A yellow skirt in June

In June I bought a yellow skirt. Then I wore it basically everywhere we went. This is a good thing, right? Better than buying a yellow skirt and then just hanging it in my closet.

Here are some of the places my yellow skirt went, and some places that I went without my yellow skirt, too.

Brunch at Wilson's with our framily -

These girls are the best.

 Sarah and Ryan came to visit! One of the strange things about graduating, moving out here and starting real life was no longer seeing certain people everyday who kept me sane and also understood all of my insanity at the same time. So it was lovely to have them out for a visit and we are so excited for them to move back East, even if it is still a ways away from us.

 Baked and Wired and a little sunset river watching = perfect.


We went to hear the fabulous Charity Sunshine sing:


Rooftop parties

Saying farewell to friends at church (and that great moment when Jesse and Kate show up wearing the same dress!)

Went blueberry picking at Butler's Orchard (these blueberries were incredibly tasty.)

I stole these pictures from Jacki's phone. 

and one wonderful evening had some old high school friends over! Both Chase and Nakita and Natalie and Bryce are in the area for the summer and it was so much fun to catch up (plus an everybody-dig-in-cake never hurts.) The most wonderful thing about getting together with friends you haven't seen in years is remembering how much you really like them.


We barbecued then went to the park to play like we were little again for Owen.

Summer always goes by way too quickly.

When the family gets together

My parents and two of my brothers came to visit this past week. When the family gets together for a vacation it generally results in a baseball game and a rambunctious night of Uno playing. This past week did not disappoint, plus we added in a beautiful 4th of July on the National Mall.

It was so wonderful to have my family here. It was wonderful to have them all staying with us. (It was less wonderful to all share one bathroom, but we made it work.) There are so many things to do here in DC and although it seems in some ways that we barely scratched the surface we kept going nonstop and actually covered a lot of ground. Countless museums (countless if you ask Christian, although they really can be counted) Arlington Cemetery, the monuments by night, a Nats game, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall, yummy restaurants and cookouts in the backyard.

My feet are a little tired today.




When we go to baseball games, we always do a little dance we affectionately called "The Daniel" and which has been in our family dance move collection since 2006. You can see more of our family dance move collection in this old post.




The Nats won.

And then there were fireworks.

 I suppose there would have been fireworks even if they had lost, but it seemed very fitting after such an exciting close game that ended in victory.



The Folklife Festival on the Mall is always a treat. This year's featured countries were China and Kenya. We had the opportunity to learn a little Tai Chi -
 

and also Tai Chi Ball, which is much more difficult than one might think.



We learned a little Chinese and also tried our hand at calligraphy -



Nils was such a show off.

We got to see so many neat artists:


Then we headed back home for a backyard barbecue -
 

Hotdogs, lots of hotdogs. If you look carefully you can see a giant platter of them in the left corner. And only like half of those were for Jeff.

Then we chased those down with some delicious blueberry cobbler, from a recipe I found here.

Then it was back to the mall for fireworks!

Saturday we went to Arlington National Cemetery and toured General Robert E. Lee's mansion, which was really neat to see.

This last picture is from Mary's conservatory, which was beautiful and made me want to start calling our sunroom The Conservatory instead. Then my mom told me that growing up they had a similar room with lots of windows and low bookcases, and they called it The Book Room. So now it is a toss up...The Conservatory vs The Book Room. Thoughts?

Anyhow, it was a wonderfully patriotic fourth of July.

Quick and Dirty: Undefeated

I kept trying to write a bit about Jeff's undefeated intramural football season and failing. I wanted it to capture that inspirational-football-movie triumph. Something that would make you feel like you could also almost drink the humid air, need to shade your eyes from the glare off the Capitol, scream in frustration as they were down 34-7 at the half, then again in exhilaration as they came back to win the championship in overtime.

It just wasn't quite coming together, though. Maybe the real problem here is that great football movies are rarely based off intramural leagues. Perhaps I should have been instead trying for a feel good made-for-TV featurette instead? We could have played on the audience's emotions by showing the dilemma faced by the teammates when they had to choose between studying and showing up to do their part for the team. You'd all be reaching for the tissues as a montage played of different DC landmarks quickly emptying of tourists as a thunderstorm started, leading to the double-header the night before COMPs exam being rained out and rescheduled. Miracles do happen, people.

And that championship game comeback  - the music would be swelling.

Yes, Jeff caught this. And then ran a touchdown.

Cherry Blossoms

A friend of mine said recently that this was the longest, most awful Winter but now we are having the most beautiful Spring ever. I agree.

Also, there is just nothing quite like DC in the Spring.

Ran into a friend and her darling children at the blossoms too - 
My good friend Veronica came down for a visit during peak blossom time. We had a wonderful weekend with her, involving a lot of good food, the zoo, and the blossoms, naturally.