whiteout in washington

We're sure you've heard. Or you're here going through it like we are. But to make a large understatement, we have been seriously dumped on with the white stuff lately.

Dec. 19 was a rockin' 2-footer snow storm. Unheard of for DC. We're used to 2-4 inches once a year that melts off in limited subsequent days. All the same, December's storm came, it went, and life moved on just in time for a perfect White Christmas.

But starting last Friday night (Feb. 5), we got a blown-up version of a Dec. 19th repeat. Not only did we get somewhere around 2 feet again (apparently breaking a 100+ year record for the area in total season snowfall), canceling school, church, work and life in general for days, but by the time Tuesday rolled around the skies were at it again, landing us with another 10 inches or so. It's up to our hips. No kidding. Jon's on a freebie holiday tomorrow for the 4th day in a row. (Rock on, snow days!) Our car hasn't moved since last Thursday (despite Jon's diligent shoveling and cleaning off his car—just in case we should decide to brave it). The mail has come once. Church has been canceled for 2 weeks in a row and we just got word that Stake Conference originally scheduled for this weekend has been postponed by Elder Packer until March. Besides the neighbor kids outside going nuts with their sweet sled hill they built and the overly-confident SUV drivers, no one's left their own street (at least in our neighborhood, because residential areas are never plowed. Ever. Chalk it up to lack of snowplows, but seriously. Oh how Utah would laugh). It's hilarious, awesome, crazy, and giving us all a healthy dose of cabin fever. Jon is in heaven. I'm in heaven because he's home, but I wouldn't mind soaking in some July heat rays about now. :) But I can't lie...it's pretty fun.

Good news is we're finally checking some things off of our never-ending to do list. Bad news is we're running dangerously low on TP (anyone nearby got a spare?). Should things get desperate around here, we'll spare you the details. But in the meantime, we thought we'd finally get some pics up here to show our families a hint of our snowy state (and how cute our kid is surrounded by snow taller than he is).

We're curious to see if the speculation of more snow on Monday proves to be true. If the forecast is strong for snow, you better bet we'll be making a store run the second roads are clear enough this weekend, and you can guess what will be the first thing on our list!

Taken on Saturday night, the first night after the snow stopped and we dared take our camera out.






this is the path leading out from our apartment, and photo number 2 is our dining room window. Basement, remember? Submerged in snow. The bottom of our window is at least 6 inches above the ground, and it still looks like this. And I thought we lived in a cave before...






day 2 venturing out.
the man's reaction. what a babe.


he LOVES dogs. and it looks like they love him back.


oooo, pretty snow!












oh how I love this photo...doesn't it look like they're sharing some inside joke or something? not the clearest photo,
but i had to include it.














yeah, that's a car.




a little spontaneous light painting, but we made the cars and traffic lights do the work for us this time. :)








Van-angels. jon may or may not have dropped the kid in a time or three to see what he would do. I may or may not have begged him to stop for fear the poor little guy was getting cold snow all over his face and neck. i'm a mom. it's my job to beg for no nonsense even when said nonsense is really funny and cute. :)


looks like he survived!


day 3 venturing out.
hot.


it's official. he's a snow-eater. he digs his mittens straight in, pulls them straight out and starts licking. with very little coordination due to awkward snow layers. it's darling.




sliding off of one of the many mounds surrounding our path out to civilization. van LOVES slides, and therefore he loves sliding on snow as well. even in jeans since he has no snow pants. welcome to dc in the snow.


i'll eat him up i love him so.


the official shoveler in the family. needless to say we're grateful for his love of snow and his large muscles.







We hope you all have a safe weekend with no toilet paper rationing in your homes! :) We'll be here all week.

seconds

So if this guy was a first serving...


...then we clearly wouldn't be able to resist going back for seconds. NO. WAY.

Second scoop due to arrive approximately
July 21, 2010!

:)



for the curious...

• no, I haven't been sick at all, except for a bout with food poisoning. boo.
• yes, I'm VERY grateful for having yet another "I feel totally normal" pregnancy without any sick days (or afternoons, or nights...). I know it's a rare blessing!
• yes, we're going to find out what we're having. In just 4 weeks! (I'm 16 weeks now)
  
• no, we don't care what it is. We totally think it's a girl, but wouldn't be surprised if it were a boy, and we'd be ecstatic either way.
• no, hopefully we will not be waiting until the babe's 2 days old to name the poor thing (like Van!)
• yes, I'm starting to show. Good thing we're finally announcing this to avoid awkward questions! (such as, "I know she hasn't run a DAY since the marathon...but seriously?")
• yes, it was planned, and we don't think the timing could be more perfect! Van will be just over 21 months older than the newbie.
  
• no, we shouldn't be walking to the hospital this time since we discovered the free parking for mothers in labor (could it really have been that easy?)
• yes, I will most likely be opting for the help of modern medication this time. thankfully!
• and no, we're not nervous to bump our family up a notch. We are SOOOO excited! Yes, Van is a complete ball of crazy energy and we'll definitely have our hands full, but he's so incredibly fun right now that the more we see of him the more we can't wait to have another! We could not be happier to have another little one on the way, and Van's going to love having someone to hang out with besides his boring parents. :)
  
  

accidentally patriotic {MLK Day 2010}

He had a dream.

We knew he'd had a dream. We hadn't forgotten his dream, but we may or may not have forgotten we live so close to where he gave a speech sharing that very dream, and that should we venture out on a bike ride on the day honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, we might stumble onto his monument (or at least his engraved quote at the top of the stairs of someone else's monument). Of course. Welcome to the convenience of Arlington. (Potential visitors, that was a plug for you!)

As a free day to have Jon with us at will, we plotted and planned a bike ride since it's been much too long since our last (darn the January sub-twenties phase we've been having. We left Logan for a reason! This is not what we bargained for!!), and decided it would be a route of Van's choice. Not that he's fluent in English or anything, but were we to ask him what he likes, he would either soar his pointer finger through the sky with an appropriate airplane engine sound, pump his arm while sounding the imaginary train whistle with his "too too!" train sound, or flap his fingers to his palms and say "duck! duck!"

In that case, our course was set. Load up the bikes and start the party at Gravelly Point. Where all airplane sighting dreams come true, ducks can be regularly spotted, and if you're lucky, you can even catch a metro passing overhead while you're cruising on the trail.

And we're happy to report, Gravelly did not disappoint. Van was pretty stoked to see that things he'd only seen (or could only remember seeing) in books were actually real. He rocked our parental world with his appropriate self-sign-language responses to everything he saw, accompanied by his perfect sound effects and sheer joy for having recognized each thing.

We like ducks.


And airplanes.


And we LOVE bike rides. Clearly. {see joy below}. And tell me you love the fact that I have a sippy cup in my pocket. The mommy staple. It turns out I can handle losing a little pride for the sake of his happiness.




Happy to be on his own feet with the freedom of ridiculous amounts of open air.


"more? more?"


Taking on the stairs at the Lincoln.



Walking with dad. His hero.








Work it, dude. Love the tongue.


Dance and rock on. Jon was so proud to see his son pull off the rock sign. He's been teaching him long and hard.


As luck would have it, we even happened upon the MLK Day presentation by the National Park Service, including the playing of a recording of Dr. King's speech, which took place from the very place the rangers were standing. Really cool idea until they realized no one had charged the stereo battery the night before—cue park ranger #2 to read the speech out loud to the crowd. Really cool opportunity for us until we missed it all thanks to the maniac...oh how we love our crazy man.




The face of mischievousness we've come to know all too well. This was when he was trying to sabotage the ranger's big moment.


Plan B: let him roam wild and free in the Lincoln.






The classic lesson never learned by parents: trying to pose your kid where and when the last thing he wants is to be posed. In public. Shamelessly. It's official—we've joined the big leagues.





Fearless of man and beast alike.


I absolutely love the way Van's looking up at the officer in the second photo below. Like he's the coolest thing ever because he's sitting on that huge animal. Van's totally jealous.


And he's off!


We heart long shadows.




Still watching for airplanes.
















This was the greatest part of the day...

The unbelievable happened. He fell asleep on his face while riding in the beach cruiser. Completely unaffected by bumps on the path, roaring airplanes overhead, and his parents stopping repeatedly to capture the perfect picture of his nose being squished just so. Seriously, it was possibly the cutest thing we'd ever seen.




Still sleeping...








Bikes loaded, airplanes passing, strapped in the carseat...and he was still sleeping. He gets those mad sleeping skills straight from his parents.


Enough of our "sleeping in funny places" story...what about you? Do share. :)

how to unintentionally fall off the face of the blog world

As you may or may not have noticed, we've been experiencing somewhat of a blogging famine. All sorts of things have been missed. The holidays (starting with the 4th of July...), birthdays (mine and Van's), small trips, haircuts, projects, and a baby who suddenly carries the title of toddler and all that comes with it––walking and running, signing with his little chubby hands, talking his heart out in his best alien language, throwing killer tantrums, and giving the greatest hugs. And I don't even have some rockin' side hobby like sewing or crafting to use as an excuse for not having documented it all nice and orderly here.

It makes me feel a lot better when I see other blogs that have also not updated for months, leading me to believe we're not the only ones that have got tied up in living life and unfortunately bailed (hopefully a temporary state) on recording it.

But my feeling of being behind in life doesn't begin and end here at the blog.

The usuals:

• blogging to catch up since July :(
• cards to send out (July-August birthdays) and cards to make & send (every birthday after that)
• emails to respond to
• phone calls to make to catch up with friends
• thank you notes to write
• things to do for our calling at church
• laundry (I'll let it pile up for much longer than I should, then when I finally get it washed and dried, I'll let it sit in baskets for a week until I sit down to fold it . You should have SEEN the pile on our bed just days ago that took over an hour to tackle)
• dishes (for some reason when I get behind in the whole loading/unloading the dishwasher process it makes me feel eerily like a college student all over again)
• books we're both dying to read that are getting covered at the rate of one chapter a week
• design jobs for friends and family that have been on the FRONT burner for months, and still haven't fully made it out the door
• we haven't had anyone over in much too long...and we miss it
• there are always more photos to upload, more tiny edits to make, more CD's to burn and get off to their rightful owners, and more life goals to dream up and someday fulfill

Really, I'm just looking for a little reinforcement from anyone to let me know it isn't just me that sometimes feels 100% behind in almost every aspect of life.

Not to say we're dismal or covered by a black cloud here in the Smith home, because we LOVE life! We are loving where we're at and exciting thoughts of where we could be in the future, we're loving being married now as much as we did the day we sealed the deal, and more than anything, we're bursting at the seams with the happiness our little man brings us. We know we're blessed, and we're so grateful for that. I just wish we had more time to share all that with others, and do so in a more timely manner. It would be nice to feel "on top of things"––even the thought of it hints at a huge release of weight from the back of my mind.

I recently spoke separately with my mom and my mother-in-law about this always-behind-phenomena, and they seemed to both be able to relate, giving me the feeling that this might be a recurring theme for life. As long as we're not the only two crazies out there, then I can probably handle that. But please let me know if you've found any miracle working techniques that have potential to help one be on top of things.

So.

Know that we have the largest backlog of photos you've probably ever seen in your life, all waiting to come front and center to our little blog. And please know that I really do want to call you, email you, send you that thank you note, and come visit you. And we really do want to invite you over. And just so our parents know, we really do DREAM about going to bed on time and we would feel as though we had arrived at heaven itself were we to ever make a habit of it.

But we haven't become resigned to the backlogging life, after all, this is a new decade, which means big things could happen. We've opted for simplifying our goals for this beautiful new year of 2010, and if simplifying goals has the unintended result of simplifying life, then that would be big indeed.

Just ask Van. He would totally agree.