Vacation - Post #9, Arlington National Cemetary

This post finds us in Arlington National Cemetary. Wasn't too sure what to expect when heading there, but whatever I was expecting, what we experienced wasn't it.

The drive to Arlington was absolutely beautiful as well.  We took interstate 270 down to I495, which was not the beautiful part of it, until the 495 crossed the Potomac River and we soon exited off onto George Washington National Pkwy.

That goes down the Virginia side of the Potomac and you're pretty much on the bluffs overlooking the river valley, with DC on the other side.  The sun was coming up, a bit of fog in the air and otherwise just a nice morning.

So, good morning aside, we get to Arlington and set out to walking up to the visitors center. 

I don't believe the sign needs much explanation...

There's a small Chinese boy checking out the statue of the bugler in the welcome/visitor's center.  There are multiple different areas of the building that are dedicated to specific wars, events (assasinations, 911, etc...) and artifacts of history.

One of those dedicated areas.  This one being to John F. Kennedy.

This was inside the gates, and shortly after leaving the building above.

And then you walk... and see tombstones...

Lots of 'em.

Acre after acre of them.

Don't believe me?

Here's some more...

more...

more...

Getting the idea?

Just one more photo.  I left a good many out but I was fascinated that you could just keep on going and going and in every direction you looked, there was sights like these.

This was a section dedicated to the Spanish War Vets.

This was a section dedicated to our nations Army, Navy and Air Force nurses.

The reverse side of the Memorial Amphitheater from the TotUS.

Two little varmints at the fountain which is at the bottom of the Unknown Soldier uh... area.  That's the Memorial Amphitheater up behind them and the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier is almost directly above the right edge of the fountain (at the top of the steps).

Having never really understood (and sadly, cared) what this was about, I had previously thought this somewhat silly that they guard this and do a ritual every hour.  This was in my younger, and dare I say, dumber and more cocky days.  I was dumbfounded by the emotions that came up up standing and watching the changing of the guard!  I cried.  I got angry with my fellow Americans when they dared make the slightest noise.  I didn't want to leave when my family began to move on.  Perhaps what struck me is that I feel most Americans used to have a strong sense of pride, the same kind of pride these soldiers had guarding their fallen comrade, but now we have have more of a sense of "me first".  Powerful moment for dear ol' dad here!

The new guard, walking off the previous guard towards the end of the ritual.

This is the Kennedy's burial site.

As we left and were (foolishly) walking over the Potomac over to the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall, I turned around to take this photo.  That building in the background there is the Robert E. Lee National Memorial, which was just up the hill behind the Kennedy graves.

I then turned back around to take this photo of my family.   Way, way way ahead in the distance, blending in with the trees and sky just above Mom's head, is the Lincoln Memorial...

You're supposed to train for this kind of walking.  Just like on the Great Wall Of China, we were caught off-guard by our less than optimum physical prowess...

Next up, the National Mall.

It's The 100th Day Of School

Monday, January 26th marks the 100th day of this current school year.  Caleb's teacher had a project where the kids were to decorate a shirt in any way/shape/form they wanted as long as it had 100 of something on it.

I sort of figured that the boy needs work with his handwriting so we would simply write the numbers 1 - 100 on his shirt.

He got a kick out of doing an "art project" with daddy and did most of the writing himself.

Now the question is, is will they have school tomorrow?  The temperature has dropped about 33 degrees in the last 4.5 hours and we're getting wind gusts that are making the house groan.  Thankfully, the snow missed us this far South, but not too far North of here was supposed to get a few inches to be rearranged according to the whims of 60 mph wind gusts!

Fun stuff.

Class Character Robby!!

It was only 364 days ago that I wrote this post. It seems that I am blessed far beyond any realm of my own deserving with two great boys!

Robby is a football junkie as anybody who has spent any time on this blog already knows.  What they may not know about him is that he is a bit of a history buff and doesn't only have the memory of 1 elephant (as it is said), but rather the whole herd!

I could babble on and on about the boy, but I'll let the photos and paragraph that his teacher wrote about do the speaking.

This is Robby (He's the one in the football jersey, in case you're wondering...) receiving his Ram's Way dog tag necklace.  That's his teacher at the mic reading what she wrote about the lad.

I had to include this photo as well because you can tell by the way he's holding his arms that he's excited!

The lad with some other fine fella and "fella-ettes".

This is what Mrs. Conley had to say about him.

If he looks a little glassy eyed, it's because he's been out of bed for about 15 minutes at this point and it's not quite 6am yet.  But that is the boy displaying his newly acquired dog tag necklace.

Congratulations Robby!  Way to make your parents proud!!

Silliness...

Guess who got the boys ready for school on MLK day?  (hint: it wasn't mom)

Robby wanted to wear his hair in a ponytail since it is (mostly) long enough now.  I didn't care, and quite frankly, niether did Mom.  So Dear Ol' Dad got him all ponied up and ready and to my surprise, I found myself missing the days of my own ponytail. So I wanted to take a picture of it.  Caleb, being one who will never miss a photo op, asked to take a silly picture and a good picture.   We never got around to a good picture of both of them, but the silly picture is delightful!

Robby's ponytail.  He liked it and thought it was pretty cool.

And for other good silliness, last night was Robby's first swim meet of the season.  He did good.  That's beside the point and not my other "good silliness".

While waiting for his third race, he was in his lane on the side of the pool next to his buddy, Brody.  He looked up at us and tried to motion something with his hands.  I motioned some non-sense back to which Robby motioned even more.

I did my best Eddie Murphy sign language impression from The Golden Child and finished it up with the motion of an "armpit fart".  Robby got a good chuckle out of that from 30 yards away and soon he and Brody were doing armpit (and knee-pit!!) farts on the side of the pool.  I was about dying laughing.

Mom?  Not so much.  You see, she was never a young boy!

Silliness, indeed.

Random Chaos...

I'm sitting around waiting for football games to start so I thought I would dump photos off of the camera.  That's when I found out that Caleb had an "outing" with camera recently and took various photos of Robby doing things such as folding laundry, going down the steps to the basement, and simply running away from the small Chinese boy with the electronic device.

Here's the sassy little camera man on a photo I took of him while he was busy watching Peppa Pig on the computer and I went in to grab the camera for whatever reason it was that I saw fit.

Robby, doing laundry as captured by a small Chinese camera man.  What a photo to capture life in America as experienced by a small white American boy who is somewhat spoiled due to circumstances that are out of his control yet quarantined by the daily rigors of life!

Caleb's first "selfie".  A close-up, no doubt.

A much better selfie!  That's a dang good photo he took of himself!

Nice!  A great selfie!!  He captured himself in all his own glory!

Enough silliness.  Today after worship and Sunday school, I had promised to Caleb that I would read his library book from this past week to him. I was on the first page of it, when Robby approached, hair buff and Peyton Manning jersey in tow, asking if he could read the book to Caleb instead of me.  Heck yeah!  It was sweet as we stood back in the kitchen and enjoyed the show.  Rob did great and Caleb enjoyed it immensely.

Small Chinese boy has been doing puzzles on the Kindle like a madman lately.  Today, we got him a new box of puzzles contain four seperate glow in the dark puzzles.  He tore into the first one with reckless abandon and knocked it out in a little over an hour with minimal help. This is him asking Daddy to help him open the second the one..

So that's about it.  It's now after the football games and both of the teams that I wanted to advance, did.  The Seahawks and the Bronco's are in the "Supper Bowl" and I'll have to start game planning what I'm going to eat during the game to curb my boredom during long commercial breaks and a ridiculous half time.

GO BRONCS!!!

Vacation 2013 - Post #8, The Museums

There's not a ton of museum pics here, although I could have certainly included them!  Especially when it came to the National Air & Space Smithsonian!!  Robby and Dear old Dad were at home in that bad boy!

Otherwise, it's a lot of photos, mostly of kiddos, which is by far the coolest!

Let's get started.

A happy and fresh Liena & Robby on the train for Downtown D.C.  To think back to these two becoming friends in the Forbidden City in Beijing, is almost too cool!  Hopefully, they'll be friends where ever life leads them.

This is in the National Museum of the American Indian where we had a wonderful ethnic lunch at the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe.  There were different food stations for different ethnicities where you could order food based on your current fancy.  The photo is a big pavilion type area where they have prism windows to reflect the sunlight.  I'm a dork so I've been fascinated by prism's ever since this record came out in 1977.

Another shot just inside of the entry way...  Note the space capsule.  Note the Missile on the right side of the picture.  Note the satellite in the upper middle/left.  Need I go on?

Inside the entry way of the Air & Space Museum.  I was hooked and we weren't more than 50' inside the door.  Oh sure, I'm fat... it's hot outside... it's wonderfully air conditioned inside...  BUT I PROMISE that didn't have anything to do with my fascination.

Liena, Robby and Caleb outside of the Air & Space museum.  They do not realize the walk we have ahead of us to get back to the train, which is a considerable ride back to the car, which is a small drive back home.  Oh to be young again!

Robby, Momma chaos, Ethan, Liena and Marylynn on the train ride back to Gaithersburg.   The end of a long day for the kiddos, but absolutely fascinating, to me at least.

So that's about it for this post.  I wanted to caption the pics better, but they're giving me fits for whatever reason and I'm not about to put up with that kind of behavior from a silly machine!  :-)