Life today, illustrated by yesterday

Time for a brief update on our lives. Oh how things have changed, and how they've stayed the same:

Jeff continues his life as a student. One day he may actually graduate. Until then, he's generally rushing out the door with his backpack and throwing his shoes on at the same time.


He has now finished one internship and is a little over halfway through his second one.

The standard PT outfit is a collared shirt and khakis. Jeff's wardrobe has no problem accommodating this:

 

I continue to work as a photographer and spend my days trying to tap into my creative juices -

- and attempting to be creative while working in an office.

 

"What now?? I mean, can I help you?"

A friend and I have been attending Barre and zumba classes, where I generally look a bit like this:

 

But I do think I am getting stronger. In fact, my barre teacher complimented me the other day - because I corrected something myself before she had to come do it for me, sure, but hey - a compliment is a compliment!

Because Jeff is done early two days a week during this internship, he currently handles the majority of our errands and shopping, and does it with ease, grace and style:

and we are well into our second year without a dishwasher.



It doesn't get any less annoying to live without one.

Exploring Ottawa

After my parents visited Jeff and I they headed north to see Daniel, Holly & Co. in Canada, and I flew up to meet them. It was great to see what their house and neighborhood look like when not covered in three feet of snow and always fun to visit with family! We played tourist around town and ate ourselves silly. The weather was fantastic and I really love Ottawa - the pace of the city, the beautiful buildings, the nephew and niece who live there...

Going sightseeing in our family requires great hats and a sense of wonder.

And a little patience for short legs. We took a tour of the Parliament building and I learned a lot about Canadian government (which I probably should have known more about already.) Sightseeing can be tiring.

Our family loves reading. Here Livia treats us to "Fox in Socks" which can sometimes make your tongue go numb.

It was fun to play in the backyard without the snowbanks. We introduced the kids to the magic of games like London Bridges and Duck, Duck, Goose! Fredrick liked to be silly and come up with other animals to say (pig, pig) and Livia seemed to be saying "Moose" instead of "Goose" and just run aimlessly until we encouraged her to sit down, but she caught on fairly well considering.  

We went on a river tour of the city, which was lovely.

Construction: you just can't escape it anywhere.  

We explored Ottawa on foot, too. Overall bib pockets are obviously for collecting wildflowers.

We finally headed back to DC on Sunday, which made Fredrik cry ("No goodbye! I don't like goodbye!") I feel you, kid. I don't like goodbye either.

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.