What's happened this week?!
Saturday, August 29, 20096:16 PM
Thursday:
Lockheed Martin Blackbird (ft in the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
We went to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum near the Dulles Airport. We went up to the Observation Tower and were able to view what seemed like all of Virginia and beyond. Planes flew by almost every 20 minutes. Since
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had scenes filmed at the museum, they had a lot of Transformers references throughout the museum. We even saw the Lockheed Martin Blackbird which played the character of Jetfire. The planes were so interesting and the Space Shuttle was so large. My mother years and years ago was driving down Interstate 66 in the middle of traffic when she looked up and saw a plane and the shuttle. She was watching it and wondering why the shuttle was on top of the plane and was not separating from it. When she arrived home, she had learned that it was the Space Shuttle Enterprise which had been retired. Today, we were able to see it up close and in person.
Friday:
The Lincoln Memorial (Washington DC)
This was our big trip day. Early morning we took the Metro from Vienna Station to the Smithsonian Station in Washington DC. As we got out of the station it began to rain, and across the street was a Farmers Market. While my family ducked and covered, I stood out in the rain in a line waiting to get my favorite treat: Kettle Corn! I paid $12 for a bucket of Kettle Corn, but the bucket is reusable and if I bring it back to any of the company's Kettle Corn stations I can get a refill for $6. After that we hopped onto the TourMobile and rode around to see the monuments. The point of the trip was for the Twins to get a general idea of Washington DC. They didn't need to see every single museum and every single monument, but to get a general overview. So we rode around seeing the different Smithsonian Museums and decided to stop at Union Station to eat lunch and get some small souvenirs for the twins. My mom and I realized that Union Station was like a mall with a lot of stores. We have made plans to just ride the metro over one day and walk around and shop. After lunch at Uno's we hopped back on the Tourmobile and saw different Memorials including the Washington and Jefferson, and decided to hop off at the Lincoln Memorial. The boys enjoyed seeing Lincoln, as they had remembered which president that was and could place him to the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. We also walked over to the Korean War Memorial, before hopping back on to the Tourmobile, in order to see the museum the boys really wanted to see: The Natural History Museum. We went to see the dinosaurs, the ocean life, the animals, insects, and of course the Hope Diamond. After that we went back on the metro and headed home, and watched the movie all of us had been waiting for: Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie
Labels: Family, Family Stories, Personal, Travel
Family, Yet Not Family
Wednesday, August 26, 20099:52 PM
Today was my first full day of my week of fun with the twins, Nicholas and Robert, along with my mom's best friend Auntie Barbara, and her husband Uncle Tony. The twins are like little tornadoes. They start of as calm little wisps and they're running around, then they settle down, yet you know exactly where they were with constant calms and bouts of excitement. They're absolutely adorable and they love to have fun, but the day could not have gotten more tiring with all the exciting bits.
Last night, everyone except my father and myself played a round of (as Auntie Barbara calls it) 'Musical Beds'. Auntie Barbara and Uncle Tony slept in my mom's bed (otherwise known as the guest room), My brother slept in a sleeping bag after Robert and Nick didn't like sleeping in the same air mattress, so I believe Nick slept in Andrey's bed and Robert slept in the air mattress. Yet when everyone awoke, Robert was in Andrey's bed and Nick in the air mattress. Throughout the night you could hear them switching constantly between the air mattress in the loft and Andrey's room.
Around 11 AM we went to the pool, and since absolutely no one else was there with us we had the two giant pools to ourselves. Luckily we today was an excellent day for swimming when it wasn't too hot when we got there. Of course there was an abundance of water guns when we had the 10 minute breaks, and a blast squirting our favorite lifeguard Matt. I exercised a bit with Water Aerobics and doing laps in the lanes. I had to stop doing laps in the lanes when I lost my hair tie and couldn't swim with my hair getting all over my face and causing me to be unable to breathe. When the snack bar finally opened we had a delicious snack of Nachos, but since they had no cheese we decided to just have chili with them (Robert's new Favorite). We also had a variety of crackers and chips to tide us over.
After finishing up from the pool and cleaning up, we went over to Tropical Smoothie Cafe in Centreville, VA. It's a often haunt of mine, since my father co-owns this certain store. ALL the boys (even the old ones) had Chocolate Chillers, while I had a Island Paradise (I believe), and Auntie Barbara had a Mango Magic. My mother and I shared a Sesame Chicken Wrap, Auntie Barbara had a Cordon Bleu Wrap (which she shared with Robert), and Uncle Tony had a Buffalo Chicken Wrap. The Buffalo Chicken Wrap is
extremely spicy, so I don't recommend it for the faint of taste. Nicholas decided he wanted to try it and he took a big bite out of Uncle Tony's wrap, and he looked like a scene from a Disney TV Show. His face got red and he gagged a bit and hurried to return the wrap to Uncle Tony. After that it sort of ruined the TSC experience as he refused to eat anything else except some of Auntie Barbara's smoothie which has low-fat yogurt in it to help soothe the burn.
Soon we came home to relax and enjoy ourselves, but the boys had been messing with my brother's broken RoboSapien V2 and could not figure out why even though they replaced all the batteries, it still kept saying "brain battery low", so they gave it to my mom, my aunt, and I. The robot turned out to be extremely creepy, annoying, and funny as it would turn on and turn off at certain times. And some random touches caused spasms or out of control movements, that it made it seem possessed. This possessed idea came from a previous incident with my cousin Jonathan. One time he had been staying over and it was approaching midnight and he was playing with a 20Q ball, and was yelling that it was possessed since it kept guessing what he was thinking. So he runs into my brothers room and jumps on his bed screaming this in order to annoy him since Andrey was trying to sleep. However, as he's lying in Andrey's bed, the RoboSapien which was supposedly broken was on this shelf and turns on, begins to talk, and then goes into Standby where in moves into that pose that the kids are in in the Quaker Oats Chewy Bars commercial and spooks Jonathan completely.
This was an extremely fun day (followed by an extremely long post.
Labels: Electronics, Family Stories, Personal
