Outstanding Civilian Service Awards

This Osprey landed at Ft. McNair the other day and Tom shot this photo.  It hovers and moves up and down like a helicopter.  Thought it was kind of cool!

That night Tom had to work at Ft. Myer for the Outstanding Civilian Service Awards.  It was also a shortened version of the Twilight Tattoo ceremony we had been to before.  The thing that was cool about this was the amount of school kids and tourists in attendance.

Air Force Memorial

Ft. Myer backs up against Arlington Cemetery.

               I would love to live on this street.  It's right on the base and the streets are just lovely.

The view of the city from Whipple Field 

Constantly amazed at those who give of their time and talents for our servicemen. The honorees  included marketing vice-president of New York Yankees (donation of time & resources and recognizing troops at games), Fisher House (provides comfort homes near military hospitals), Gary Sinise (improving morale, welfare and quality of life of soldiers with entertainment and visits), Got Your Back network (developed hugh support network of volunteers for service family members) and Ryan Blanck, gave up his private practice in prosthetics to work solely with injured servicemen and women. Developed a special brace (IDEO), waived the patent on it, and has dramatically improved their quality of life. Thanks to all these awesome folks!

 All the servicemen in the show were great about having photos taken with the kids and signing autographs.  It's like they were rockstars!

Too Much To Do!

I read that every Friday night from May through Aug, down by the river, there are free concerts so after my day long adventure in Georgetown I packed a small picnic and Tom and I took the Metro to the Navy Yards then walked over to the riverfront.  It was an R&B band that was really good so we relaxed with our water bottles, cheese, crackers, apples and See's Lollypops and enjoyed the gorgeous weather, the people watching and the atmosphere.

 We wandered around the Navy Yards where we could still hear the music then watched some of the spectators dancing to the music.

As it was wrapping up we started walking toward home but decided to stop at the Fairgrounds by the Nationals Ballpark to see what was going on there. It was the Truckeroo where all the food trucks from the area pull in and set up once a month.  There was live music and tons of people (much younger than us!) so we just wandered through to see what kind of food there was then headed home.

The next morning we got up and it was rainy and dreary.  We didn't know what we wanted to do so we  went for a swim (indoor) then headed to Union Station to try our luck at 600 million.  We're generally not gamblers but boy, you just have to dream.  

 We grabbed some lunch at Union Station then headed to the Postal Museum which is right next door.

I failed miserably at the "throw the mail in the right bin" game.

It was pretty interesting...lots of things about the Pony Express and the automation of the postal service over the years and we spent probably an hour poking around then decided to walk and see if we could find the National Asian Festival.

The rain stopped and we happened on the Japanese American Monument.

I've read a couple of books about Utah's Topaz and other Japanese internment camps.  Yeah, that wasn't our finest hour.

Then, there it was......another festival!

I'm sure the weather hurt attendance....having been in charge of stuff like this in the past, I kept thinking of the poor people who put hours and hours into planning and then are left at the mercy of the weather that particular day.  Still, people showed up with their umbrellas!

Had some Thai tea and Tom's favorite food in the world....sticky rice and mango.

Okay, this is something that is really bugging me about DC.  I don't know if it's just because of the sequester cut backs or if it's always like this but I don't find this a very attractive way to welcome folks to the nation's capital.  Every weekend is like this!

We came home and read & napped and decided to make a last minute call about attending Opera in the Outfield because the weather was so dicey.  5:15 PM we decided to give it a go and hope for seats under the upper levels in case it rained.

It was sponsored by M&M's so we both ended up with handfuls of goodies to go along with our dinner of (yet again) cheese, crackers and apples.....though Tom did feel compelled to have a stadium hotdog.  Got to relax, read and people watch while we waited for the 7 PM curtain as the show was live from The Kennedy Center.  It got a little chilly but I had packed blankets so between those and cuddling we were cozy.  Showboat was presented by the National Opera so as with any opera, the voices were amazing.....some of the acting...not so much.  Show was very good though, sound was awesome and the cast took their curtain calls in Nats baseball caps.  Pretty fun!  Walked home and fell into bed around 10.  And THAT was a very full (but fun) day!

Georgetown

 I am lucky to have friends here from Utah that I get to still see occasionally.  I've been helping my friend Dalliss with a retreat that's coming up in a couple of weeks so I've been heading to Vienna, VA every Thursday for that, but went in early one day so I could have lunch and visit with another friend Stephanie who was also from Utah.  She showed me their cute neighborhood right behind Wolf Trap (they can hear the concerts!), helped me find a nursery where I could buy some plants, showed me Chuck Hagel's house, complete with secret service parked out front, we had a yummy lunch and then I got to see her darling daughter Anna, who I have not seen since they left Utah seven years ago!

Friday, my friend Denise (who I also knew from Utah) and I headed to Georgetown for the day.  She and her husband are moving to Colorado next month for his job.  He has been at the Pentagon since they left Utah and you may recall we stayed at their house with Denise while Jeff was deployed and while we were looking for housing here.  Anyway, she picked me up Friday morning, we parked and wandered the streets of Georgetown for several hours.

 The streets are lined with shops and cafes but you can walk up the side streets and see all these great town homes.  As we got to the top of one street we could see Georgetown University where they were holding graduation ceremonies at several tented locations around campus so we poked our noses in around there as well.

Denise is completely fascinated by the Kennedy's and knew they had 7 Georgetown homes they had lived in during their time in DC.  She looked them up on their phone and we tracked this one down that John F. Kennedy lived in when he was a congressman and before he was married.

She was also completely stoked when we had been driving into town and passed the Watergate apartments!  She couldn't stop talking about that!  

 Georgetown Cupcakes was on our list of things to see. I had to admit I didn't know about them and hadn't seen the show but after we had stopped at a small market and grabbed a quick sandwich and water.....we went looking for the shop.  Sure enough, as we walked up the street....there it was!

 I had the BEST red velvet cupcake I've ever eaten and Denise had lemon.  Cake was moist and yummy and the icing was creamy, not too sweet and just perfect!  Worth the $2.75!

 This was the Francis Scott Key park which we followed down toward the river.

 Yeah, see those cute blue shoes?  Brand new, comfortable flats that I thought would be perfect for walking all day.  When I got home I had gigantic blisters on 3 toes!  I guess that's what happens when you splurge big and spend $5.95 on shoes!  We had a great day though...perfect weather and managed to see everything we wanted to see (except the Exorcist stairwell which I'll have to look up for next time) without the benefit of maps.  We squeezed a whole heck of a lot into a few hours.