This weekend was our first official weekend in DC and I know what you are thinking - we must have seen some amazing things right? Well the majority of our Saturday was spent waiting around for the Comcast cable guy to show up. Reliable Internet and cable is a must for this tribe. The past week has been very frustrating for our resident IT man but everything is working speedy now. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have Nathan to take care of all my tech stuff - I would probably still have the original cell phone I had in college and would be going to the library to use the Internet (no offense to people who actually go to the library for their Internet).
Then we decided to venture out to do a little shopping. We are still in the mode of hunting down and gathering our food. After a quick trip to Trader Joe's where everyone stared at my screaming two year old we decided to try a new burger joint. It's at National Harbor and it's called Elevation Burger. The view was spectacular and the kids loved watching the sail boats while eating their organic burger and olive oil cooked fries. Yes, for a measly $40 your family of 4 (Jane mooched off the rest of us) can also eat an environmentally healthy meal. The beef was real but I was assured the cow lead a lovely life and was gently killed.
We ended our shopping trip with Nathan running to Best Buy for a new router and the kids and I checking out the dogs available for adoption outside the Petsmart next door. This made us miss Buzz tons and the kids begged and begged for a new dog. Okay...here's some food for thought, if we could have a dog, wouldn't we have kept the perfect 5 year old lab we gave away 10 days ago? You would think that me explaining this to them would be enough for them to realize that they could not get a dog, however, this did not help. They kept begging and promising they would take care of it. The sad thing is, I so wanted to get a dog too. I have come to the realization that while no one in Nathan or my family likes pets, we are most definitely a pet family. I love animals!! They are so cute and they teach kids a lot about responsibility and unconditional love. We always had a dog in our home while we were growing up and I am so glad we did. I hope that when our life becomes a little more stable, we can have a dog again. My kids are keeping their fingers crossed. Oh, and a cat too. Audrey is my little cat lover so if we have a dog, we need a cat too. We miss you Buzz and Rose (the cat).
So that brings us to Sunday. Today was stake conference. I was not looking forward to it seeing as how our stake conference was two months ago. It's one of those things you don't love to do because you are in the chapel for two hours, trying to keep kids quite meanwhile not being able to listen because your kids are constantly asking you how much longer until it's over and that they need to go to the bathroom/get a drink. So having done this not that long ago, I was kind of dreading it. So I have to say the entire meeting was not exceeding my expectations until the end when Stake President Nixon (see why I wrote "stake"?) gave an amazing talk that really spoke to some of the things I have been thinking about lately. He talked about how we need to prepare for our destiny and not try to control our destiny. When we get out of our comfort zone, amazing things can happen in our lives. Because this can be difficult, we are forced to rely on Heavenly Father more and have faith in his plan for us.
This meant a lot to me because just this weekend, I really began thinking about everything the kids have had to give up. Their home, their neighborhood, their schools, their grandparents and cousins, and their friends. I started to feel bad that we basically took everything away from them and they really haven't benefited from this move at all. While I believe it will be beneficial to them in the long run, I haven't seen too many immediate benefits for them. During President Nixon's talk, I really felt like we were doing the right thing and we just need to continue to have faith in our decision. We are trying to have faith!
Later this afternoon, we went on a walk on the Mount Vernon trail. It's right next to this waterpark (this word means something completely different in Utah) and everything was really pretty - a perfect fall afternoon. It was so fun being together as a family. Audrey brought her itouch along so all the pictures you see here are her doing. Pretty great right?
