Busy, busy, busy!

We have had so much fun lately being so busy. Every weekend we plan something to do, just to get out of the house. Our kids have been great tagging along with us, we couldn't ask for better children.

We finally took our first family picture since Mallory was born. We visited the Wash DC temple and snapped a few shots of us with the my new tri-pod and self-timer. There was one point in the photo shot where a nice man was walking out of the temple and asked us if we wanted him to take our picture for us. We obliged and he took our camera off of the tripod. Somewhere in the transfer he turned it off of picture and onto video. So when he got ready to take our picture he snapped the button which actually started filming us and the whole exchange between us and him. It was hilarious.

We have also visited DC more than once this monthalready and plan on going a few more times. I know you are probably sick of hearing about us and our DC day trips but how can you not take advantage of this awesome city when you live so close. It is just a nice destination to go when you just have to get out of the house. We always talk about how people travel from all over the world to come here and we are already here. At one point during the day we were walking across the mall (which is a very large piece of lawn that connects the Capital building, Washington monument and the Lincoln Memorial and is lined with the Smithsonian Museums) and Maxwell sees a group of free-spiriters laying on blankets and playing music with guitars and singing Koom-baya. He proceeds to take one of Mallorys blankets off of her and lay it out next to this group. He lays down with his hands behind his head and stares into the sky reminiscing about his life. The group of twenty-somethings thought it was the cutest thing and invited him over to sit with them and sing. This all went down while we watched and laughed and then Matt took some really cool pictures of the Washington Monument at sunset. We will print and frame the pic if anyone wants it. A week later we had some friends from Utah, the Stoddards visit the area and we met them in the city for dinner at ESPN Zone so that Matt and Alex could watch some BYU game and Becky and I ate and watched the kids. They placed us in this huge banquet room at the restaurant and no one else was in there. We thought it was awesome, because we can talk in peace and catch up on our lives. Maybe they thought our 3 kids under the age of 4 would disturb the other patrons, so they secluded us the corner of the banquet room. We were ok with this until we caught wind of some intruders about to invade our peace and quiet. The employees came in and started rearranging the tables and chairs in long rows like you would see in an elementary cafeteria.

They weren't even done setting up when about 50 high school kids and their chaperone's started trickling in, socializing and taking their seats. Our peace and quiet was all but gone. At one point in the dinner we were sure they were going to relocate us to another part of the restaurant because they didn't have the space to fit all of the kids. We had already decided that if that were to happen then they would have to give us free dessert or a discount on our meals. So here we were in the center of a high school social where everyone is far too excited to be eating dinner with their band-geek friends wearing nothing but DC apparel that they picked out from the sea of street carts lining the streets of DC. Clothes that were so incredibly trendy and ugly that they will never wear once after their trip but will remain in their closets for years to come until their spouses decide to donate them to a charity where they will live a good life with some other unfortunate soul. Well, to make a long story short we had a great dinner with Alex and Becky catching up things and making funny faces in the backgrounds of these pictures that I am sure will make it into the yearbook. All I have to say is that I am sure glad I nursed Mallory before the crowd showed up so that I wouldn't have a hundred eyes on me. Now that pic would have made for some great Facebook walls.

The next day we had more visitors come to town. My cousin and her husband, Miranda and Bryce came down from Philly to go to the temple and stay at our house for one night. We took them to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near our house. It is the hangar where all of the famous airplanes and spaceships have been parked for the remaining years of their lives. It is actually really cool and fun to see the faces of the people seeing it for first time. We enjoyed their stay and had fun eating cookies but more fun eating the cookie dough.
We had the Stoddards our at our house on Sunday night for dinner and more cookies. We enjoy having visitors. Some of Matt's friends are going to come and stay at our house next week with their families and we will do it all over again. Yipee!

Of course I have to talk about the kids. Mallory has hit the 6 month mark and can now roll over and sit up by herself, mostly. She loves to eat any solid food she can get a hold of and is very impatient if the spoon is not in her mouth or on the way to her mouth. Max still loves to go to school and we have signed him up for preschool again next year. He is looking forward to the spring and summer to be able to spend more time outside. We are all looking forward to spending more time outside in the upcoming months.