...and Monuments

Washington Monument= 3.5 (Craig = 3.5 MacKenzie)
This is the only monument I'm going to rank because you really have to do all the others. Well, you have to see this one too, it's impossible to miss, but you don't have to go up in it. Again, we spent the few extra dollars to get our tickets ahead of time and skip the long morning line. It was fun to go up and see the great views of the city
but it's not necessary. If you don't want to spend the money or wait in line, I wouldn't stress about missing it.

I also don't really understand it as a monument. The other monuments make you remember either the people themselves (Lincoln or those who died in Vietnam) or evoke the ideals for which they stood (Liberty, Equality) but the Washington monument is just a big obelisk.
Since we had both already seen of most the monuments before, we wanted to make it a little different so we did the Washington monument about 7pm then spent the rest of the evening walking around the other monument as the sun set and it got dark. I highly recommend doing this. Instead of being hot and sweaty, it was cool, calm and had amazing views.

Walking around to the Jefferson and FDR memorials was so peaceful.
We even had time to swing by the George Mason Memorial.
I had heard complaints about the new WWII memorial, but I really liked it.
I think overall the war memorials were more moving at night, the statues in the Korean War memorial looked almost real.
Very sobering, even with the tour guides and their flashing light-up umbrellas bustling around you. My pictures aren't that great, but I would rather have good memories than good pictures.

A bit of a break

Note: We've been having some bad storms around here and my internet at home is down. I can still put up some posts I've got saved and respond to comments during breaks at work but it might take me longer to respond than normal.

On our third day of our vacation, we decided to take a bit of a break and have some down time at a little community Craig knew of, taking the day to walk around a local festival and spend an hour canoeing around a lake in town. Nice and relaxing. Which means we both get a break from my super long vacation posts. Enjoy!

M is for Museum

The title pretty much says it all so let's get started:

National Archives = 4 (Craig = 4.5 MacKenzie = 3.5)

The lines are long but we went early and they moved fast. Craig knew just where to go so we got to the line for the cool stuff quickly and headed in. There isn't really a whole lot here, but what they have is pretty impressive (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights). I didn't take any pictures because even with it's no flash setting, my camera sends out a metering light and I didn't want take part in any destruction of historical documents or be whisked away to the torture chamber where they send the "flashers" although the big group of kids flashing their camera lights all over Magna Carta didn't seem to be bothered by any security detail.

We did take a few minutes to look around other stuff that most people skip where we found - President Taft's bath tub! How cool is that?! Now, I have to let you know that in my excitement over the bathtub, I did take a picture. And despite the fact that there weren't any "No Camera Flash" signs or any reason to think that bath tubs would be damaged by a flash, I kept my camera's flash off. But even the metering light was too much and a security guy came running over with arms flailing to stop me. I really wanted to tell him he would be better off guarding the Magna Carta, but I kept my mouth shut. I just hope you readers appreciate this picture.


National Gallery of Art (West) = 4 (Craig = 4 MacKenzie =4)

Our first museum of the trip and what a delightful way to start. We actually started out at the East Gallery but took the tunnel over to this one when the East seemed too modern and that isn't how we roll (we tend to like our art like we like our hymns - old). The "What to see in an hour" guide helped us hit the highlights but we took a longer convoluted route so we could see more on our way.

The Smithsonians:
American History = 4 (Craig = 4 MacKenzie = 4)

I wanted to go here for the pop culture item like Dorothy's Red Slippers
and the Muppets


and Craig said okay because 1) he's nice (don't let the grouchy picture fool you) and 2) they had Lincoln stuff. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that Craig is a big fan of Lincoln (see here, here and here). I personally found some of the Lincoln memorabilia kinda creepy.
We both enjoyed Julia Child's kitchen and the "Within the Walls" exhibit which showed the changes to a house over 200 years and had stories on the real-life American families that lived there. I was excited about the Science in American Life exhibit but got annoyed with the "Better than Nature - The Pill" section and environmental hazards sections. (I might go into more detail about those later but I don't know if I can do it without ranting so maybe not).

Natural History = 4.75 (Craig = 5 MacKenzie = 4.5)

We got there right when it opened and after some issues with the security (you can take a crochet hook onto an airplane but apparently not into the Smithsonian) we headed up the second floor. It was great, we probably only saw 4 or 5 people in our first hour we spent exploring the crazy world of Ants (way more fascinating that you would think, especially with the cool macro photos), the Hope Diamond and the Western Cultures. Apparently Monday at 10am is the time to go museuming. By the time we finished those and got to the exhibit about forensic science and it's role in determining what happened in 17th century settlements in Maryland and Virginia, the people were arriving. But it was still worth it. That was one of the coolest exhibits I've ever seen. I'm sad that it is only there until February 2011 but I really hope you all get to go to D.C. by then to see it. The mammal hall was pretty cool too, but it was really crowded. Overall, this was our favorite museum of the three. It had an ideal mix of history for Craig and science for me.

I really really wanted to give it a five but the entire downstairs (Ocean Floor and Mammal hall) was inundated with evolution. I was expecting it to be there occasionally (like the Evolution Trail, which we skipped) but it was in places it didn't need to be and in ways that didn't even make sense.

For example, a sign about large birds said that they evolved to be oddly proportioned and flightless because they didn't have any predators and didn't need to be small and flighted anymore, except in areas where they do have predators, there they evolved to be oddly proportioned and flightless but with the ability to run fast. Why couldn't they have just said that although these birds are oddly proportioned and can't fly, they can still run fast to escape predators? So, after that, I had to give it a 4.5. But you should still go.

In which I am about a month behind

I was recently reminded that I never told you how the baby shower turned out. Which is very rude of me considering how helpful y'all were.

For the gift, I went with this pattern and used the softest pooh fabric I could find. The original pattern is the wide one but I thought I think my diapers were narrower than here and it was too much fabric since the plain diaper parts were going to be more absorbent so I did two wide and two narrow. Except for the part where I learned you absolutely can't take out a stitch once it gets woven into the diaper mesh, it was a really easy project that I will probably do again.
Fallon made the cake and it was so adorable! Piglet, Pooh and the little butterfly were made of fondant ahead of time but the rest of the decorating was done on site in just the hour or so before the party. Talk about working under pressure but she did such an amazing job. It was the talk of the party.
For the menu, we served:
Piglets in a blanket (I think that was Craig's idea but I liked it :-)
Rabbit's tomato salad
Pooh's honey-yogurt dip with fruit
Eeyore's sour-faced mini key lime pies
Punch (Someone else fixed the punch but it used lifesavor brand sherbet as is sooo good and I'm not normally a big fan of punch. If you ever make punch with sherbet, use the lifesavor kind. Trust me.)
And for decorations, we just used lots of pretty girly platters and lacy tablecloths that the home hostess had on hand. Another co-hostess found three or four large stuffed characters on Craig's list, cleaned them up real well and set them around the room. The mom then got to take them home. It fit the theme but was still elegant. She also made the mother and grandmothers corsages with baby socks and ribbons. Too cute!

Taking in all your thoughts about the positives and negatives of games and the issue of not knowing at all how many people would be there, I went with an out of the box craft idea instead. We all decorated 4X6 scrapbook pages with verses we thought would encourage a new mom. These went into a stand up flip type photo album so she can have them displayed in the baby's room. I was a little worried that some of the women would lament their lack of craftiness and hesitate to participate but they all joined in and it turned out great. There were quite a few young ladies (10-14ish) that knew the mom very well and their obvious effort to make something special for her was so amazing to watch. Alas, I didn't get a picture of it as I was having too much fun talking with everyone.

So thanks for all your planning help and if you ever are hosting a winnie the pooh baby shower, you now know what to do. Of course, you have to get super talented co-hostesses and a mom as sweet as the one I had to work with which is next to impossible, but you can still try.

Foreign Affairs Friday: Honduras

This weekend could be eventful as far as the political situation in Honduras is concerned. As you recall, Honduran President Zelaya, a buddy of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, broached the topic of getting rid of the one-term limit on presidents, a popular ploy for wannabe dictators. The government there, including the military, the Supreme Court, and Zelaya's own political party, united in opposition to this. The removed him from power, deciding to send him to exile rather than arresting him, in hopes of reducing domestic turmoil. The world sadly has sided largely with Zelaya, condemning Honduras far more than they did Iran after its election shenanigans. Now, the former President of Costa Rica is attempting to mediate the situation.

At the same time, though, Zelaya is thinking of making a second attempt to return to the country. His first attempt, via airplane, was turned back. He and his people have made some ominous statements:

"The establishment and installation of an alternative seat of government will be to direct what I will call the final battle" against leaders of the coup that toppled Zelaya, [foreign minister, Patricia Rodas] said.

"The people have the right to insurrection. It's a constitutional right," [Zelaya] added, saying Honduras' constitution stipulated that no citizen had to obey a "usurper regime."

It is clear that Zelaya is willing to provoke mass unrest in order to get his way. It also seems clear that he wants to emulate Hugo Chavez (who has a lot at stake here) in gaining extraconstitutional power. What's not clear is how this will be resolved. Neither Zelaya or the current president seem to be backing down. The de facto Honduran regime doesn't have much international support, so it seems likely to have to relent eventually, but the next election is scheduled for November, so hopefully they can delay and extract concessions that will ensure that any Zelaya return to power is short and uneventful.