East Coast Exploring

We did some East Coast exploring over the Memorial Day weekend. The first part of our tour was to check out Baltimore's Inner Harbor. We walked around the Inner Harbor and over to an area called Fell's Point. After that we headed up to Philadelphia. I didn't realize how much there is to do there. We saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed, Betsy Ross's house, Ben Franklin's house (the site) and grave, the upenn campus and track (home of the penn relays), and my personal favorite the art museum where Rocky ran up the steps (pictured above is the view from the top) and home of the Rocky Statue. Dave did a run to the top of the steps but he said it wasn't hard .... We also ate at two Philly cheese steak places Jim's and Geno's.

The last leg of our adventure was to the Antietam battle field and Harper’s Ferry. Dave's brother Jay was an excellent tour guide/historian. I learned a lot and he really made it come alive for me. It's interesting to note that the Generals who participated in this battle have army posts named after them - Jackson, Hood, Meade, Lee, and I'm probably forgetting one. McClellan (the union leader) got the shaft. Harper’s Ferry was gorgeous, I think that I would like to go back and bike there. We had a wonderful time seeing all the sites in this neck of the woods :)

My boys at the Inner Habor

Showing Jack the Rocky statue. I love that movie :)

Here we are at Geno's to get our philly cheesesteaks. This place does cheese whiz which I did not think I would like, but it was really really good!!

This is bloody lane. I believe I was told that there were more casualty's here then in all of D-Day. Appreantly when they do soil testing they can still find traces of blood.

American Idol

Did anyone else watch the American Idol finale? I am so excited!!!!!!! For the last two months i've been saying "Kris is my favorite, I know he won't win or anything, so I like Danny." I can't believe Kris won.
We had our friends Phil and Allison over, ordered pizza, and watched the show. It was a great night!!

Jack is 7 months old

Jack has been doing a lot in the last month. The most exciting thing is that he has started crawling!!! I love watching him explore. It's still the low crawl, but he is also working towards being up on his hands and knees. He doesn't really come to me or Dave very much, he is much more interested in exploring the house or a toy. Right now his favorite thing is my running shoes.

Jack is also able to sit up on his own if i put him in the sitting position. He won't get up there yet, but he'll stay that way if i put him down. He LOVES to sit in a high chair and shopping cart. I don't even have to entertain him because he just loves to look around and swing his feet and wave his arms. It's so much fun for us!!
Jack has also been meeting lots of other kids. He has three cousins here who have taken quite well to him. Then we have baby Andrew Doyle who is four months older than Jack. I have also met two other moms through friends here who have baby boys within two weeks of Jack. I am very happy that Jack gets to interact with other kids so much. Jack loves it too!

This is Jack with Andrew

Here are the Boland boys - Jack and his cousin Peter :)

Settling in ...... or not

In the past month, we have done a lot of moving in, a lot of seeing friends, a lot of seeing sights, and a lot of not having internet.
Moving in has been a difficult process. At this point, our bedrooms, living room, and kitchen are completely moved into. The day after we moved in, the hose on the back of the washing machine broke off and flooded what will be our office area. On top of all that, we had a huge fight with verizon about getting our internet installed. It has made it impossible to completely move in, so we are just going off and having fun instead :)
We have already been to the National Mall twice, the Natural History Museum, Arlington National Cemetery, and biking on the Mount Vernon trail (I am going to love bike riding here). There are so many more places to go see and the best part is that they are all completely free.
In addition to the sights of DC, we have been able to spend lots of time with friends. Our friends Phil and Alison live down the street and we walk over to each other's houses all the time. It makes me happy to be living in this neighborhood. We have seen some sights with the Doyle family and the Desert Bolands (Dave's brother's family), and we have been to a few bbqs where we met some new people.
I'll post a Jack update tomorrow :)

We went up to the Natural History Museum to see these dinosaur bones. It also turned out that the Hope Diamond is there. Both the diamond and the bones were really big.

Here we are at the new WWII monument. I love it!

Dave and Jack heading over to the Vietnam War Memorial. Isn't the National Mall gorgeous?

We get to live here!!!!!!

Our Big Move

We have had some internet issues, but I am FINALLY back online. I have a lot to blog about - even though I have probably lost all my readers. This post will be about our move, and I'll try to post something everyday until I catch up.
It took 18 hours to load up the crazy big uhaul. Our friend Tim was nice enough to help Dave load all night long. My mom came in the next morning to drive the first part with me. It was great to have the help.


I fell asleep at one point and when I woke up we were out of Texas. I didn't even have to ask because there were trees every where. I had forgotten about trees! We stopped for three days in Clarksville (Fort Campbell). It was so nice to see everything again. Jack had his first Easter there and met our very dear friends Kim and her son Tim (Bill is in Afganstan but on his way home!). My mom found an Amish furniture area about an hour away that we ventured out to and bought some dinning room chairs and a rocker. Fortunately, we had a uhaul to move them ;).
My mom stayed in Clarksville while we pushed on to DC. Our family and our stuff all made it safe and sound.

This was the crazy 26-foot Uhaul and car trailer that dave drove all the way to DC


I had been looking forward to Corky's BBQ in Memphis for half the drive. It was great!

The best part of our trip was having Easter dinner at our favorite restaurant Yamatos with our great friends!