Mimic

Danielle has reached a fun stage where she likes to mimic people. She copies things that we do all the time and keeps us laughing with her antics. She also has gotten more independent and doesn't want us to help her do anything. If I so much as open her yogurt, she will refuse to eat it, even it has been ten hours since her last meal, and yogurt is her favorite food. She has also become a hoarder with her new Princess Rider. When we can't find a wii nunchuk, a remote or keys, we just need to look in the seat of her secret stash. What a firecracker!

Tonight she wandered into the bathroom with me, and while I was using the bathroom, she decided that she needed to feed the cat. She opened the cupboard, with me trying to explain to an almost-two year old that the cat already had enough food. She must have known that I was indisposed and unable to stop her, so she grabbed a handful of cat food and deposited it in the cat's dish with only a quarter of it ending up in the water bowl.

Once I was free to go after her I stopped her from grabbing her third handful and blocked the cupboard door, while she furiously screamed at me for letting her kitty go hungry. I scooped up the water dish and dumped it into the toilet before I refilled it with fresh water. As I was standing at the sink, Danielle grabbed the food dish and dumped it in the toilet. I'm sure it made perfect sense to her.

Fall Happenings

This past fall felt like quite a blur to me. Between homeschool, college, my calling, our trip to Washington, and life in general I didn't have a second to slow down. This Christmas Break has quite possibly been the best of my life. And happily, it isn't even over for a couple more weeks. I have had a time to slow down, stay in my pajamas, deep clean, read, organize, watch movies, pay bills, catch up my budget for the past four months, play the piano, clean out the garage, and sleep in. Plus, I told the kids they were on their own for breakfast and lunch, and sometimes even dinner. I have had time to call my own.

Now it's time to catch up on my blog and summarize the highlights from this past fall.

I nearly forgot to take a picture of the kids in their Halloween costumes. I was going to snap a picture when they went to the Trunk-or-Treat, but the battery in my camera was dead. In the chaos of trick-or-treating I didn't remember to take a picture until they came home and were cold and tired. Luckily, I did get a shot though. Brandon didn't go out this year. He passed out candy and then hung out with some of his friends for a while. Andrew was a boy scout, Connor was Draco Malfoy again, Nicole was a hippie, and Danielle was a bunny rabbit. They got plenty of candy.
A few days later I was in charge of our Stake YW in Excellence. We used the theme from Cami's ward, "Welcome Aboard." It was a lot of work but was a huge success.

That same weekend our friends the Fletchers came down from Walden (Nedlaw) to visit us. The kids didn't sleep all weekend, and they had so much fun. They invented a new sport called "Dally Diving" where you dive off the couch head first into a pile of sleeping bags and pillows. They played it for hours.
Next up was Thanksgiving. We shared it with our friends the Tolleys and had excellent food as well as excellent company.
The day after Thanksgiving, Nathan took the boys out to go hunt for our perfect Christmas tree. They found it, and we had fun decorating cookies and hanging them on the tree that night.

Danielle loved the Christmas tree this year, and she didn't mess with it too much. Connor was old enough to help string and tie them this year.

Brandon could reach the higher branches this year. He has passed me up in shoe size and is just about to be taller than me.

Andrew isn't too far behind Brandon.

We sang around the Christmas tree as many nights as possible.

The Tuesday after Thanksgiving was Connor's Pinewood Derby. Last year, he was the first of the Cherpeski boys to place at a Pinewood Derby, getting 3rd place. He told me on the way there that he was going to get 2nd place this year. I was worried that he was going to be disappointed, but low and behold, he really did come in 2nd!

I gave Nicole a cute new haircut.

I also discovered that Danielle finally has enough hair for a cute hairdo.

Connor took a few good shots of the deer in our yard after we had gotten a little snow.

Andrew's birthday snuck up on us. It was his party year, and his dream party was to invite his two closest friends, Bryant and John to play Memoir 44 for seven straight hours with pizza and cake during a break. They had a wonderful day.

He also got another cake on his actual birthday.

We were all relieved when Christmas Break finally got here. My semester ended, and I still have straight A's. I enjoyed my classes this semester and learned a ton, but I needed a break. We have been relaxing as much as possible.

I was such a bad photographer/mom I didn't get a single shot of any of Brandon's Football/Basketball games, or Nicole's dance/gymnastics, not to mention their swim lessons. Most of the pictures I took were honestly an afterthought. I don't want to run another marathon like that for a while, but I probably will next semester.

Brandon has been catching up on his reading, although Hockey started this week, so we'll see if I get a picture of that.
Andrew has been playing Memoir 44 by himself and anyone else who doesn't mind being skunked. In the rest of his spare time, he has been solving his rubiks' cubes (2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5).
Danielle has been playing in the dog's kennel.

Connor has been fine-tuning his lego-building skills.

Nicole has been playing with her friends every chance she gets.

It's nice to have a little breather, before I jump back into the chaos.

Smithsonian

This is my final post from our trip to D.C. Both times I had been to Washington before, I had a taste of the Smithsonian, but only enough to whet my appetite. I really wanted to see more of it. This trip was more of a feast. Because there were just to two of us, and we are in better shape from running this year, we covered a lot of territory in one week. We did a run through of many of the museums we have been wanting to visit. I had favorites from each museum.

The holocaust museum didn't allow any photography, but it was the most emotional museum for me. There was a scale model of Auschwitz with that still haunts me. It makes me wonder if there was more our country could have done.

The Museum of American History had the hat the Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night he was shot. I was surprised by how small it was.

The Museum of Natural History was full of interesting things. I really liked the gem exhibit and I saw the Hope Diamond again with a new setting.

The National Archives wasn't nearly as accessible as it was pre-9/11. Still, it was good to see the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.

The Air & Space Museum was impressive. I loved seeing the command module from Apollo 11. I was really wishing our boys were with us to see all the airplanes they love.

The Newseum was something new to me and ended up being one of my favorite museums. They had a powerful exhibit of all the headlines from September 11th. They also had a history of headlines.
The art museum was amazing as well. It was so impressive to see the brush strokes of Renoir, Monet, Picasso, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. I loved it.

We also got to see the second Air & Space Museum near the Dulles Airport. I will never to to the small one again. There was no comparison in the size and scope of the airplanes on exhibit.

My favorite part of the trip ended up being Mt. Vernon.

I loved it there, and we were there on a day with perfect weather. I looked in the same mirror that reflected our country's first president. I saw his home and was sobered to see his slave quarters and realize that as much as I honor him, he was still a product of his culture. He had an amazing view from his front door:

The scariest part of the trip was definitely the escalators coming up from the subway. It felt like we were coming out of the "belly of the beast."

I'm so grateful for our wonderful trip and that I was able to share it with my best friend and eternal companion. Happy 15 years!

Monuments

I loved taking Nathan to our nation's capitol. I have been to Washington D.C. two other times, but this was his first time. It was so fun to plan and so exciting to actually be there. My first memory of D.C. was a nighttime bus tour of the monuments. I wanted that to be his first experience as well.
We turned in our rental car, took the subway into town and ran from the subway to our hotel. Then, we sweated in our hotel lobby while waiting in line at our overbooked hotel for nearly an hour to check in, only to be told that instead of our King Deluxe room we had booked, we would be privileged to have two full beds. Oh, and we would still have to pay the King Deluxe price, unless we would like to cancel our reservation, but good luck finding an empty room in this town this weekend. Then we ran back to the subway and got off at Union Station, hurried to grab a wrap for dinner, found a bathroom and were re-navigated three times to where our bus departed from, ending up at the proper location with 1 minute to spare. Thankfully, we persevered, and it all worked out wonderfully.

The bus driver was informative but still had a great sense of humor, there were interesting people to talk to, and it was a nice rest after all the running we had done. It was worth all the work to get there. I had never seen the Korean Memorial before. It felt eerie and powerful all at the same time. I liked it better at night. The stone at their feet reflected the light and looked like swamp water next to the plants.

I also liked it during the day.

The best part of the night tour was that at 11 pm when we were wiped out, instead of having to go back through all that to get to our hotel, the bus driver dropped us off a block away from our hotel.
The next day we got to see the monuments in the light.

The Vietnam memorial is sobering.

Somebody left a couple rolls of toilet paper with a note to a fallen friend.

I took a lot of pictures of the WWII memorial for Andrew. They have a tower for the Pacific and Atlantic theaters of the war. Etched in the stone are the names of all the battle locations. There are also bronze wreaths for all the U.S. states and territories.

There is a wall of gold stars behind a fountain.

There were a lot of lives lost.

The monuments were beautiful and impressive to see. It was a great part of our trip.

What I learned at Gettysburg

I must admit, that the only reason I went to Gettysburg was for Nathan's sake. I've never been much of a history buff, and I tend to have different interests. We spent our second day at the battlefield and went on the driving tour after going through the museum, cyclorama, and film. There were a few things that I have thought about since the experience. First, it took me back to see the faces of those who died on both sides of the battle.

They were real people whose families mourned their loss.

This display of two fused bullet captured my attention. I don't know why, but for some reason the thought of two people on opposing sides shooting at the exact moment and creating mutual destruction was haunting.

We stood on the spot where Chamberlain held the high ground. It was extremely rocky and such a small space. They must have twisted ankles and felt so vulnerable in holding the high ground. It was awe-inspiring.

When I saw the wheat field of Pickett's Charge, I understood Lee's pride and folly for the first time. How he thought they had any chance of winning this charge is inconceivable. He must have known that there would be slaughter.

Later that night we drove into Washington D.C. where we went on a night bus tour. We saw this:

I re-read the Gettysburg address and the Emancipation Proclamation, and realized that there are some things that are worth fighting for.