A DC Year in Review

What a whirlwind of a year 2012 has been.  I’m glad that it began and ended in Colorado, but we made so many great memories, I had to write once last blog as a thank you to the District of Columbia for showing us a great time all year.  As was probably painfully obvious in my previous posts, me not so good with English.  So I decided to break down our year into one of my favorite things: bulletized lists. Woohoo!  Me like that better.

Things we saw

• Natural History Museum
• Air and Space Museum
• Smithsonian Mall
• Chantilly
• Mount Vernon
• Smithsonian Zoo
• International Spy Museum
• Museum of American History
• Phillips Collection
• Capitol Building
• Holocaust Museum
• Anderson House
• National Archives
• Library of Congress
• Newseum
• Manassas Battlefield
• National Building Museum
• Lincoln Memorial
• World War II Memorial
• Korean War Memorial
• Ford’s Theatre
• Petersen House
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighy House
• African American Civil War Museum
• National Portrait Gallery
• Museum of American Art
• The Kennedy Center
• National Harbor
• The National Christmas Tree

The people who came to visit us (in chronological order not order of favorite-- Steph)

• Steph and Peter ( approximately 15 times)
• Stephanie and Olivia
• Roy and Nancy
• The Brunets
• The Crafts
• Jonathan and Joey
• Kath and Abbey
• Emelie and Ryan (plus Maggie and Alice)

The 12 months of DC

12 – The number of calendar months we were in DC.

11 – The number of actual months we were in DC.

10 – The number of times I went to Popeye’s Fried Chicken, conveniently located within walking distance of our house.  Don't judge me.

9 – The number of times the Garmin lady corrected us on the drive into DC .

8 – The number of visits we got from family and friends.

7 – The number of times we went to Mount Vernon.  The membership more than paid for itself.

6 – The number of days I was on swing shift while Jenn’s parents were visiting.  I’m still recovering from burning the candle on both ends.

5 – The number of fish I caught while open ocean fishing in Nagshead, North Carolina.

4 – The number of days I had to travel for work this year.  Significantly less than usual, which means more time with my wonderful family.

3 – The number of weeks it took to resolve my enormous screw up of writing a high priority DR (Editors note: Yeah, I should know what this means by now, but I don’t. DRs are a fairly common thing at his work…apparently) against my own co-workers back in Denver.  I will carry the name Pri-B/Uno Bravo/Juan Bea to my grave.

2 – The number of perfect eyes Jenn has after getting LASIK.

1 Great year in DC.

Top Ten things about being in DC

10. History everywhere—I almost tripped over a cornerstone built by the Free Masons in 1834.  Museums, monuments and centuries-old architecture are everywhere in this amazing place.

9. The money—Gotta be honest here.  It was really nice and we’re hoping to get a new kitchen out of what we saved up.

8. Mount Vernon—Five minutes away and such a great place to take kids

7. Trees—Trees are neat

6. Having the time to get in the best shape of our life. (Editor’s note: I’ve been in better shape, but that was before I had kids, and before the whole “once you hit 30 your metabolism goes to hell” thing.  However, being able to go to a gym six days a week was awesome.)

5. Visits from family and friends.  We had 23 people who visited us!

4. Two words—Date days.

3. The work.  The analyst shop, Katie’s team and Jim Erker made it an amazing experience.

2. Seeing Steph and Peter every other weekend.  This could be thrown in under number five), but it deserves its own category.  I miss my sis already.

1. The kids getting to have a stay-at- home mom.  Jenn may want this one lowered/removed, but the kids and I agree: having the best mom in the world also be a stay-at-home mom is a pretty special thing.

So, if you’ll spare me one last set of un-bulletized thoughts in my last blog post, here it goes.  It was an amazing year.  Thanks to all my co-workers who welcomed in a short-timer with open arms and made me feel like I’d been a member of the team for years.  Thanks to all our family and friends who visited and kept our home-sickness at bay.  And most of all, thanks to Jenn for being in the trenches with the kids every single day with only a couple of exceptions.  Goodbye DC, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we’re so thankful for the memories.  

Home for the Holidays

　
LIAR!!  First off, name that movie. If you can't, I will promptly be de-friending you on Facebook. Secondly, I am a liar.  For the past three months we have been lying our asses off to family and friends in Wyoming that we wouldn't be home for Christmas.  We originally assumed that my contract was a full year, which would have had it ending on January 18th.  To my surprise, when I checked with HR, it ended on December 18th, presumably in an effort to save a little money and not pay me over the holday break.  So, we naturally started to think, "Why tell anyone we're coming back home?"  We could come home and surprise our families on Christmas, making for an excellent Christmas memory.  A surprise like this gets complicated quickly.  The recipe for a successful Christmas surprise includes:

1) Don't tell your three year old anything. They are blabber-mouths and are guaranteed to ruin the surprise.

2) You need a present re-routing plan. This gets into a set of sub-instructions
a) Tell your family not to send presents, that you'll celebrate a late Christmas when you get back in January (insert your own return date here)

b) Instruct your family if they have to send presents to only send them through the USPS. They will forward packages. Make up some story about UPS and FedEx packages being stolen.

c) Setup mail forwarding through the postal service.

d) This is important.  Your family will NOT listen to you on either a) or b).  Have a back up plan.  Ask a neighbor, co-worker or friend to re-send any packages that arrive at your house.  Suck up for months ahead of time to get them to oblige.3) Stock pile photos of your home in DC (insert your current home here) onto your phone.  These will come in handy later.

4) Avoid all attempts to Facetime and/or Skype while packing and moving, and while living back in your old home back in Colorado (Insert your old state here).

5) Use the pictures stockpiled in Step 3 to post Facebook and Instagram updates.  This will lead the world to believe you're still living in DC.  Mwa ha ha. (insert your evil laugh here)

After executing Steps 1-5 to perfection, we packed our remaining possessions in the car and headed home on Friday the 14th.  We stayed in Morehead, Ky on Day 1, St. Louis, Mo on Day 2 and powered through a 14 hour Day 3 to be comfortably back in our beds that night. So for 5 days, we laid low, unpacking our things while packing and making Christmas presents. Then on Saturday morning, we piled the kids back in the car and did an additional 450 miles to make a grand total of 2275 miles in the past 8 days. Short shout out ot the kids, they were PHENOMENAL travellers.  Even on the 14th hour of the third day from DC to Denver, they played really nicely for the most part.  They read books, sang songs and only occasionally needed a movie played, though thank God for the portable DVD player when they did.

When we showed up at the Garber house, there was only a single car in the driveway, when there should have been three.  This prompted Jenn to believe that the secret was out and began to panic.  We quietly walked into the house (yes, even Brynn) and heard the Garber girls talking in the living room.  Brynn went first into the living room and we heard a, "Oh my God!" from Abbey as Nancy and Kath followed suit.  The rest of walked into the living room as well and everyone had tears in their eyes, relieving our concerns that they had any idea this was coming.  When Roy showed up a few minutes later, we surprised him in the kitchen and for the next half hour he repeated, "I can't believe it. "This is wonderful. I can't believe it. This is wonderful...".  Successful surprise of the Garber family. Now onto that pesky Walker side....

We head into town as soon as possible that afternoon to see the Crafts.  At this point we feel pretty good about ourselves and are excited to have the trickery done with.  We park a couple of houses away from Jules and Mitch and sneak over to the doorway.  The tough part about this house is the nice big window parallel to the entire walkway up to the house.  Nora sees us first and exclaims, "I see Jenn and Phil!" Jules replies, "Um, no they're not here, but I forgot we do have to Skype with them in a couple minutes." (Thanks for forgetting us, Jules.)  We saw Nora spy us, so we ran up to the house to the chorus of, "What!? What!? What!?" as we realized we had successfully hoodwinked the Walker/Craft side of the family as well.

All in all it was a pretty special Christmas and a great way to end the year.  Just seeing everyone after being gone for so long would have been memorable enough, but to add the fun of a Christmas surprise made it something we'll never forget.  We're retiring from the lying game and are looking forward to going clean in the New Year.  I hope you all find yourselves surrounded by wonderful family and friends like we've been lucky enough to have for our entire lives. Merry Christmas!
　

The 11th Hour

If hours equal months, then this is the 11th hour of our stay in Washington and undoubtedly the toughest one of all. Today marks exactly one month from the day I'll finish our assignment out here and head back to Denver. It's been an amazing trip out here. I've worked with and learned from some of the best people I'll ever get to work with in my career. I'll never forget the lessons I learned here and the people who taught me them. From a personal perspective, Jenn and I've gone out more this year than we have over the past three years combined. The kids have been so lucky to have my wonderful wife as a stay-at-home mom all year, sacrificing her sanity and the great job she had back in CO for this opportunity.

Today is also significant because it's one week until Christmas, and Jenn and I have never missed a Christmas at home. When you're our age, usually most childhood traditions have gone by the wayside to make way for the traditions of the new family. So I have one more sacrifice to thank her for because my contract ends on January 18th. We won't be able to come home to due work obligations (that and I'm pretty sure the FAA has banned us from flying with our children until they're both 25). It'll be tough, but we are planning to do a Tour de Wyoming as soon as we get back to visit everyone we've been missing so much all year and especially now towards the end of our stay.

Keeping busy helps. We visited the National Christmas Tree last weekend, something Jenn has been excited to do since we got here. We thought we'd save money and drive into the city instead of taking the Metro. To any of our fellow DC-ites, spend the money. It took forever and a day, and the Garmin Lady getting a little snooty, but we finally found a good spot and walked to the tree. Because we parked in a different spot than usual, our walk took by a building we'd never seen before, the Executive Office Building. A beautiful old building that if we get time in the New Year, we'll try and visit again. We made it to the Christmas tree and it was fantastic....and crowded. A 28 foot Colorado blue spruce beautifully lit with 50 stars and over 45,000 LED lights, they setup a very narrow pathway to visit and with a double stroller, it was a very slow crawl to get close. All-in-all though, we had a great time and checked one more thing off our DC bucket list.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to visit an ice sculpture exhibit dedicated to the Shrek movies. Given our son's obsession with all things Shrek, we had to do this. They kept it at eight degrees in an effort to keep the two million pounds of ice frozen. They hire a bunch of excellent craftsmen and did an amazing job. Jonah was in a state of shock the whole time and spent the entire time jumping up and down and getting whiplash as he swiveled his head from amazing ice sculpture to amazing ice sculpture. At eight degrees, we were very happy when we saw the exit door, but so glad we'd had this great experience.

This weekend, we're going to visit Mount Vernon, probably for the last time. Apparently they bring in a camel (not relaly sure what that has to do with George Washington), so that'll be fun for the kids. The hardest part will be once the holidays are over, because we'll still have almost three weeks before we leave. If I'm already anxious with a month to go, I can't imagine what the first half of January will be like. For now, we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas (yes I said Christmas), a Happy New Year and we can't to see many of you in January!

VA Ink

VA Ink

Tattoos are pretty hard core.  I always thought they were for sailors, guys who have weird mom issues, tramps who need postage and drunk folks looking to “forever remember that girl he once dated for a couple months several years ago.”  Then my wife, her sisters and my sisters all got tattoos.  Now, no disrespect to all the wonderful women in my family, but the last word I would use to describe them is hard core.  Sure Kath and Abbey participated in a Wyoming Polar Bear club and Jules did ice climb throughout college and punched my 8^th grade bully in the face, but hard core is a stretch.  (That actually qualifies them all as tougher than me)  So, for a few years now, I’ve been thinking if regular folks like them can get tattoos, maybe I could take the plunge too.

Earlier this year, Jenn mentioned that she wouldn’t mind getting another tattoo.  In early October, Steph said she’d found someone to get us inked up in Charlottesville, so with three paychecks coming in November, I started looking for designs/ideas.  My initial thoughts:

Idea #1:  A full back tattoo of a dragon.  Maybe the one from Shrek for Jonah.  Maybe the one from Sleeping Beauty for Brynn.

Idea #2: A heart just above my hip.  It would have a sword going through one side and a flower going around the other, with the word "Jenn-spice" in the middle.  That idea didn’t really make it very far.

Idea #3:  It’s going to get weird.  Two dragons.  That idea made it a little further than I’m proud of.

In the end, Jenn and I decided on the same root of our tattoos’ meaning: our kids.  For me, I’ve always loved the stars, so I decided to get the zodiac symbols of each of my kids tattooed on my arms.  On the left, I have Gemini for Brynn and on my right, Pisces for Jonah.  I found a design online that I liked, but only for one symbol.  The folks at this place are real artists.  Within five minutes he had completely matched the design in both symbols, added his own style, while staying true to the concept and I was ready to go.  I was a little nervous about such a permanent change, but it came out really well and exactly how I had hoped.  In the end I was happy to honor my two kids who I love so much.

Jenn’s tattoo was a little more complicated, so they were going to take longer to draw up and iterate on a final design.  A few weeks later, Jenn went in and the tattoo artists did another amazing job.  Jenn’s idea was of the two kids birth flowers, intertwined on the inside of her wrist.  Super sensitive area, but she swears it didn’t hurt.  I wasn’t there and I’m positive Steph wouldn’t tell us even if Jenn did cry for 75 percent of the time.  Maybe Jenn is more hard core than I realize…. (Editor’s note:  I am not hard core.  It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I didn’t cry, nor did I need to have the tattoo artist stop, which I am oddly proud of.) 

In the end, we both walked away with two enduring symbols of our love for our children.  Brynn is already planning on getting her tattoos.  Her idea: dolphin on one arm, tiger on the other.  We’ll see how that idea comes along….

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving.  Any holiday where you sit around eating all day, watching football and listening to people tell me how thankful they are for me is my kind of day.  In our family we’ve always been pretty traditional.  Growing up, I ate olives off my fingers for about three hours straight while watching the Lions lose with my Dad and friends and then stuffed myself painfully full with turkey for the next three days straight.  I married a similarly awesome traditional Thanksgiving girl.  With the exception of a very fun and drunken fried turkey Thanksgiving that I barely remember during our first year in Denver, I’ve had 31 great traditional Thanksgivings. 

Enter 2012.  We planned to have Steph and Peter come up for the day and my co-worker Rick, who’s a great guy, also came over.  Our kitchen is pretty small and Jenn was trying to figure out how to work the turkey and all the sides with the limited space.  The schedule looked something like:

Wed

09:15 – Begin making pumpkin pie

09:45 – Begin making pumpkin pie #2

10:30 – Begin making cherry Pie #1

10:45 – Begin making cherry Pie #2

11:00 – Begin making cherry Pie #3 – yes, you need 3 cherry pies

11:30 – Refrigerate all said pies

12:00 – Clean bathrooms

01:00 – Sweep floors

02:00 – Wash dishes

03:00 – Dust the furniture

04:00 – Sweep floors (again – the kids eat like a dinosaur having a seizure)

Thurs

10:00 – Prepare the stuffing in the microwave

10:15 – Begin roasting the turkey in the oven

11:30 – Prepare the crostinis on the grill pan

11:45 – Cook the bacon wrapped mushrooms on the stove

12:00 – Bring out the appetizers, place olives on kids’ fingers

01:00 – Put the kids down for nap

01:30 – Prepare the sweet potatoes in the Crockpot

01:45 – Baste the turkey

02:30 – Prepare the mashed potatoes in the mixer

02:45 – Begin sautéing the green beans on the skillet

02:55 – Open the can of cranberries – yea we’re not very creative here

03:00 – Wake up the kids from nap

03:30 – Serve dinner

…or we could just order in.  Peter and Steph found an amazing alternative: a barbeque place by their house was offering a full Thanksgiving dinner for $25 a person.  Screw tradition.

So Steph and Peter picked up six Thanksgiving dinners on Wednesday morning, drove up from Charlottesville and the Thanksgiving weekend was upon us.  It was a great time.  We hung out with the kids, played Mario Kart when they went to bed and had a delicious pre-made dinner.  Jenn and Peter couldn’t help themselves and still kept pretty busy in the kitchen making appetizers, cookies, French onion soup and mashed potatoes.

We had a great time, although as the night wore on, I found myself thinking more and more about tradition.  We finished the evening the same way we’ve finished our last few Thanksgivings:  by groaning over a half-eaten piece of pie and watching Punkin’ Chunkin.  Punkin’ Chunkin’ is a great show that Jenn’s Dad introduced me to a few years ago.  Crazy yet oddly brilliant people from Delaware and the surrounding area get together and compare pumpkin hurling devices they’ve spent all year building.  The designs include: trebuchets, catapults, air cannons and my favorite, the centrifugal force machines.  We had a fun break from tradition this year, but I’m looking forward to getting back to Colorado and perfecting our traditions.  The only downside of going back is not having Steph and Peter around.  No Thanksgiving is complete without someone making fun of my body wave (Steph) and someone bringing me a beer I didn’t ask for (Peter). 

So whether you were at the China Buffet or making stuffing the way your mom used to, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I sure did.

DC Sports Quadfecta

DC Sports Quadfecta

When we came to DC, I was excited to maybe catch a baseball or hockey game while I was here.  The DC natives have it rough when it comes to sports.  The Redskins, Nationals and Wizards are perennial loveable losers and the Capitals, while close, but have never brought home the Stanley Cup.  Little did I know I would actually catch all four major sports teams before the year was up, completing the elusive and ultimately not-really-worth-it DC sports quadfecta. 

Basketball

Feb 29^th vs. the Chicago Bulls

The Washington Wizards were in a tight race all year….the race to be the worst team in all of basketball.  Ultimately they lost the title to the Charlotte Bobcats, but not for lack of trying--or maybe that's exactly why.  Anyways, the point is they're terrible.  So when the Bulls came into town, but Chicago-loving brother-in-law and I decided to go to a game and tickets were dirt cheap.  We had a bro-tastic dinner in Chinatown, then watched the Bulls destroy the Wizards to a packed house of 19,500 Bulls fans and one poor bastard who gets paid by the team to be a "die-hard fan."  All-in-all it was a great time and a good start to my DC sports experience.

Hockey

May 2^nd Round 2 vs. the New York Rangers

With the current hockey strike going on, we got crazy lucky that the dream for a DC Grand Slam didn't die here.  I assumed we'd have a chance to go in the Fall, but when the Washington Capitals made it to the playoffs and even upset the second place team in the first round, we decided if we're going to one hockey game this year, might as well go big.  That along with the fact that my beloved Avalanche have not given me many chances to cheer, much less go to the playoffs lately, made me extra excited for the hockey playoff atmosphere. 

I found some tickets on Stub Hub on the first level, nothing fancy, but solid seats for our trip to the Verizon Center.  Then things got awesome.  Stub Hub sent the tickets and the row/seat didn't line up with what I remember I'd purchased.  Since I got them on Stub Hub, they didn't have the exact seat/row on the e-receipt I got, but I could confirm that where the seats were, didn’t correspond with how much I paid.  They were WAY better!  Jenn and I showed up and sat three rows behind the glass right next to the penalty box.  This was and will probably be the best seats we’ve ever had.  Not sure what happened, but Stub Hub sent us the wrong tickets and somebody else was probably royally pissed off.

Baseball

July 18^th vs. the New York Mets

Oct 3^rd vs. the Philadelphia Phillies

The Nationals were the only DC team I was actually excited to see.  Strasburg and Harper are two sensational rookies that I was excited to check out up close and personal.  I was so excited I saw this team twice.  The first visit was with my sister and the amazing family she married into.  Her husband, Mitch, and his three kids came along and we had a great time.  I got an awesome deal on tickets that were right along the left outfield line and my niece almost caught a homerun that rang off the foul pole!  Mitch purchased two tall margaritas for the ladies (niece excluded) and the party was on.  We had a great time celebrating my nephew Henry’s birthday at their first time ever to a major league game and our first time at the Nationals stadium.

My second visit was a little more sporadic.  The guys at work and I decided to go to the Nationals’ last game, which was conveniently during the work day.  We played hooky and got to see two great events.  The first: The Nationals won the game to clinch home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  Oddly enough, the one that got more cheering was when Teddy Roosevelt put on his green Usain Bolt shoes and won the President’s Race with a little help from the Philly Phanatic.  No, I didn’t just have a stroke while typing.  The President’s Race is a fun tradition at Washington Nationals park.  Every game in the middle of the fourth inning, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt race around the ball park in huge over-sized head costumes.  And for 525 games, they have never let Teddy win.  Teddy Roosevelt was 0-525 going into the final game of the season when he broke the curse.  Fitting since the Nats were headed to the playoffs for the first time since 1932.

They lost in the first round.  Thanks for nothing, Teddy.

Football

Nov 4^th vs. the Carolina Panthers

And as the trees turned brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow, we came upon football season; the last frontier in my quest to hit the DC sports cycle.  My co-worker Jim and a couple of his buddies went to the game.  We got seats at the club level and had amazing weather for a Redskins game in November.  I’m a little frustrated at the Redskins right now because as they toil away at the bottom of the NFL pecking order, my beloved Broncos are on route to win the division with a real good chance to get to the Superbowl with Peyton Manning at the helm.  I mean, would it kill the NFL to sign a deal with the cable companies to allow for other team’s to get purchased, so I don’t have to get Direct TV to see my team from 2000 miles away?   But I digress…

It turns out my co-workers are not the timid engineers I expected, but full-on Peter Lovegrove worthy enablers.  By halftime I had consumed way too much alcohol, watched a little bit of football and stumbled our way back to the metro for some post game appetizers and sobering up.  I met a bunch of guys in my line of work I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise and we all got some good blackmail material on each other.  Ahhh…good times.

All in all it’s been a fun year getting to see sports from the East Coast.  With that said, look out Avalanche, Broncos, Rockies and yes even you Nuggets, I’m coming back!

Sandy Storms and Sugary Sweets

Sandy Storms and Sugary Sweets

So originally this blog was going to be an intense story of survival.  Braving the hurricane force winds with our two kids as we struggled to survive without power for days on end.  Frankenstorm, Snow-pocalypse, Winter-maggedon, but my favorite name of all for this impending doom was Brynn’s: Sandy Storm.  As Hurricane Sandy headed up the coast towards the Eastern seaboard, it seemed much less threatening when coming out of a three-year old’s mouth.  We put gas in the cars, charged all our devices, drank all the milk in the house, stocked up on batteries and bought a ton of non-refrigerated food including a delicious 12-pack of Oatmeal Cream pies….for the kids of course.

In no way do I want to be insensitive to those people who’ve been terribly hurt by “Sandy Storm.”  $30-$50 billion in damages and 175 lives lost.  They cancelled the NYC marathon and several people are still without power nearly two weeks after the storm hit New Jersey and New York.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone struggling out there.

For us though, Sandy Storm came and went.  The wind picked up, it rained for 48 hours and then as timidly as she had entered our lives, she left.  We were left with four pounds of beef jerky, eight cans of spaghettios and embarrassingly enough…only six oatmeal cream pies.  Brynn was left with a lack of respect for hurricanes, Jenn was happy that I’m not considered essential by my work and Jonah was just excited that everybody was home for four straight days.

So since I don’t have much more to report, I decided to throw in a note on Halloween.  The storm rolled out of town on Tuesday and Halloween was the next day.  Jenn made a great Peter Pan costume for Jonah and Brynn was an adorable Tinkerbell.  The size ratio was non-Disney official, but if Brynn stood back in the distance, it almost worked.  I was extra excited this year, because this was the first year that we were going Trick-or-Treating in our neighborhood.  When you live in a town home community on Halloween, being a kid is amazing.  The house per minute rate these kids achieved was dizzying and in only 25 minutes, we had a quarter of a pillow case full of candy.  We promptly put them to bed and helped ourselves.  I’m only assuming our parents did the same thing and we turned out fine…

So all-in-all it was a busy week.  With sugar highs and adrenaline crashes, Sandy storms and sweet sweet candy, October left with a bang.  Now if you’ll excuse me, a Three Musketeers bar is calling my name.  Don’t judge me.