Washington DC

Well, for Christmas this year, we decided to come visit the Schiel family in Gaithersburg, Maryland! They are friends of ours from our church and are currently in MD going to Pastors' College. They only have 6 more months to be here, so we thought we'd take advantage of the opportunity to get to know them better, while also getting to visit DC at the same time :)

We left last Thursday morning at 5am and made it to Atlanta, Georgia (yes--we DROVE with two small children!! BUT, we got to bring another family's 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, with us as a surprise for the 13-year-old Schiel daughter, Danielle. This actually worked out well for all of us b/c Sarah and Danielle get to hang out, but we also have an extra hand to help out some with the kiddos! :) ). Then another family from our church has a sister (sister-in-law, aunt) who lives in Atlanta whose family was very gracious and fed us a meal and provided us with lodging for the night.

On Friday, we made the rest of the trek to Gaithersburg. Danielle was super surprised to get to see Sarah. It was something she'd been hoping for but had pretty much given up hope that it would actually happen :) On Saturday, we just took it easy and lounged around the house, resting and talking. Little man decided to start having a very loose cough :( On Sunday, we went to church, and later in the afternoon, the older girls, Shari and I went to the mall for a little while. Little man was feeling even worse, now also with a little fever :( Mikaela also started in on the loose coughing, but not with any fever. So on Monday, we decided not to go in to DC. Instead, Monday night, we went to a drive-through "Christmas in the Park," kind of like Santa's Wonderland in C.S. MJ slept through the whole thing; when we got home, I put her in her sleeping bag, and she said, "But we didn't get to go bye-bye yet!" Poor thing--didn't remember ever leaving the house :) Elijah at least woke up for a little bit of it.

On Tuesday, we went to DC and toured the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and to a castle (can't remember the exact name right now). Little man still didn't feel good, but we figured we could carry him around the house all day, or we could carry him around the museum all day--we chose the latter :)

On Wednesday, little man finally broke his fever and is now coughing MUCH less and is on the road to recovery, but unfortunately, he has passed on whatever he had to a few others :( For the most part though, Wednesday was just the beginning of it for everyone else, but there was a pretty high chance of rain, so we decided we didn't all want to be trekking around DC in the rain :) So we had another easy day and went and got some Webkinz, and then Eric and I went to a Christmas Eve production at the church--alone! (everyone else went Tuesday night).

So today, Eric and I decided to go see a lot of the memorials this morning so that we could see them before we leave. We took our kiddos and Sarah, but a couple of the Schiel kids weren't feeling well today. Poor Sarah really wasn't feeling well either, but she came along anyway, not knowing when she might ever get to see these things again :) We saw 7 memorials in all, and my brain is so fried right now that I'm not even going to attempt to name them all. I'll try to put all the names with the pictures later on. Upon returning, Shari had made a wonderful Christmas lunch/dinner. My one regret is not being able to help her cook and see the memorials at the same time :(

Tomorrow, our family, and whoever else feels well enough to go, is going to the natural science museum and to the natural history museum.

And I was going to post pictures tonight, but it's late, and I haven't gotten to label them yet, so you'll just have to wait for another post :)