Hurricane Sandy

With the preparations all of my Facebook friends were making and all the talk on the news and weather websites, I started getting nervous about Hurricane Sandy.  Then the storm approached and it never seemed to rain especially hard, just constantly.  Monday night the winds really picked up, but we've lived in Kansas and we grew up in California where Santa Ana winds are big and strong this time of year.  It didn't seem especially unique, just a bad storm, not a hurricane.  Tuesday morning we drove down to Richmond so we could Trick or Treat with the cousins on Wednesday.  I logged into Facebook and saw the pictures some different people from our ward posted of the field where the kids play soccer.  It's a giant lake!  The smallish river at the edge of the field over ran its banks and the soccer fields are sort of a flood basin.  The result:

 There shouldn't be any visible water on these fields.  There's a teeny stream that sometimes has water in part of it at the base of this hill.  Otherwise, the creek/river is at the far far end, behind the trees to the left.  Not visible at all, Buddy only discovered it was there last week because they were practicing at one of those fields and a soccer ball got kicked into the trees and it turns out it went into the river. 

Thunder Cake

I grew up in southern California where thunder and lightening were rare.  When we'd go to our cabin in the mountains in southern Utah in the summer, the thunder was so loud on the aluminum roof and the lightening lit the black sky, it was amazing to me as a kid. Then I went to college in Utah and thunderstorms were common, I loved the summer thunderstorms when I could get drenched in rain while it was warm out.  When Princess Sparkley was 3 and Buddy was 17 months we moved to Kansas.  The kids were not a fan of thunderstorms.  I don't think I'd ever heard anything like a Kansas thunderstorm with the loudest BOOM BOOMs ever, until we moved to Virginia.  I didn't think Kansas thunder could get topped, but either Virginia's thunder is louder, or they are very close.  This morning was another one of those loud storms.  Thunder so loud it woke me and the big kids up.  It shook the house. The storm was weak compared to a Kansas storm, but the LOUD BOOMING thunder.  The thunder inspired me to read the book Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco to the kids again, a book my mom bought us when we were living in Kansas and the kids were terrified of thunderstorms. And this time, we braved the recipe (which includes pureed tomatoes) and made a Thunder Cake. 

More Sledding Films

Little Guy on the jump again.


Buddy turned the corner on the soccer field and found where some kids had made a sledding spot that went down a big hill and then went up a tiny hill (to what is normally a sidewalk in the park) and then down again.



Little Guy's last downhill of the day.

Snow Day! And Sledding!

The snow stopped late Wednesday night and so Thursday morning B and I joined the kids outside. We shoveled, they played.



It was a warm day, so the slow was slushy but the bottom layer was those sleet balls I took pictures on an earlier post, so shoveling was a pain. Keep in mind also that the sidewalks were shoveled at least three times already by the time we came out to play. And there's about two inches of snow on them.


Since it was such a nice day and the roads were clear, we ventured out in the car in search of a park with a sledding hill. There are a few we know of in town, but we didn't want crowds. I remembered I park I'd been too before that has sort of an elevated soccer field. I guess, more accurately, the soccer field was leveled off to create a flat field and so two sides of it are hill. It was perfect. We had to park at a nearby shopping center (because the parking lot for the park hadn't been plowed, and the gates were closed) and trek to the park in probably 8 inches of snow with just a couple other sets of foot prints in it. But it was worth it. The hills were little enough for our kids, but big enough for them to love it. And there was just another group of older kids off across the field leaving us alone.


You can see in the bottom left picture how deep my foot is in the snow. 8 inches. Maybe.



So handsome.


So excited.


Pretty and colorful.


While sledding, Buddy kept saying variations of "[Buddy Mileposts] the world's most fantastic awesome sledder!"


Lots of videos... I figured the grandparents and cousins might like to see some of them.

Buddy was thrilled with this sledding hill with a jump/bump that someone else made and he discovered.


Little Guy getting a push from Dad.



Princess Sparkley goes down the hill with the jump.


Little Guy. Then PS and Buddy.



Mom and Little Guy go down a hill together next to Princess Sparkley. Then the camera pans over to Buddy going down the hill with the jump. The best parts are PS's scream and the end of the video when Buddy has his legs straight up in the air.



PS and LG go down together.



Buddy.




I went down the hill with a jump (twice, the first time really hurt but B didn't get it on film and made me go a second time). Ow.


Little Guy goes down the jump, then Princess Sparkley tumbles at the end of her slide.


Three more videos to come... it's just taking forever.

Snow (Birth)Day

Buddy and Princess Sparkley were not happy with me today because homeschool was in session even though it was Little Guy's birthday. And on top of that, it was a snow day for every other school in the city and county and B's classes were canceled. But it didn't even start snowing until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And by then our school day was done. I think it's stopped for the night now (midnight). But for the first 3-4 hours we were under a severe weather warning and were supposed to get 5-8 inches. After an hour or so a snow plow went through our parking lot and the grounds crew shoveled the sidewalks. We'd gotten as much snow in that hour as we've had all winter to date. But now that the snow has stopped snowing, it's no where near the amount we got in the two separate huge storms last winter. But it's still a lot and the kids have big plans for it in the morning.


Here's the snow throughout the day.
top left to bottom right:
2:30 pm
hail/sleet (I opened the door and scooped a handful up)
4:10 pm
5:40 pm
7:18 pm
10:29 pm



The boys went out around 4:30.
Buddy and Little Guy were eager to get out there with the kid snow shovels they got for Christmas. It hadn't been very long since maintenance guys went past with their snow shovels, but the snow was coming down hard and the sidewalks needed shoveling again so I sent them out front. PS opted to stay inside and be in charge of hot chocolate when the boys came in. The one picture is of Buddy's hood covered in snow. It was a really wet snow, so the boys came in wet like they'd been out in the rain, with snow stuck all over them.

Fairfax Corner Fountains - 2nd time

We had to be in Fairfax Monday, knew there'd be some down time when we were just waiting, and that it would be hot, so the kids wore their swimsuits and we went back to Fairfax Corner Fountains. Princess Sparkley and Little Guy were much braver this time (although, you can see from the pictures that Little Guy spent most of the time skirting the perimeter). Buddy loved it, again!

Puddles!

I ran into the grocery store the other night (it wasn't raining), with Buddy and Little Guy (who insisted on coming but once we got inside was freezing cold and insisting that I carry him). We grabbed the few items we needed, checked out, loaded our bag, and started to the exit. It was POURING down rain. Like, step outside and you're taking a shower kind of rain. B was nice enough to watch for us and was pulling up to the curb, but I still had to carry a heavy grocery bag, and a heavy 2 1/2 year old, open a car door and shove him in, followed by me and the bag. In that 30 seconds, we got DRENCHED! So we drove home and the kids were super excited to play in the pouring down rain, but by the time they got boots on, etc. It had stopped. Yet only a minute earlier, when we'd been making the trip from the car to our front door, it was still pouring. If only we'd stuck it out in the car a minute longer!

They still had some fun playing in the puddles!


Favorite Quote of the Day:
"I got water in my boot," said by Princess Sparkley. Followed by Little Guy saying, "I got water in my flip flop."

Boys in Undies*

Friday night we were sitting around getting the kids ready for bed when all of a sudden water started spraying on our front windows and the tree branches were going crazy. It was unexpected and seemed like someone squirting the windows with a hose. No, a storm had blown in really quickly. Here are the boys watching out the screen door as the front of the house gets sprayed with rain. I like how Buddy has his hand on Little Guy's head. He does this a lot.

*While they are wearing "undies," they aren't actually their underwear. Buddy wears these Star Wars boxers with an undershirt as pajamas in the summer (he's got underwear on underneath) and Little Guy is wearing little underwear shorts over his diaper as his summer jammies.

Cherry Blossoms at Full Bloom

When we showed up at the Metro station last Saturday morning and had to wait in a line of maybe a half dozen people (per ticket machine), I thought that was crazy. Today, being a weekday, we had to miss the commuter busyness of the Metro, so we showed up around 11AM, shocked to see a line stretching back so far, we couldn't even SEE the ticket machines. (Note to self: buy SmarTrip cards for the whole family and load them). We get on at the last stop on one line. By the time everyone was on our train, most seats were filled. Thirteen stops later, it was PACKED. I was glad I didn't bring our stroller. Getting off at the Smithsonian stop (where everyone else going to see the blossoms was getting off), there were actually people taking pictures of how crowded the station was. We could barely get OFF the train, because there were lines for the escalators filling the entire platform.

As soon as we emerged from the underground and started walking, the kids all claimed starvation and the need to eat immediately or they would pass out. We stopped and ate sandwiches I'd packed. We always end up in DC at lunch time because we leave late enough to miss the morning commute, and want to head home before the afternoon commute... lunch time.

Once we were done eating, we joined the masses walking towards the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin. The blossoms WERE beautiful. The crowds actually felt about the same as Saturday (only Metro crowdedness proved to me that there were indeed MORE people).











We skipped the Jefferson Memorial having seen it on Saturday, but took the kids' picture with Waddles, (the beaver on the kids' National Park pins they are wearing in a lot of the pictures). Waddles reminds us to not pick the blossoms.




Baby X insisted on walking along holding this chain. Luckily, this part of the Tidal Basin wasn't AS crowded.













It was a beautiful day. Princess Sparkley kept complaining about how hot it was. It was probably in the low 80s. I reminded her that this was when we wanted to be walking around in DC rather than July or August.

We stopped to see the George Mason Memorial (since B's attending GMU).


I had to repeatedly yell at Baby X all day, "[Baby X], look, there's a duck on Mommy's head." I was trying to get him to look at the camera, but mostly he just said, "What, Mama? What, Mama? What, Mama?" So, then he was looking, but talking, not smiling.


George Mason


Colorful Washington Monument... taken from the George Mason Memorial.


Then we made our way further around the Tidal Basin toward the FDR Memorial.


It was too crowded on the bridge's sidewalk to step back and get the full effect of the Tidal Basin with both the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial... I tried.








Trying to get a lovely picture of all three kids (but somehow, the Washington Monument is ALWAYS crooked in my pictures and of course, the kids are not smiling, not looking, making weird faces, shadowed by baseball hats, etc.)








B saw the FDR Memorial several years ago when he toured DC on his own as a college student and rep for BYU's College Republicans. He is not a fan of FDR and told me that if we were going to see it (which, PS IS a fan of FDR, so we needed to at some point) we had to do it without him. So we circled the other side of the Tidal Basin this time and visited this enormous memorial. It's strange. Not so much a statue, but one side of the Tidal Basin dedicated to rocks and waterfalls and fountains and statues of FDR.





Then we SLOWLY made our way back to the Metro. The sidewalks were crowded. The kids walked slow. Baby X was not in a stroller (I knew it would be way too crowded to bring a stroller on the Metro) but walking (and being carried). By the time we reached the Smithsonian stop, it had taken forever (three hours since arriving for basically just walking around the Tidal Basin). And there were police announcing that the entrance we showed up at was CLOSED. Instead of battling the hundreds of other people trying to get on at that exact station, and that exact train, we pulled out our map, found the next Metro station, and walked to the L'Enfant Plaza stop. Not so crowded. A man was nice enough to give me his seat since I was holding Baby X which is difficult to do while standing on a train. Then the lady next to him gave Buddy her seat so I didn't lose him. Which was nice because the train got very crowded very fast. AND, when the train pulled up at the Smithsonian stop to load all those people, we were already on it. It was CROWDED all the way home. Pushing, yelling, swearing. I was glad we were all in seats (with Baby X on my lap, Buddy, Princess Sparkley and I can all sit on one row - 2 seats).

Shockingly, this is just some of the pictures (I took nearly 90 today).

The Blizzard, almost a week later