Summer Activities

This summer Britton and Larson have been taking swim lessons every other day. Larson enjoys jumping in the water, but is not as keen on following directions. His job is to 'Scoop the water; kick your feet!" Britton has learned to swim quite well and really impressed Bronwyn today while they were swimming with the Windward's.

On the topic of the Windward's, Nick & Maddy moved into our ward a few months ago, with 3 boys of their own. It is interesting that Nick & I served in the same mission (Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo East) with some time overlapping. Maddy and Bronwyn have hit it off well. We went with them to the Mercer County 4H fair at the Howell Living Farm on Saturday. Highlights included touching several sheep and ducks, a goat pulled wagon, a pony ride, seeing oxen, sheep, horses, cows, rabbits, chickens, swans, ducks, guinea pigs, and rats, and enjoying some homemade strawberry/blueberry ice cream. The flywheel engine they used to churn the ice cream was very interesting because it only fired every once in a while to keep the flywheels going. The guy running it said that they could run for a very long time (8 hours) on less than a gallon of gasoline!

In the middle of July, Grandma & Grandpa Smith came to visit. Although the original plan was to go to Palmyra to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant as soon as they got here, we had to make a change of plans to help the Hardy's and Rugh's move. The Hardy's are homeless (living with grandparents) for the next year while Jeff does research in Russia and elsewhere. The Rugh's just moved across campus.

So after helping the moving families, we went down to D.C. My dad had never been there, so everything was novel. On the first afternoon, after driving for 4-5 hours, we went by the White House, to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, to the Lincoln Memorial, past the WWII memorial, past the Washington Memorial, and rode the Metro back to our hotel (~1/2 mile south of the Capitol building.) We were sure happy to be in our beds that night.

My dad and I went to the Washington Memorial early on Tuesday to get tickets. We ended up with 6:00 tickets, so we met Bronwyn, my mom and the boys at the Air & Space museum. We got to see an IMAX movie about operation Red Flag: an aerial War Game for fighter squadrons to practice aerial combat and strategies. Larson lasted most of the way before he and I went out to ride the escalator... Britton, who is quite the Air Force/Navy plane enthusiast really enjoyed himself. We ate lunch in the Air & Space museum, then made our way up to the Longworth House Office Building to the Office of Rush Holt, our Representative in Congress.

We had arranged for a tour of the Capitol through his office about 1 week ahead of time. After leaving all of our possessions, except diapers and wipes, in his office, one of his interns (Matt), took us over to the Capitol. Matt was a very cool guy, not least of which he is studying physics and philosophy at Johns Hopkins. Luckily Britton and Larson slept through most of the Capitol experience, so we had more time to ponder what was around us. However, they both woke up at inopportune times. Britton woke up while we were in line to get into the House Gallery, and desperately needed to change his oil. So Bronwyn and Matt took him while the rest of us waited. They finally got back and we got through the metal detectors and into the gallery. As we were sitting there, with the House in session, Larson woke up and yelled out that he wanted to go home. So we beat a hasty exit, before they could call security to extricate us.

By then we needed to get to the Washington Monument for our ticket times. It is quite unfortunate that there is not a Metro line that runs the direction of the National Mall, because it takes a lot of walking to get from one part to another. The observation deck on the Washington Memorial was much smaller than I remember from when I went for the FHA (now FCCLA) National Meeting of 1995.

We ate dinner at the ESPN Zone, which was kind of disappointing since they didn't have their molten lava cakes. My dad ended up forgetting his bag in the reception area, and the workers couldn't find it when we were ready to leave. We were fairly convinced one of them had stolen it. Eventually, after talking to the manager, the bag was found, but not after we had left, so my dad had to go back to the Zone the next day to retrieve it, which was another hassle of 20-30 minutes and talking to 2 workers. The final museum we visited was the National Museum of the American Indian, which was a real hodge podge of Indian cultures. The final D.C. stop on our way out of town was a visit to the temple where we did an endowment session.

Other summer activities for me have included softball, soccer, and a week of Scout Camp. Britton has gone to a few days of summer camp with an elementary teacher in the ward. The boys and I have played some baseball and bowling, and watched the original Star Wars trilogy, taking advantage of the later nights possible when there is not school the next day.

I guess we'll have to see what the coming month holds.