Our state fair is a great state fair

Today Rachel came home, beaming with pride, and presented me with a letter from her art teacher that said her "artwork was selected to represent [our school] at the North Carolina State Fair.... We hope that you will be able to see this wonderful exhibit. Thanks for sharing your talented student with [our school] AND the State of North Carolina."

This is her project that was selected, The Hattaras Lighthouse:

We'll have to see if we can figure out the whole state fair thing...we've never been...but even if we don't make it (because this month, let's face it, is bordering on insanity) we're very pleased with Rachel's artwork this year.

Mount Vernon (September 24)

With the festivities surrounding the opening of the new museum in DC, we decided to spend some time out of the city center. On Saturday morning we hit up Mount Vernon, which gave Benjamin George Washington fever! 

I'm sure I mentioned earlier how we were skimping on meals. We stocked up on breakfast foods while we were at Target, though, and I was groggily passing stuff out to the children one morning. I grabbed a bunch of bananas out of one of our grocery bags that also contained a package of doughnuts.

"Doughnuts?" I offered, holding up the bananas.

Everyone got a good kick out of that.

One "travel treat" our children requested was beef jerky. We had to explain to Benjamin several times what it was and when the information finally seeped into his brain he exclusively called it "cow," as in, "Pass the cow, please? Mmm! This cow sure is good."

It made it difficult for everyone else to eat the jerky, but Benjamin seemed to enjoy it just as well as before he realized it was...cow.

Anyway, breakfast aside, we made it to Mount Vernon and went into the main lobby where a volunteer handed out fun little maps with a puzzle for the kids to figure to earn a prize. The kids were all rather excited about the map.

This is how we hurricane

Hurricane Matthew is fast approaching. 

Today we had nonstop drizzling and even a few (enjoyable) downpours. 

A friend in Florida compared hurricanes to "contractions in labor. Initially they come slow and intermittent. Then you get into the eye of the storm we're at crescendos and you're an actual hard labor and then you come out the other end again with an equal exit to your entrance."

Tomorrow is supposed to be another rainy day for us, but we're pretty far inland and the storm has spent quite a bit of its energy already so I don't think we'll suffer too badly.

We are thinking and praying for those harder hit, however. I showed my kids some pictures of Cuba and Haiti and they were shocked, not only by the destruction the hurricane caused in those places but also by the general poverty evident in the pictures.

Miriam remarked (about some pictures of Haiti before the storm), "Those houses already look like a hurricane hit them. What's going to happen when the hurricane actually hits?"

So much tragedy. That's what.

And by pure, dumb luck we live here in opulence while they live there in shambles (...once again). 

DC waterfronts on September 23

On Friday the 23rd we set out to meet a friend at the Georgetown Waterfront Park. We were aiming to be there at 9:30 but didn't end up parking until 9:58 (we had to stop at Target to pick up some pants for Rachel and then hit some traffic). Unfortunately, our friend got stuck in such terrible traffic that we weren't able to meet up at all, but we enjoyed the park quite a bit anyway. It's a beautiful part of DC, and made us feel like we weren't even in the middle of a bustling city.

Here's Andrew leading the children around the labyrinth at the park:

Zoo Day

Even though Andrew is insanely busy I convinced him to play hooky and come to the zoo with us today. In all honesty though, we did cut our DC trip a day short, so this kind of makes up for that, in a way. There are a few other reasons forthcoming which justify front-loading some family time for October...but since those are in the future and I still have so much to cover in the past (like the week we spent in DC) I'd better get to it.

I boiled eggs last night so we could pack them for our lunch today, which was brilliant. No one even asked for a snack the whole time we were at the zoo (except Zoë, but she doesn't count because she didn't eat much of her egg). Protein really does make you feel full longer!

Zoë was the perfect age for a trip to the zoo. She loved everything about it.

 

Miriam's Toad Story

Here's Miriam's version of the toad story:

On Tuesday, I picked up a toad! After I picked it up, I dropped it, because it felt really weird and gross. (It was at night time, the next morning we were going to Washington, D.C.). Well, after I dropped it, I chased it around the stroller. When it finally got onto the curb I grabbed it. It still felt weird, it still felt gross. After that I carried it home. I brought it inside, then we took pictures. Then I grossed out dad. It was fun, I had to let it go. The end.

And here she is doing her best impression of the toad:

In DC on September 22

Andrew had some interviews to conduct on Thursday (for research purposes) but he had time to walk us over to the Air and Space Museum beforehand, which was nice for me because my sense of direction is terrible, and nice for him because he loves the Air and Space Museum.

Here are the kids sitting on the lawn of the mall in front of the Capitol Building.

Damp fools in the woods

Today while I was forcing the children to help clean the house, Miriam wondered aloud when they'd get to go back to school because being at home was so boring. I was like, "What do you mean 'boring?' We're cleaning the house so we can go do something fun. If you want to get to the fun part faster then stop sniffling and pick up the pace."

That's probably why she wants to go back to school, truthfully. Her teacher is super nice. I'm pretty heartless. Just ask my kids. 

Why, just a few minutes ago Benjamin got out of bed to show me a little hangnail that's causing him grief and instead of expressing sympathy I...sniffed his finger? In my defence, I'm rather sleepy (Zoë went to bed at 4:45 AM last night) and I was reading a friend's blog post about the sense of smell. I think I meant to fake kiss his finger but ended up sniffing it instead, uttering, "Mmm...that's too bad. Get back to bed. I love you."

Anyway, I'm heartless. And I force my kids to do chores. 

Even school is better than this.

*eye roll*

Our fun activity, which we did eventually get around to doing, was a hike along the river. Fall hasn't always been one of my favourite seasons, but here where fall stretches and lingers for months, it really is. I suppose I have always enjoyed autumn, but sometimes in the north autumn is too brief to even think about enjoying. Here, however, autumn is an actual factual thing. And it's beautiful.

Here's a lovely zigzag spider that I found in our front garden as we were headed to the van. Isn't she beautiful?

DC at night (September 21)

We arrived in DC around 8:00 at night on the 21st and were all so excited to be there that instead of heading straight to Amanda's house we decided to head downtown to see the sights. We parked by Potomac River, which was p-totally awesome (the 'puh-tuh' thing carried on through the whole p-trip (because, as our children would be happy to tell you, we're nerds)). The kids were all very impressed with how many planes and helicopters flew overhead, just while we were standing on the sidewalk.

We walked over to the Lincoln Memorial first and took some terrible-quality pictures. But though the pictures are sub-par, the night was wonderful. Seeing the monuments all lit up at night is pretty amazing.

Here's Miriam with the Washington Monument behind her:

Goodbye to pool season

All week long the forecast has called for rain so Andrew has been taking the van to campus, leaving us stranded at home. It never actually rained while he was gone with the van, but it always threatened to so we didn't have the courage to walk anywhere too far from home (getting caught in a wicked thunder storm with four kids isn't my idea of a good time), which meant we've mostly been stuck at home driving each other crazy.

On Friday, however, we needed the van to go to ukulele practice. There was still rain in the forecast, but it wasn't raining in the morning, so Andrew took the scooter to campus, which meant we were free to go to the pool...even though the sky was threatening to unleash its fury at any moment.

It was the very last day the pool was open this year so we had to go!