A Whirl of A Week

Washington DC (see the picture)

N 38 52.736 W 077 01.507

Libby and I are very lucky and very happy to be the parents/grandparents of such a fine family. We were invaded over the last few days, and although exhausted, we loved every minute of it. John, Cheryl, Nick, Sara, Katelyn and Victoria arrived in the early afternoon Friday, and they left about the same time on Sunday. In the interim, we did the following.

• Reg, brother of our cruising friend Penny, gave us a personal tour of The Spirit Of South Carolina. She's a lovely boat. Nick, our oldest grandson, immediatly wanted to sign on as one of their student crew members.
• We rode the METRO to the National Zoo and spent several hours there. Unfortunately, because of renovations and the hours of the day, we only got to see a small fraction of the animals.
• We had a great dinner in Chinatown.
• We walked to the Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korea, Vietnam, WWII, and Washington memorials.
• We ate lunch at the Old Post Office.
• We did the Smithsonial Natural History Museum.
• We aborted plans for the Archive, Air & Space and Indian museums because of exhaustion and excessive crowds.
• Libby got to cook a big dinner for the whole group, thus feeding her mothering instincts. We had super jumbo shrimp, steamed clams and pot roast.
• Three of the kids got to sleep on the boat with us.
  
• We rode the METRO to Arlington and did a walking tour of the cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown, and the Iwo Jima monument.
• Poor John had to drive home to upstate NY. Even on a Sunday the traffic was so heavy that it took him 2 hours to get out of the city an on to the highway.
  

Here's a classical family portrait, taken at guess where?

Clowning Around

One does not need panda bears or unknown soldiers to make for kids to have a good time. A bucket of water and a broom is much more fun.

Above: There were about a million tourists running around on Saturday. There was even a gay pride rally with 100,000 people that managed to escape our notice because there were so many people around.

Given those circumstances, one would think that grandpa could sneak away and grab a quick nap for a few minutes anonymously. Not so. Our friends Ray and Pat just happened to be walking through the Smithsonian lobby and saw a familiar face on an old man sleeping on a bench, so they snapped this picture. Sigh.