Our bestest friends, Austyn and Dustin, came and stayed with us this past weekend. We had so much fun! We loved hanging out and reminiscing about the good ol' days, fung wah, mumufuku, and how Tyson used to not like Dustin. haha. We did so much while they were here. I don't know about them, but we are still recooping after all the walking and sight seeing! Here's what we did:

Friday:
Supreme Court Building
The Capitol
Air and Space Museum
Museum of Natural History
Musueum of Engraving and Printing
Washington Momument
Lincoln Memorial
World War II Memorial

Saturday:
Arlington National Cemetery
Iwo Jima

The Holocaust Museum (don't get there at 4:05pm - we didn't get to see much)

PF Chang's
The Eye and Indiana Jones


Sunday:
The White House
Vietnam Memorial
Korean War Memorial

Striking a pose - don't ask me what I'm doing in this picture, but aren't we cute???

The boys doing their "blood" sign - aren't they cool???

Can't wait to see you guys again - I took this picture without you knowing - it's so dang cute! Thanks for the awesome weekend!

FDR and Jefferson

This week we went and saw the Jefferson Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It was such a pretty walk, right along the water. Both memorials were a lot bigger than I thought they would be.

This picture is actually taken at the George Mason Memorial

Thomas Jefferson Memorial

The view from the memorial

*Highlight of the day: When Gina was taking the above picture, a group of Asians, at least 15 of them came by and started gawking at Landon while he was in the stroller. They were smiling, laughing and even taking his picture! Landon was loving it, smiling and laughing right back. We came over and they started doing the same to Lexi and Jace. Lexi and Jace on the other hand were not very animated and didn't think it was as funny as Landon did. But, every one of them wanted a picture with the cute little American kids (and I was in some too). They were there probably a good 10 min. and Gina and I were just laughing the whole time. Pretty funny!

FDR memorial - it's basically a lot of waterfalls the the picture below

D.C. temple

Today after church we went with the sister missionaries, Ee Ming, and Richard to the temple. Sooooo pretty! While the missionaries, Ee Ming, and Richard were inside the visitor's center doing a tour, we walked around the temple grounds with the kids and took pictures.

Fish hook

Are my eyes big?

Lexi and Richard - Richard is really missing his family right now! We miss you too Mcrae!

Richard, Ee Ming, Lexi, Miche, Jace, Tyson

Isn't it gorgeous!!!

The Capitol

Gina and I decided to go tour the Capitol this past week. We knew we had to get tickets for the tour and we had heard that the tickets go pretty fast. So, we got there around 9:45am and we didn't get tickets until 3:00! So we walked around, had lunch, and saw some more sights.

The boys

These two (above and below) were taken outside of "The Castle" - the information center

A statue in the American Art Museum - Lexi thought it was pretty cool

Picaso painting (I think this picture is upside down...can you tell???)

A picture with ALL of us!

Teach em' young

The other day I changed Jace's diaper and stuck the dirty one next to me. Without telling him to do anything with it, he just picked it up and put it in the garbage. One less thing I have to do I guess!




The other day it was raining outside and so we stayed inside and watched movies. I just thought this was a cute picture of the kids sitting and eating their snacks...so calmly. It's very rare that Jace will just sit there and focus on something for very long...it was kind of nice!

We again had another eventful week...there's SO much to do here!!! We started off the week going to the pool a few times and going to a little spray park near by. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me. The kids didn't really like the spray park as much as the pool so it was a lot of watching other kids for them. We met up with Gina and Landon and went to the Botanic Garden Conservatory which was really neat.

If you can see the name of this plant was "Pink Princess" so of course had to get a pic with Lexi next to it.

They had a little play area for the kids where they could dig in the dirt and plant a flower. They had this little play house too that we couldn't get Lexi out of!

Landon, Lexi, and Jace

We then headed over to the Native American Museum, which is an awesome looking building! It is very different from all the other museums in that area. But of course, I didn't take a pic of just the building, but this picture was taken outside.
Saturday we got to meet up with my uncle and cousins and we went to the National Spy Museum! Way cool! I would tell you all about it, but if I did, I'd have to kill you...haha. They didn't allow photography inside, but there was a lot of neat things! You should check it out sometime!

Here's us with the cousins: Jace, Tyson, Michelle, Tyler, Ashley, Katie, and Brian

Book Tag

Ok so I've been tagged!

Book TagDirections:

1. Get the nearest book to you, or one you're reading that contains over 123 pages.
2. Go to the 123 page
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence
5. Tag five peopleBook

Book: Timeless Waltz by Anita Stansfield

Sentence: "Maybe I should wise up and marry her."

I'm actually not that far into this book yet...that sentence just gave everything away! Ok, not really. I tag Kim, Kaydee, Austyn, Andi, Melanie, Kylene, Gina, and...Scoobie (haha)

Update on Allison

A lot of people have been asking me how Allison is doing so I'd thought I'd give a little update. Allison has improved a ton since her little stroke last week. Last Friday she was admitted to a rehabilitation center in Spokane to start physical therapy. They let her leave for 24 hours so she could make it to her high school graduation. I was sad we couldn't be there, but heard it was a very touching celebration. Since she's been in physical therapy, she's walking better and called me the other day to tell me that she lifted her hand to give my dad a high 5...it was weak, but she did it! She will be at the rehab place, pretty much until she's better...her goal was to be there only 2 weeks. Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers!

She does it again!

Another good read by Stephanie Meyer...this one is not part of the vampire series. Honestly, this one started out a little confusing for me and really took me quite a few chapters to get into it, but once I did, I couldn't put it down!

Another week

Where does the time go??? This week has flown by. Here's adventures:

We headed to the National Aquarium. We had gotten there right at the right time. It was still hot and muggy when we went in, but when we had come out, it was raining. Apparently while we were inside the storm hit and it got crazy. The Aquarium is downstairs and we couldn't hear a thing from outside. I had called Tyson and there were trees falling down around his office because of the wind and rain. Glad we didn't get stuck in that!

The kids liked the aquarium, but we didn't know how little it was going to be. We circled around in maybe 25-30 min...so we circled again to make sure we had caught everything. It didn't really matter how little it was because like I said, the kids had fun...except for the part when Lexi and Zach were fighting over pretend fish...priceless :-)

Abby and Lexi

Yesterday (Saturday), Tyson's work had an office picnic. They had tons of crab and all that yucky hot weather people warned me about, happened yesterday! We were pretty much sweating all day long. But it was good to meet people Tyson works with and the kids had a blast. Here's a picture of Lexi's face painting. They also had one of those big jumping blow up houses and a clown tying balloons. Tyson participated in the tug of war as well...his side lost :-(

Yesterday, after the picnic we went to the National Archives building and saw the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the Constitution....way cool. You can't have any flash photography in there so all the pictures I took are really blurry. The room was pretty dark too, the darkness helps preserve the documents. It was a very cool experience though.

Earlier in the week we went to this park close to our place.

They loved it!

Sand box!

*Funny highlight: Jace got this fake icecream top stuck in his mouth, he really couldn't get it out. He wasn't crying or anything, just kind of making some weird gagging sounds. It was pretty funny!

We walked quickly through the dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural history since Tyson hasn't been there yet. That's all he got to see because they were closing. But at least he's been now.