Julie & Jeni--kayaking on the Potomac (Oct. 2008)

As has become one of our favorite traditions to take our visitors to, we made sure that Jeni and Julie had the chance to do some kayaking in Georgetown up the Potomac. The weather couldn't have been more perfect, and Jon and I had fun with Ren and Jayci while Jeni and Julie were off kayaking.

Jon and I went on a walk with the kids in their strollers around a nearby park for the whole hour, and I have to admit, we must have been quite a sight. Me with my 8 month-prego belly, pushing one stroller while my husband pushes another, each stroller with a baby that looks around 6 months old (even though Ren's 6 mos. and Jayci's 11 mos, Jayci's cute and small, and everyone mistook them repeatedly for twins during their entire trip here). Twins and one on the way, baby! We explained to anyone curious enough to ask that the two in the strollers were actually our niece and nephew and the one on me is ours, but the looks we got from others were definitely worth it.

Visitors--Round IV: Julie, Jeni, Ren & jayci (Oct. 2008)

At the beginning of October, we were so happy to have another round of visitors, this time Jon's sisters Julie and Jeni, and their cute little babies Ren and Jayci (hands down our cutest visitors yet). Since we haven't been back to Utah for over a year, we hadn't even met these two cute kids until Jon picked them up from the airport. We had sooo much fun with them, and I loved the chance to spend more time with my cute sisters in law, they're so fun.

Cutting out pictures to post is hard enough for me, but throw two cute kids into the mix, and I pretty much can't exclude anything. (I can tell already this is going to be a problem in a week or so when Baby Smith decides to show up...) So in attempts to make all the photos easier to swallow, I've divided them into separate posts of the things we did while they were here.

Here's #1!
Capitol Tour, Friday Oct. 3
(Thanks a million Kami for hooking us up last minute and for being such a cute tour guide as always! I loved having the excuse to see you!)

SEPTEMBER RE-CAP

Another month down, just one more to go until we're finally caught up! Below are all the posts that should have been made in September. Get ready for the last round of updates in a few days...

Getting ready for Baby Smith--the crib (Sep. 30, 2008)

Not a moment too soon, we got baby Smith's crib and pack 'n play set up just hours before Jon's sisters landed in DC with their two cute little ones that would need a place for their little bodies to sleep. We were working down to the wire to get everything done in time for them, and we're SO glad they gave us an excuse to get everything all ready in advance, because now we're done! Mostly anyway. :) I was so happy to have everything set up for them so they could feel at home. Thanks Jon for working so hard with me so we could pull it off and for letting me monopolize your time for weeks to get things done!! Here are a couple previews of his little bed in his room...

Getting ready for Baby Smith--recarpeting (Sep. 29, 2008)

So ever since we got into our new place, the carpet in future-baby-Smith's room had a terrible smell of wet, dirty dog, due to the previous tenant and her live-in dog living in that room. Not only are Jon and I allergic to animal hair and it makes our eyes itch like crazy, it's also a little disheartening to think of anyone having to stay in a room like that--especially a brand new little person. So after wrestling with our landlord on it for some time, we finally gave up on hearing back from him, tore the old carpet and padding out ourselves, cleaned the floor, and went and put the skills my dad taught us (by carpeting the living room) to good use.

One trip to Home Depot and a couple hours later, the smell was completely gone and replaced by a new carpet smell, complete with extra padding. Finally. And just in time...we laid it the night before Jon's sisters and their babies got here to visit us for a week, and that's the room they would be sleeping in. Check out our mad newfound home improvement skills.

Recent shots of the Washington DC temple (Sep. 2008)

These are still with our point and shoot camera, but considering half of them were taken through our car windshield while driving on I-495, we were pretty excited to get anything of considerable value. It's such a beautiful temple that it's really hard to take a bad picture of it. We love this place. To see more on the temple, click here, or for info on the its Visitor's Center and its exhibits/events (they're all free and open to everyone), click here.

Quick trip and baby blessing in Philly (Sep. 28, 2008)

The last weekend of September was the baby blessing of Jon's cousin's newest baby, Alexa, up in Philly, and since they're our closest family geographically out here, we wanted to jump on the opportunity to go join them for the event. All Jon's cousin's kids are really cute too, we always have fun playing around with them when we go there.

Jon's especially cute with the kids (see convincing photo below). We went to church 30 minutes early since Heather & Tom had a bishop interview before sacrament meeting, so Jon was put in charge of kid entertainment. He had all 4 of the older kids (ages 2-7 I think?) on his own and all I know is I didn't see them the whole time, and they came back happy. Jon said they took advantage of the church library and hoarded all the paper and crayons to sprawl out on the gym floor and go crazy with the coloring. He said when he was coming back into the chapel, the lady handing out programs said something like "oh, I almost forgot you, Brother babysitter!" as she made sure he got a program. So funny...Brother babysitter. Love it. I knew he'd be a good dad. :)

Here are some photos from the day. Thanks again Tom and Heather for letting us stay the night on your posh double-layer air mattress--we're sold on them! We had fun with you and the kids and hope to see you again soon!

Our first date in 6 months! (Sep. 26, 2008)

The sabbatical away from dating each other didn't happen because we got lazy, or busy, or sick of dating, because Jon promised me before we got married that he would always date his wife (that's me). But due to a 6 month rotation at Jon's job, he's been totally out of commission every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the last 6 months. It was an insane schedule where he packed in all 40 hours for the week in 3 consecutive days, and I can't go demanding date nights on top of that. So we've been deprived and date-starved since March, and since Sep. 19 was his last day on that schedule, we've been planning our Friday, Sep. 26 date-night celebration for months.

We had it all planned out to splurge and go to dinner at the top of Hotel Washington, overlooking the White House. Sadly, when we tried to make reservations that morning, we realized the Hotel Washington was closed to become some Hotel W or something---and it's actually been closed since last December. Oops. Not-so-efficient planning on our part. But Jon got the inside scoop from coworkers and whipped up some last minute dinner reservations at a darling little Italian resaurant near Ballston called Tutto Benne. I love Italian, so he knew I'd be easy to please there. :) The restaurant looks like a hole in the wall from the outside (just quoting Jon's coworker), but it's perfect and quaint on the inside. Better than any food or decoration though was just being alone with Jon again, with nowhere else to be. We made it!!!

Jon's type of job doesn't allow for much public praise and recognition, but I definitely saw every bit of effort he had to put into that schedule, and how little he complained. He's such a good worker and takes such good care of me, and I'm so grateful for that. It's weird now that he really will be the sole breadwinner and income-bringer in our home, but I love that he not only supports me in my decision to stay home with our children, he prefers it. Seeing him go through some hard work assignments this year just reiterates my confidence in him as the person that will be providing for our family--I know he'll work hard through anything and do what's best for us and our family, and that's pretty amazing. Thanks Jon for all your work! I love having you back with me every day! :)

34 Weeks (Sep. 24, 2008)

The updated belly shot...growing straight out!

The kind of party we throw for the people that are already making all the money anyway (Sep. 2008)

In the second week of September I had a huge evening work event that we'd been planning for months. This was a rooftop broker event, meant like all other broker events to lure the brokers in with a gift (a really pricey gift), offer grand prizes (insanely good grand prizes), give away food and drinks, make the tour a sample space before they get anything, and hope that in the end it amounts to some of them being impressed by our brokers/marketing/building and wanting to find a client to rent out any portion of the building. This is all pulled off by the miracle work of my coworker/marketing manager and the rest of our marketing team, and when it's all over, we can all let out a big sigh of relief for yet another successful event.

This was the last event I helped with at my job...time went by so fast! I LOVE my coworkers, these girls are what makes everything happen. And on top of that, they're so fun!!! I miss you guys!

Thanks, Dad! (Sep. 2008)

On my dad's last night in DC, he slipped me into dinner with all the other people at the conference with him, so I was treated for free to a dinner in Union Station. The food was really good, but mostly it was nice to see how much everyone there appreciated and respected my dad. It was great to spend time with him too (Jon was working until 12 that night), and he was even nice enough to metro with me all the way back to my stop in VA, even though he had to backtrack all the way back to his stop in DC, which would have been much closer for him from Union Station. That's my dad, always thinking about himself last, and everyone else first. Of course the one picture I got with him was taken by some random person in Union Station who apparently thought we'd like a shoulder/headshot with 50% ceiling in the picture...nothing like a flattering straight-up-the-chin view.

Thanks again, Dad! I feel bad we just worked you to death every night you were here, and I wish we could have had time to just go out and do a bunch of touristy-nothing, but you helped us so much and we're so grateful for all your hard work! Come back soon...

Visitors--Round III (Sep. 2008)

As I mentioned recently, it's been nearly a year since we've seen any of our family, but then just a few weeks after we got to see Jon's parents, my dad came out to DC for a business conference, and we were SO excited to have him here! Unfortunately for him, we put him to work the second he stepped off the plane, and we didn't give him many chances to rest between then and when he got back on a plane 5 days later. To my credit, he did tell me before he came to keep in mind that he'd be willing to help with whatever we needed in our new place, so I was really just fulfilling his wishes (right?). :)

We picked my dad up from the airport and went straight from there to Home Depot to get enough carpet to cover the nasty lemon-yellow/lime-green tile that was previously our living room floor (let me mention that the realtor didn't even call it a living room, she called it a "rec room." Suffice it to say it needed some help to feel a little more like home). The landlord refused to carpet it, so we were determined to 'lay' our own carpet, meaning, put down padding and make the carpet fit wall-to-wall without actually tacking it down. Kind of like a big floating rug that's stuck in place, but better. Lucky for us, my dad's pro at every handy-man thing there is, so we bought the carpet, had the Home Depot guys saran-wrap it to our roof, and then dad and Jon had it laid in the room in an hour. They improvised near the fireplace and laid some nice leftover tile that we found in our storage room (laid, meaning really, just laying it on the floor. No grout, glue, nothing. Gotta please the landlord! and you can't even tell it's just floating there, see pic below).

It was awesome, and I can't tell you the difference it made. I didn't even recognize the room when I went back there. Before the carpet, Jon said once that we'd never spend anytime in that room, and after the carpet, we kept going back there just because something finally felt like a normal house. Thanks SOOO much dad!! You're the best! To see the before and afters, see the post on our move, or click here.

Tonya + Will (Sep. 5, 2008)

We were able to go to a wedding of one of Jon's coworkers , and it was sooo pretty. They were married on the edge of the water at a beautiful orchard/farm in Havre de Grace, MD, and the weather was perfect--it didn't rain until right after the ceremony. :) Tonya looked so pretty and happy, I had to put some of their pictures up.

She was of course, escorted by none less than George W., as you can see in the photo above. (Okay, maybe not really, but her dad looks JUST like him and her whole family's from Texas, so they could at least be friends. Everyone was sneaking pictures of him all night...okay everyone meaning me). The dance afterwards was a blast! Jon of course was his crazy dancing self, and he loosened up everyone else to start dancing and get the party started. Nice work honey! I wish I could have videotaped some of his sick moves, but we had no video camera at the time. Let's just say there was some solid Vanilla Ice playing, some quality line dance time that let Jon and I show off our Utah skills, and there may or may not have been a back flip at sometime during the evening. Those of you who weren't there to see the show definitely missed out.

I had so much fun dressing up and being with Jon and his coworkers, they're all a blast and so nice to me. Thanks for inviting us Tonya!

Another under cover photo of George W.:

Visitors--Round II (Sep. 2008)

My cute roommate from college (go Aggies!) and her husband came out from Texas and stayed with us for about 5 days to celebrate Brad finishing law school and taking the bar. (I'm so glad it's you, not me Brad!) It was so fun to spend time with them and I was especially glad Jon had the chance to get to know them better.

I have to give Kaci and Brad a HUGE thanks--these two landed in DC the night before our move. They helped SO MUCH and never complained at all! It would have taken us twice as long to clean up and everything without them, and I was SO grateful for there great attitudes about getting stuck with us during a move while they were on vacation. They were so nice. Thanks you guys! You're so great!! I hope it didn't sway you from every wanting to stay with us again in the future! :)

Here are a couple pics from their visit:

The temple
























Arlington Cemetery






















The National Cathedral

In with the new, out with the old (Sep. 1, 2008)

I'm finally getting around to documenting our life for the past 2 months! The biggest reason we've been so slow (on top of getting ready for the baby and having tons to do at work) is our move from one part of Arlington to another. It was only a 5-mile change of scenery, but it's taken us a while to get everything up and running. We still don't have everything on our walls (we're not used to having so many walls to do something with!!), and not everything's even unpacked yet, but it's definitely feeling more like home, and we're loving the change. (Thanks again to everyone who helped us with the move...it was amazing that we could do it all in one trip and one hour since there were so many people helping, we owe you guys big! Let us know if you need anything!!)

Here are some highlights of the new place:

• probably about 3-4 times the square footage we had at our last place (the last one was probably only 350 sq ft or so...you can only imagine), which means we finally have space for visitors!
  
• 2 bedrooms instead of 1 (room for Baby Smith on the way!!)
• we can stand up completely in our new shower--no bending, limbo-ing, or other such creative skills needed to get our heads wet under the shower head, and no hitting our heads on the ceiling
• a dishwasher that runs all by itself and isn't called Jon or Melissa
• washer and dryer in-house, greatest thing ever
• a living room! With a couch and everything! It's nice to have somewhere to sit if that's all we want to do for a change. Jon said "I might even just watch some TV every now and then now." Not that he has, but if he wanted to now, he now has a nice place to do so.
• this place was almost fully furnished by the generosity of others after we arrived here. Thank you SO MUCH to all of you who gave away things you no longer needed at the perfect time for us to fill our empty rooms. We'd have nothing in here if it weren't for all of you!
  
• new carpet in the living room and the baby room (laid by Jon, my dad, and myself, but new nonetheless, see later post for details on our carpet laying skills)
• great neighborhood with tons of parks, super close bike trails, not to mention the hospital, dr., and future pediatrician just a couple blocks away for all our new baby needs :)
• our church is only 6 blocks away
• it cut Jon's commute almost in half
• our neighbors are totally friendly
• there's a high school nearby for all our football-game-going dreams to come true at

Saying goodbye to our first apartment:






















And here's the new one! (we're in the basement)

















And here's for the photo update of the new place I promised ages ago. Some are before and after shots (mostly to show the difference the carpeting made in the living room, we LOVE it) and the rest are just to show the general layout of everything (except the 2 bedrooms).

AUGUST RE-CAP

Starting from where we left off, below are several posts for August, which are just the beginning of our many catch-up posts that remain. Many more to come...

Great Falls with Jon's parents (Aug. 2008)

To finish off our couple of days with Jon's parents, we wanted to take them to Great Falls (since it's the closest national park we know of) and show them a little bit more of the outdoors close to our place. The highlight was seeing kayakers braving the falls, especially since we had just come from kayaking on our own, so we could easily look at them and say, "oh that's nothing! We could have owned them!" Okay, not really, I was more likely thinking that I was so glad we had been kayaking on part of the Potomac that was more like a lake than a river, but I'm sure the risk-taker in Jon was just dying to be out there on the falls with them. I loved watching from the sides! :)

PICS OF THE DAY: 1-going over the falls, 2-upside down in the water :)















After walking around the falls for a bit, we went on a "hike," which is actually more of a nature trail, seeing as there was absolutely no incline. But it was pretty hot and humid by midday, so we were grateful for some easy-going strolling. It leads to a man-made dam with a castle-looking house in the background, so we of course took advantage of that to take lots of pictures. My feet were totally prego-swollen that day, and Jon was kind enough to take pictures of those too, but thanks to my father-in-laws request to not blog them, I don't have to post those on the blog. :) Otherwise, Jon might make me just to be funny and for 'documentation purposes.' Suffice it to say they were large that day.





















After our walk we had an awesome picnic that Jon prepared ALL of (his parents were so proud) and headed off to take them back to the airport. We miss them already! Thanks so much for coming Jeanne and Jeryl!! It was so fun to have you here and we loved spending time with you! We look forward to seeing you again soon when the baby comes!

Kayaking with Jon's parents (Aug. 2008)

Jon and I have been kayaking a couple of times now, and we're big advocates of promoting it as a perfect, inexpensive DC activity if you want to get out of the business/monument district and get into the great outdoors. Our friends Nate & Ashlee introduced us to Jack's Boathouse, and we haven't been back to the Thompson Boat Dock Center since then. Jack's is a little more upstream (north of Key Bridge instead of south of it) and let's you get straight out of the city and right into some beautiful scenery.

We had so much fun kayaking with Jon's parents! They shared a kayak, and Jon and I each had our own, and you can guess we were embarrassed when they were killing us on the way back--we accredit that to them sharing and having twice as much manpower, not to mention me being 6 months pregnant at the time and Jon being nice enough to stay with me. :) Don't get me wrong, I still paddled hard and made some serious good time! But we weren't cut out to beat Jon's parents...Jon said that made him feel old. :) What a beautiful quick getaway though. It was the perfect Saturday morning activity!

Marine Corps Concert #2 (Aug. 2008)

Since we were so impressed with the Marine Corps band and Silent Platoon, I searched the internet like crazy looking for another concert at some other location while Jon's parents were in town, and I finally found one at the Navy Yard. Since we'd never been there, we didn't realize where it was exactly (or that once we got there, we'd have to actually shuttle over to the barracks), so we got there just after it started, and squeezed onto some super mini-sized bleachers with everyone else that didn't fit our knees at all, but it was definitely worth it! It was cool seeing them at night, and even though we only had a side view this time, we were glad Jon's parents got a chance to see them. They were impressive as always!

We had VISITORS!! (Aug. 2008)

For the first time in nearly a year, we finally saw some familiar faces of family here in DC! Jon's dad had a business conference up in NYC, and after their time up there Jon's mom and dad were able to come down to DC to see us for a couple of days. It was SO GOOD to see family, and we had so much fun doing things with them here.

They had been to the area before, so we mostly wanted to take them to lesser-seen things nearby and just have the chance to spend time with them. The next few posts will show some of what we managed to squeeze in during their short stay with us. The photos here are from the Einstein monument, the Washington monument, and a couple from Mt. Vernon (and one sweet night pic of one of the flags at the Washington Monument).

Marine Corps Concert #1 (Aug. 2008)

I went to this concert 2 years ago when I was out here as an intern, and I loved it. There's nothing better when you're in DC than doing something patriotic, just because it seems like that's what you should do. So I've been raving about it to Jon for 2 years, and we finally remembered to go!! (We always plan on doing things and then forget to do them before the event's over).

This concert is played on the grounds of the Iwo Jima monument, with the Washington and the Capitol in the background. They play taps, the Star Spangled Banner, and a bunch of other things I don't remember. But the best part is "Silent Drill Routine," which is when the Silent Platoon does their routine swinging their guns with bayonets and slamming them against everything (that makes it sound a lot less interesting than it really is, and probably a lot less safe too, but they're super impressive). Jon was just as impressed as I was, it was a fun after-work activity, and Jon packed dinner in a cooler that we went and ate on a picnic table afterwards. We made it just in time—it was their last Iwo Jima concert of the summer!

Beach Experience #2 (Aug. 2008)

Beach Day, Round II. For our make-up-for-our-bad-beach-day trip, we convinced our friends Brandon and Meredith to come with us to a place I've been hearing about since I was 8 years old living in MD with my family and never gone. My coworker made the recommendation to go to Assateague Island in MD after she heard about my disappointment with Rehoboth. There was a State Park fee (I think $10?), but it was SO worth it!!! If you haven't been to this beach, you HAVE to go. It's exactly what a beach should be--no shops, hardly any people, beautiful white sand, and a beach that stretches in all directions. The best part was the wild horses walking around the beach! We didn't get any pictures of the horses, but believe me, they were awesome. (the only downside to having horses was having to swat at horseflies...those things hurt so bad!!) It was hands down the best beach we've ever been to.

This time we left at 6:30 am to make it there for prime beach hours. We were there by 10 or so (we took our time and stopped to get groceries for lunch, etc., but there was no traffic, it was so nice), played in the water, busted out the frisbee, roasted hot dogs right on the beach with a sweet $5 disposable/portable grill we got at the grocery store, and we were totally entertained by Brandon and Meredith's dogs. Brandon and Jon swam out so far Meredith and I could hardly see them, and after about an hour they came back happy and completely exhausted from body surfing. Everyone on the beach was soooo nice, we were in heaven. The weather was flawless, and we left sunburned, tired, and completely satisfied. We had a full beach day, and we even got back before dark. Thanks Brandon and Meredith (she's due just 3 days after me with a girl) for joining us and making the trip so fun!! I was so happy to get my beach fill before summer was over. It's such a beautiful place, we'd recommend it to anyone.

Beach Experience #1 (Aug. 2008)

Jon and I had been dying to go to the beach ALL summer, and when we finally cleared a Saturday for all our beach dreams, we decided to branch out and head to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Consensus: not recommended.

The weather was fantastic, but we got out much later than we had hoped, which led to a nightmare trip backed up with traffic almost from the second we left. We had hoped to get there by 11 at the latest, but we didn't get there until almost 3, and when we did, the beach was FLOODED with other beach goers. I may or may not have been in a really bad mood by then. People had recommended Rehoboth because it's smaller than Ocean City and supposedly attracts a smaller crowd...we disagree. It is smaller than Ocean City, but just as many people go, and that makes it twice as crowded because there's no beach to fit everyone. Jon and I are not into the crowds and commercialized boardwalk, so we weren't super impressed.

The best part was playing frisbee on the beach with Jon, and the fact that Rehoboth supplies umbrellas for everyone. I'll give them props for that! But our overall experience that week made me beg Jon to go to the beach (a different one) the very next week before the weather started to cool down (see Beach Experience #2 post).