Oops

Somehow I let WAY too much time go by since I last posted!! So here's an update on a few things. (this post is kinda long, as you can imagine! but the bulk of it is about our trip, so you can get the low down by just reading the bullets if that's all you've got time for.)

- John and I just began a weight loss challenge with John's family. I am excited about it and am hoping that the goals I've set will actually convert over to some less poundage!

- Joseph has TWO little bottom teeth! One is about halfway up and the other has just barely broken through.

- John celebrated his 28th birthday on July 26th!! We stayed at a cabin in Fairview for the weekend with some more of our family.

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- We sold our piano! Oh wait, I forgot to tell you that we bought one. Well, we actually bought two! We bought one that needed a lot of fixing up on craigslist for about $200. Then John kept looking at the pianos that were for sale and he saw a deal he couldn't pass up! It was this gorgeous piano and it was only $50!

We jumped on that deal and were luckily the first ones to it. It needed some minimal work done on it: a little glue and clamping to the veneer on the side, an antique oil rub, and then we paid for it to be brought to pitch and tuned. The piano was built in 1899. It was such a beautiful piano! We brought it in the house and used it for a few months. Great, but then we had two pianos! We had to decide which one to keep and it was a really hard decision. The 1899 piano was so beautiful, but the other piano, built in 1920, did have a slightly better sound quality.

We needed some extra cash and since the 1899 one was ready to be sold, we decided to part with it. We sold it quickly on craigslist. Sale price: $675!! John is still working on finishing up the other piano. He's really made huge improvements to it, and it is going to be a really nice piano to have. I'm excited. I'll post pictures (before & after) of that one when he's finished with it.

- Joseph is 9 months old now! He isn't crawling or walking yet and doesn't even seem interested in it right now either, but I am totally okay with that! He is still as happy as ever. Loves to play, jump, smile, laugh and make lots of cute noises.

- John and I celebrated 5 years since this day

by taking a trip here.

And we left Joseph with his Humphries grandparents for 6 days!!! It was a great trip. We were able to see and do a lot of things. We took a red-eye flight out there, and didn't sleep at all before spending our entire first day in D.C. And since Joseph was sick with pneumonia a few days before we left, we both were going on around 8-10 hours of sleep in three days!

Our first day we went to the National Zoo. It was all right, but I was disappointed a little. I didn't see any rhinos, cheetahs or giraffes. And we couldn't see the giant pandas either because they were inside, staying out of the heat. Not that I blame them. There was a cute little baby gorilla with it's mom that was really awesome to watch though.

We also went to the Holocaust Museum that day. We weren't able to stay as long as we would have liked there, because John started feeling ill and both of us were really exhausted anyway, but we were able to see most of the main exhibit there. It was so ... what word can I really use to describe it? amazing? horrifying? touching? heart-wrenching? solemn? It was one of our favorite places we visited.

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This was a section of the museum where they had countless shoes of the Holocaust victims. I cried to think of all the stories that went along with each of those shoes.

Day two we went to the Smithsonian of Natural History, which was incredible.

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Our favorite part was the rock, mineral and gem section. The whole museum is simply amazing! What overwhelms me is the vast amount of knowledge that is out there! Just walking around and looking at different things made me so excited that I have eternity to spend learning because there is so much I want to learn about!

Next we went to the Smithsonian of Air and Space.

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That particular museum felt so familiar to me because I remember going there many times as a child. We enjoyed an exhibit with hands on demonstrations on "how things fly." We watched a show about black holes at the planetarium on their dome screen which was really cool. (John was mad at himself because he kept falling asleep! He said, "it's just not a good idea to lay me back in a chair while watching a movie!") And I was sure to take a picture of the original airplane that the Wright brothers flew for my little brother McKay, who wants to be a pilot. He loves the Wright brothers!

Our last sightseeing adventure that day was to take an elevator up 500 floors to the very top of the Washington monument.

It was really neat to see the city at night from that high up. I could even see the temple a ways off behind the the White House. Before our tour of the monument, the skies opened up and poured down on us.

We sat at the base of the west side of the monument while we waited out the rain and amazingly we stayed dry, even though there was no roof covering us! We played a song game with each other and also laughed at how funny it would be to go up next to someone taking a picture of their family and take a picture of their family too with our camera.

Day three we rented a car. (We had been using the public transportation to get around before: a shuttle from our hotel in Sterling, Virginia to the Dulles airport, then about a 50 minute ride on the metrobus to get into D.C., and then the metrorail to the mall.) We drove out to the Washington D.C. temple (which is one of my favorite temples, since it is the first one that I ever got to visit & do work in) and did an endowment session there. This was also another of our favorite things we did on our trip. It was such a beautiful temple!

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We were originally going to do a hike at Great Falls Park after going to the temple, but that didn't happen for two reasons. One, we were very tired and my feet especially hurt. Two, it was absolutely pouring rain for the entire day. So, after the temple we drove to the historic town of Alexandria, Virginia to spend the evening there. We ate dinner at a little French cafe and then went on a little walking ghost tour of the town.

Our guide told us ghost stories that were all taken from actual old newspaper articles, police reports from the late 1770s. The rain had basically stopped by then. That was a fun little tour. And John made me about jump out of my skin by scaring me when we were walking past the site where one of the ghosts makes a yearly appearance on our way back to our car!

Day four, Sunday, we managed to find our way to a ward and went to Sacrament meeting. We then took about a two hour drive south and to Charlottesville, Virginia to visit Monticello, the home that Thomas Jefferson built. I really enjoyed that tour a lot. I loved Jefferson's architecture! My favorites were the octagon shaped guest room and the alcove beds in the walls.

Day five, we returned our car and then took the bus out to D.C. for the last time. We went on a tour of the state Capitol building.

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I wish we could have heard our tour guide better and that there weren't so many other people on tour, but c'est la vie. It was a beautiful building with lots of large paintings and statues.

We happened to notice a statue of a familiar looking man in the statutory hall. Do you recognize Brother Brigham over there in the corner?

Next we went over to the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress for a tour of one of the most spectacular buildings that I've ever seen.

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I absolutely was in love with it. There were beautiful tile mosaics celebrating knowledge and learning and family.

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And all of the marble carvings were really neat.

There were these amazing quotes painted on the wall circling the entire building up near the ceiling that were so great! They were all about books, learning, knowledge & wisdom. And from what we were able to see looking into the main reading room from behind a glass pane was simply amazing. There were some amazing quotes on the wall in that room too.

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We ate lunch at the cafeteria in the Adams building of the Library of Congress and then went to the Smithsonian Museum of Art.

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There were some really beautiful paintings there. I love the feeling of an art museum. It is quiet, peaceful and reflective.

This picture of the girl with a hoop by Renoir reminds me a lot of my childhood because there was a copy of it hanging in the bedroom I shared with my sister.

After the museum we took a long walk down to where we could see the White House. We stopped for long enough to snap a picture and then we were on our way again.

You see, when we had visited the Natural History museum, I noticed they were showing Harry Potter 6 on their IMAX screen and I swore I saw a showing at 4:30 & 7:30 for it. So as we were walking I suggested we go see the movie after we went to see the Lincoln monument. Watching the time, we knew we had to hurry, hence the stop, snap, and go at the White House.

Anyway, it took a lot longer than we anticipated to walk to the Lincoln Memorial. We made it, took a few pictures there, and then turned around and started booking it back down to the Natural History museum.

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I was jogging for almost half the way so we could get there in time for the movie to start. Well, we finally made it to the museum just barely after 4:30, hoping they'd still let us in to see the show, but when we looked at the times listed for the IMAX, it turns out there's only ONE showing at 7:30. So we found a bench and sat there for a while. It took about twenty minutes for my face to return to it's normal color.

We weren't going to wait for the show at 7:30 because we'd still have to take the bus back to the airport after that and the shuttle from the airport to our hotel stopped running at 10 and we didn't want to pay for a taxi. So after resting, we decided to head back to our hotel and go out to dinner instead of the movie. I wish we had known there wasn't a 4:30 showing because I would have liked to take some more time to just leisurely stroll through the park where all of the monuments are instead of running to see one and then running outta there. Oh well. At least we were able to get a good night's rest before our full day of traveling back home.

And as for being back home and seeing our little baby Joseph? It was a very sweet reunion!!!