway which we should have avoided in the first place. After the errand, we stopped at a restaurant called Woodlands in a little strip mall. You would never go there except the Washingtonian.com had again recommended this restaurant that serves vegetarian food from india. My favorite was a paper thin Paratha (Cris thinks it was called Dorsai). This is a whole wheat dread that is literally paper thin and was rolled into a foot and a half long cone and had potatoes and onions inside that you could scoop up with this bread and it was the most exquisite taste. They also had many of the traditional dishes (all vegetarian) that we have eaten before but this was a new food which is always fun. And the Tandoori Paneer Tikka was a hit with the kids. Definitely the best way to eat cauliflower.
Today I am taking E to Middle C Rock and Roll school of music in the city. She doesn't want to go at all but I am trying one last thing before I give up on her piano lessons. How can you explain to a child that she will regret giving up piano the rest of her life -- you point out Annie and Dorothy and Father Andrew and Aunt Frankie and the millions of hours of pleasure they have brought people, but when you're 12, it doesn't mean anything. This teacher is a jazz player. He only teaches on Sunday afternoons so it would be difficult to sustain but we'll see.