Washington D.C.

June marked the start of Chemo (BLEH) But the fun part of June was taking the girls to Washington D.C. on an "educational trip". Bruce and Sally joined us, which turned out really great. Except for the fact that Bruce was a poor sport and wouldn't let the girls take a turn in their room (because they were so rude about how much Jeff and I snore!) We actually had a really great time and had some fabulous tips that allowed us to see some things that I wouldn't have even tried to see. I love the excitement of the Subway. There is nothing like the adrenaline rush of wondering if you will be mugged, shanked or killed at any moment! And the press of filthy humanity is like nothing you will ever see "out west". That was especially fun because we were in the germ free mode of chemo. I think we went through 8 bottles of hand sanitizer that week! Bruce paid for a cab every time he got a chance. And although they have postings all over the windows of the cabs, they cab drivers treated that law as "merely a suggestion" and were happy to fit 6 of us in seats for 4. One morning Courtney and I left the hotel early to get tickets to be able to go up inside of the Washington Monument. We got there an hour before they started passing them out, but the line was already a block long. Luckily I was prepared for lines and waiting and had gone to Cabela's before our trip and purchased some little stool chairs with shoulder straps, so we had our own chairs readily available. While we were waiting in that line the person standing in front of us (who was from Europe - Courtney was a little grossed out by the lack of shaving) asked us if we had done the tour of the US Mint to see how money is printed. I didn't know how to get tickets, so that wasn't on our list. She told us that it had the same type of line as we were in, but it moved much faster and had far fewer people. It was only about a block and a half away. So I left my 12 year old on the scary streets of our nation's capitol with a stranger's promise to keep an eye on her, and I hustled myself down to that line! I scored us tickets and was back in line with Courtney before she had moved the equivalent of two car lengths. I was grateful that she had a cell phone so I could text her continuously to make sure she hadn't been kidnapped. We also did one of those hop on hop off tours that worked out really well for what we wanted to see. There was only one time that we had to wait really long and we thought that maybe we had been duped (like my girls trip had been in NY a couple of years before.) Jeff's hair started falling out pretty severely on the trip, but we didn't really take anything to shave it off so he just wore his hat as much as possible and I tried to always shower before him because seeing the bathroom after he toweled off was pretty disturbing. Not as disturbing as when he let the girls pull his hair out, but pretty disturbing! We were fortunate to be able to get together with Jeff's cousin Ryan who works in New York. He joined us for dinner one night. I guess we were kind of okay company because he arranged to borrow a van from a ward friend the next day and took us to see some really great things that we would never have even known about without him. One thing we tried to see was the NRA museum, but "sadly" it was closed by the time we got there. The boys were disappointed but it was okay because we had a really MEATY dinner and they were able to reinforce their man cards in that manner! I am sure there are some really great pictures to go along with this post, but - true to form - we left our camera in that borrowed van and I haven't made arrangements to get it back. Maybe we should invite Ryan out for a vacation here (because I'm not sure I need to go to D.C. anymore.) I do, however, have lots of little videos from my flip camera, but it would take me forever to watch them all and find some good ones and then learn how to post them. So just take my word for it, it was a FUN trip! (BTW I am dating this to count for June, because the trip started in June - even though it ended in July!!)

Here are some of my Facebook pictures.