While we're being all patriotical...

...here's another tribute to our Armed Services. We went with Jon's family to the Air Force Memorial, which is one of our personal favorites to take visitors to. From far away, it looks like some sort of alien landing or some other weird object definitely out of place with its fellow DC monuments. But when you go there in person, it's SO impressive. Because these things are HUGE! And the arches are somehow so much more fascinating when you can see they're these massive pieces of solid metal leaning over you. Plus, the site offers a fabulous view of the city, and the monument is AMAZING at sunset. I love the way it turns pink and gold. The place has character.

So while we've taken many photos there before, of course we couldn't resist taking more, and we got a little creative. We got some pretty nice shots, and the best part is...no photoshop needed. That always makes us happy (especially considering the not-so-sweet-little-digital-non-SLR camera we have).

The few, the proud

Jon's cousins are in the Timpview High Band and they got to come out to play in Cherry Blossom Festival! Among the tons of places they went, Jon got to go watch them play in front of Iwo Jima, where they were happy to run into the Marines practicing their routine. So I guess the Marines stood by and watched the whole time, which the high schoolers were obviously pretty excited about. Here are a few pics from the day.

Bureau of Engravin' and Printin'

While Jon's aunt, uncle and cousins were in town, we got the benefit of being part-time tourists, and the scored us some tickets to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a.k.a. the money factory. It was pretty fascinating to see how fast they bust those things out, but we learned that most of the money they're making is actually replacement bills, to jump in for all those sorry old bills that are falling apart. Turns out, the $1 bill has an average life span of 22 months, while the $100 bill has one of 30 years or so (or something like that).

It was interesting, quick, and to the point. We had probably the most excited tour guide I've ever heard, and I've never seen so many awful and corny jokes about money plastered everywhere, but we had a good time. And in the end, we even got to see how mcuh money we were worth by height, or how many stacks of $100 bills you could stack next to each of us from toe to head. Needless to say, we were both worth millions.

Thanks to the Hills for getting us in, and for being so fun to spend time with while you were out here! It was so great to see you!!! Tell everyone back in Utah hi for us!

The difference a little sunshine can make

So we ventured out among tourists a week later since we had family in town, and not only did we catch the tail end of the cherry blossom festival and some river dance performers on stage in from of the Jefferson, but the SUN was out!! I was so happy to catch some remaining blossoms and get evidence of them in full beautiful color. The difference in these pictures is amazing, especially compared to our first photo shoot that almost seemed to be in grayscale compared to these. I LOVE the sun!

The post that every DCer must have in April

Cherry Blossoms
Ahhh, springtime. At long last. Oddly enough, the blossoms came long before warmth did, and the day Jon and I set out to 'beat the tourists' bright and early at 7 a.m., was the day that turned out to be about 30 degrees, accompanied by a constant light drizzle of wetness. We FROZE! Besides freezing our fingers, we were pleased to see that both our coming early and the gloomy weather meant almost no one was there besides our cold little selves.

We took tons of pictures even though everything was kind of gray-ish, because that's what you have to do when there are cherry blossoms everywhere. Thank you Japan!! Since we have issues narrowing down our favorites, we're posting these in a couple segments to help them go down a little easier.

Blossoms--round 2

more cherry blossom fun...

The day we can all act like children on the Mall

The National Kite Festival
When you send it flying up there, all at once you're lighter than air...until someone gets over-ambitious with letting the string out as far as it can go without winding it back up in the handy-dandy string-holding handle when the kite drops and needs its slack tightened. I won't mention any names, but did I ever tell you that Jon can create a killer knot when he's left alone with a load of string? To Jon's credit, he kicked our kite into top notch, and Elmo flew record levels above most neighboring kites.

We went to the kite festival with our friends Odie and Tracy (who are loads of fun), equipped with some high-quality Target kites, and we of course ran into tons of Mormons on the Mall. Good clean fun always attracted our type. :) We had a blast and we were surprised how many people came. It was packed! We saw pirate ship kites, huge flying 3-D squares, and our favorite...a set of 3-D legs in running shorts. No body, just legs. Hot. We also stayed around long enough for the "chinese fighter kite wars," which were fascinating in that they took 3-6 people to control each kite, but kind of anti-climatic when it came to the fighting. We were expecting some killer speedy kite swooping, but we only saw gentle gliding and slight swaying into other participants' massive kites. Nonetheless, we cheered for the winners from Sweden (or somewhere like that).

Below are photos illustrating the kite scene, our kite flying joy, and the death of Elmo upon extreme string entanglement. You should have heard the way the kids screamed every time they saw Elmo flying--they all wanted one JUST like him.

p.s.

and as for the recent "Meez" posting, let's all just get this out in the open that Jon doesn't really hold his hand over his stomach like that with whatever that weird wrist-flicking motion is, and I don't really make those seductive expressions with my eyes at everyone who walks past. But when you can deck yourself out as a cartoon, you might as well just go big or go home. Really.

Notice: good things to come

So someone at church yesterday so kindly informed me that Jon and I are very bad bloggers...referring of course to the fact that we take big blogging breaks, and then we send it all out in a smattering of posts and photos that is maybe a little too much of our life to take in at once. No hard feelings Julie, but only because you were completely correct. :)

Don't hold it against us. We're not gone, we're just slow.

But stay tuned, we're revving up for our latest marathon of posts. And when they come, don't forget to scroll on down...there's gonna be a lot of 'em.

Jon and Melissa Smeez

So, these homeys don't really look that much like us, but use your imagination.

Charlotte and Seth, DC Temple

I'll let Melissa fill you in about the wedding, when she gets a minute...

Seth and his family are from Ireland and the newlyweds will be living there as well. At the wedding we were given this "Real Shamrock" which is a wild shamrock from the highways and byeways of Ireland. St. Patrick introduced this little plant to Ireland in 433AD. This shamrock encasing has on it the inscription "Remember that happiness is a means of travel, not a destination." We're going to miss Charlotte and Seth, and hope to be able to visit them in that beautiful country someday.

Ashlee (Cutler) Morris' Wedding Shower

More of Mel's Masterpieces

Melissa finished her cake class but not without a couple more creations to capture. She made a cake in her class where the teacher forced them to design a big freaky clown thing sitting on the edge of the cake, before the class ended Melissa had removed freaky clown dude in preparation to make a cake for me to take to my work. After she got home from the class she threw the design of this cake together in minutes. My co-workers were amazed, and it was a great-tasting cake.

The final cake assignment was to design a bunny rabbit, and Melissa did an excellent job. She's well on her way to wedding cake design world. Or at least she'll be making great cakes for our children's birthdays someday.

Road Trip to Philadelphia (Mar. 1, 2008)

Melissa and I took a weekend road trip to Philadelphia because I've never been there and because my cousin Tom Wakefield's son Adam had a birthday party the Sunday that we were there (happy birthday Adam!). We stayed at the Wakefield's place the night we were there.

The Wakefield's were great tour guides for us ALL day Saturday, they knew their way around and all the tricks of Philly (like picking up tickets to Constitution Hall early), and they have such a cute family, it was great to hang out with them for the weekend, so thanks for everything Tom and Heather. Check out their Blog.

We had way too many photos to post on our blog from this trip, so we threw 39 into the slide show at the bottom of this post, so you don't miss out on all the great pictures.

Milanesas

Melissa whipped up some Argentine food one night. It's this weird stuff called broccoli, cauliflower, and potatoes. Oh yeah and these things called milanesas, and they are choice. Even though broccoli and cauliflower aren't necessarily Argentine foods, nor are they meant to accompany the milanesas, health conscious we are, and our vegetables we eat—Argentine or not.

Happy Leap Year

Melissa is taking a cake decorating class, so we were very blessed this particular year that it's a leap year so that Melissa had something specific to design her cake for, which we took to a Leap Year Day party with friends in the ward, where Melissa's cake earned rave reviews. And it only took 10 days to make :) j/k Mel, only about 3.

Kamikaze Lincoln

Apparently our turtle doesn't like "Lincoln's Park" anymore. He successfully jumped over the edge, twice, but only made it all the way to the ground once. For any of you who haven't seen him for a while, he's grown a TON, (maybe you can tell from the photos) so a drop to the ground isn't going to happen lightly. Both incidences happened while we were at work.

The first jump happened while I was on the phone with Melissa on my way home from work; she said, "Hey, where's Lincoln?" Being that there's nowhere for him to hide his huge hero-in-a-half-shell self in a 20-gallon tank, I told her he must have jumped out. Melissa found him lodged between the wall and the shelf that his tank is on (see photo to know how high up his tank is), suspended above the ground, scared spitless, and breathing like he was hating life...poor thing. He had white paint markings on his shell from the wall for a while, thanks to suicide attempt #1. The second incident happened when I walked in the door from work, and was on the phone with Melissa, I said, "Hey, where's Lincoln?".....enter attempt #2. So I looked to his favorite spot under the couch and there he was, like nothing happened. Silly turtle...kamikaze-ing is for psychos.

How he got out: when his water's high, he can apparently grab onto the filter and pull him self up and—as we now know—over. Once so innocent, now so rebellious. Needless to say, he's lost all high water level privileges. Who knew a Chinatown reptile could end up being so clever. Any advice on how to deal with a turtle with suicidal tendencies?