Beauty Queens and a Cute Kid...

Took a moment to visit DC one more time before we move 

and saw a few Choctaw Nation beauty queens

at the National Museum of the Native American.

And an awfully cute little guy...

Who was running and dancing so fast that I could hardly keep him in the frame.

:)

If this is chaperoning... sign me up!

About a month ago, I attended the high school's "Back to School" night,

a night for the parents to follow their student's schedules 

and a chance to meet their teachers.

I enjoy going to these.

They help me put a face to the teacher's names

and give me a small glimpse into the personalities that will be interacting with my children for the entire school year.

So when Quincy comes home and tells me that Mr. Adams said "this" or Mr. Chapman said "that"

I have a better idea of where it's coming from and how it came across. 

So, there I was listening to Quincy and Natalie's art teacher talk about his plans/
goals for the year

when he mentioned that they would need chaperons for an upcoming field trip to DC.

Quincy had already brought home a note about the trip, so I knew that their itinerary included a couple of items that were on my to do list.

Such as the water taxi to the National Harbor

and another trip to the Newseum where I had seen these shirts.

(Guess what I bought... might there be a give away in my blogging future?)

So I signed myself right up... I had always wanted to go check out this giant in the sand.

But what that meant was that I would find myself in charge of TEN teenagers that I don't know!

 The teens that I know and love and are familiar with are one thing,

but these kids were unknown entities.

Would they behave?

Would they get lost?

Would they listen to me at all?

I needn't have worried.

First of all, the cool thing about high school field trips as opposed to elementary school trips 

is that you give them general guidelines and a time to meet you and then you get to just let them go.

And while they are off doing... whatever...

you get to wander around the museums and the shops and chat with the other chaperons.

And as it turned out, I had a pretty good group of kids.

They behaved, they showed up on time, no one got lost...

To top it off...

this was the art/ photography field trip

so I got to drag along my big old camera bag and no one thought that was remotely strange.

We had a great time 

and

I got a day on the town with some fun people.

Now I've just got to figure out how to finagle a chaperon slot for the NY field trip.

Broadway shows, museums, hotel... all free for the chaperon!

Sign me up!

A study in lines

Between being crazy sick and then crazy busy, I seem to have "fallen behind" in my regular posting and commenting.

I was going to get all stressed out about this, but then I remembered that blogging was for fun not for stressing.

So.... Here I am, back, not stressing and hopefully not sick anymore!

Yikes!

Anyhow... the crazy busy part of my weekend is what this post is all about.

(and probably the next ten posts 'cuz I have so many pictures!)

I went to DC two days in a row, which is kind of rare because one day is usually enough to wear anyone out.

(There's a reason for the dual visits... but maybe I'll save that for another post.)

Sooo... while I was there, I found that I had a bit of a theme going with my pictures.

I present to you (drum roll please)

my study in lines...

(Don't mind me...I'm in a weird mood.)

I like the way they all look together,

but some of them are maybe a bit better full sized...

or full color...

Okay... now I have to find time to tell you all about

high school field trips,

very quiet tour guides,

my intimate knowledge of the Smithsonian lost and found system,

science geeks,

and new discoveries.


***Quick edit***
Mom, you wanted to know what that sculpture was...
here's what it looks like.
I stood directly under it to get the picture above.

Meeting the Blogging Queen

On a total whim, I decided to have a little "me" day in DC yesterday.

A little birdie had told me that the National Book Festival was going on and I decided that I was going to be there. 

I mean... what's the point of living this close to DC if I don't take advantage of the many cool things it has to offer?

So, yeah... that's me,
all sweaty and hot with no makeup and a bad haircut
standing next to the Pioneer Woman who was looking all cute with her totally adorable necklace.

Let me just say that it is sooooo unlike me to 

a) willingly pose for a picture

b) approach someone out of the blue to ask them to pose for a picture with me and

c) hand my camera to some random stranger (who turns out to be the food and wine editor of the Washington post) to take our picture.

(This is not a multiple choice.  If it were, the answer would be d. all of the above!)

(Oh, and e. might be... post said picture on on my blog, but I've gotten far more free with that lately.  sigh... more on that another day... maybe.)

So this is how it went down...
I got to DC, scoped the place out, found the appropriate tent with 15 minutes to spare.
I settled in and listened to Spike Mendelsohn from Top Chef talk for a bit.
Kind of cool.
Then... standing just outside the tent was a familiar face.
(Familiar to me, but of course, she doesn't know me from Eve.)
A few people were approaching her and taking pictures.
Next thing I know, I'm standing there making a silent request to her handler (the food and wine guy),
handing him my camera, and posing for the picture.
My mind raced to come up with something to say.
It came up with, "Hi, I'm Colleen."

Brilliant...

(But, seriously, I thought she should know who she was sharing her personal space with.)

Food and wine guy handed back the camera noting that the quality of the cameras that he had been handed were far better than the normal point and shoots and asked what that was all about.
I off-handedly said something to the effect of "that's all her fault" as I gestured toward toward PW.

(Mental forehead slap!) 

"My fault?", she laughs.

I silently slink away...  

She spoke.

Everyone laughed.

I kept my mouth shut.

I couldn't be trusted to come up with anything intelligent to say,

so I stayed far away from the microphones during the Q&A session. 

I had plans to redeem myself at the book signing.

Coming up with five second sound bites that might be remotely relevant or interesting is difficult, 

but I had a few plans.

Unfortunately, I never made it to the signing, so I'll have to redeem myself at another time on another day.

Everybody has a camera

"So," my sister asks, "how will you know who's in your photo walk?"

"I don't know." I say.  "I guess I'll look for the group of people with big old camera bags."

Uhhhh.... yeah.

The problem there?

In DC, everybody has a camera.

I exited the metro station and saw a small group of ladies sitting along a wall.  

There was nothing that made them stand out as photo walk people other than the fact that they all seemed to be waiting for something or someone.  

I looked closer and saw the camera bags and ventured the question, "Are you with the photo walk?"

Sure enough, I had found my group.

But after walking around DC for a bit, I realized how unremarkable a group of people with big old camera bags and cameras was.
There were cameras everywhere.
Pretty much one for every person.

So I started to take pictures of the people.
Now that's a big step for me.
I feel highly uncomfortable taking pictures of people that I don't know.
Shoot... I feel weird taking pictures of people I do know.
I even felt awkward taking pictures of the model that came along with our group.
So, my people pictures weren't my best shots of the day.
I was afraid to get in close and wait for a good shot.

***Here's a secret....a look into how my brain works...***
I try to hide all my crappy pictures inside of collages with the hopes that you won't notice that they kind of suck. 
If I really hate them, they've already been deleted. 
So you'll never get to see the really awful ones.
If the picture is big and bold, then that's kind of how I feel about them.  
Or, at least I find some redeeming quality to the picture.

When I got home from the walk I saw that a package from Amazon had arrived with a new Jack Johnson CD.
(We're going to see him in July and I wanted to hear his new music beforehand.)
I popped it in the car and had to rewind it a bit to listen to this song.
The lyrics pretty much described the goings on at the photo walk. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pictures of people taking

Pictures of people taking 

Pictures of people taking pictures.

I pictured us at the end of time

Holding up a camera to our eyes

I took a picture of you took a picture of me

In the background of the picture

Was water running to the sea

~Jack Johnson

ping! boing! bounce! crash!

The three billion, seven hundred and eighty-two thoughts that are careening through my head like so many bouncy balls are increasingly hard to corral and put into a coherent sentence.  I feel as though I have about five different blog posts all mixed and scrambled together in my head.

I had a wonderful, amazing, busy, exhausting, and altogether incredible weekend.  I probably did more talking and socializing this weekend than I have in ages.  Really!

The I heart faces photo walk was great fun even though I managed to take incredibly awful pictures. (More on that later...)  I did however meet some fascinating people and made a contact with a photographer that lives right here in my neighborhood!   I truly hope to spend some time picking her brain and learning a thing or two about portrait photography, because that is the one area that I struggle the most with.

Want to see my best picture from the photo walk?

It's ridiculous...

I laugh because this is not at all a "DC" shot, but yet, if I hadn't been so hot and thirsty, I'd never have seen this (and I really do like it), so here it is...

Whatever....

Okay, so I'm adding this to the Macro Monday meme over at Lisa's Chaos.  

All you macro purists, just look away and forgive me... this certainly isn't a true macro.  

However, when you are surrounded by giant monuments, it kind of looks like a close up. 

A day on the town

One of the wonderful things about being in the military 

and one of the rare benefits of having to move all the time

is getting to be a perpetual tourist.  

I figure we have two to three years to be "tourists in our hometown"

and try as I might, I never get everything done that is on our to do list.

So, this week, while the older two were off doing their various activities

(Key leader camp and a drill competition)

Grant and Julia accompanied me to DC.

The mall was filled with white tents housing the weekend's Earth Day celebration.

We stopped to check out the displays.

All were interesting, but NASA was our favorite.

I imagine that one of the reasons why we never get our entire "to do" list done 

is because we like to revisit some of our favorite spots.  

Grant hadn't been to the African Art museum, so Julia and I enjoyed showing him the sights
and noticing items that we hadn't noticed on our first trip.

I love finding the hidden, quiet places in DC,

like the Moongate Garden just behind the Smithsonian Castle.

I'd never noticed it before.

It made a lovely resting place, someplace that felt like it belonged to us since there was no one else there.

The kids ran back and forth across the little bridges tempting fate, 

 fortunately no one fell in.

Both the African Art museum and the Sackler Art gallery (Asian art) also count as hidden gems.

Located off the mall, behind the castle and the moongate garden,

not as many tourists know about them,

which kind of makes me happy because we're not fighting crowds to see all of the displays.

This was the first time that any of us had been to the Sackler 

and we found plenty of wonderful things that captured our imagination.

Then to top it all off...

we found a secret passage way.

Okay, so it's not really secret, I mean there were signs pointing the way to anyone who cared to look.

But the underground passage from Sackler to the Freer was new to us.

(Somehow, underground passages always seem so much cooler than any other way.)

Julia and I were excited to show Grant the Peacock room.  

I shared with him the story of the room, 

taking the same type of creative license as I did when I wrote about it in an earlier post.

I think Grant loved it as much as we did.

An impromptu trip to China by way of DC

Cabin Fever had been hitting me HARD this week.

I neeeeeeded to get out!

So much so, that I spent two hours on Friday night, searching google maps and accuweather to see how far south I could get in six hours of driving and how much warmer it might be there.

Let me just say that 5 degrees warmer is NOT worth driving 6 hours for,

so I stayed home.  :oP

 

Instead of leaving town, I wracked my brain cells for a plan nearer to home.

That's when I remembered the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit in DC.

AND

The temp rose several degrees on Monday to a whopping 49 degrees 

(beggars can't be choosers), 

making it a perfect day to get out and about.

  

Unfortunately, DC was being attacked by Jurassic-sized insects!!!!!

  

But that's okay.... Grant doesn't look worried at all.

I'm sure he's got it all under control.

  

We enjoyed getting to see an area of DC that we don't normally go to.  

The less touristy portion of town.

Most of the buildings were just your basic, modern, straight-lines type of architecture.

But we found a few points of interest.

I took this picture just as the bells were chiming.

Hear them?

Bong, bong, bong.

(Hey! my blog comes complete with audio effects!  

I just want you to live the experience with me.)

:o)

 

Then there was this building.

I loved the dragonfly awning.

And you can see from the outside the very cool stained glass windows flanking their elevators.

  

They called my name and drew me in.

The building is just an office building, but I had a very nice conversation with the receptionist

who gave the kids and I all sorts of info about the Defenders of Wildlife

as well as a couple of coloring books and a calendar.

And she let me take pictures of the stained glass.

 

Which is more than I can say for the people running the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit.

Not that I thought that they would let me take pictures, 

but how is one to blog about the very cool things that they saw if they can't show everyone the corresponding photos?!

They did throw us a bone with this reproduction warrior (his name is George)

at the end of the exhibit.

George is a good guy and was very patient with us as we took several photos in an attempt to get one where no one had their eyes closed.

My wanderlust has officially been sated, no more cabin fever for me.

My feet still hurt and I'm more than happy to stay home today.

Girls Day in DC

The girls and I went to DC this weekend and I thought I'd take you with me.
I hope you're not too tired... we did a lot of walking.
Do you remember the Family Circus cartoons where Jeffy is sent outside to get the mail (or something simple like that) and before he gets there, he manages to wander all over the neighborhood, on things, under things, wherever?
That's pretty much what our recent trip looked like. 

You see, we needed to go to the Natural History Museum.
But we couldn't find the special exhibit we had hoped to see,
so we took a brief gander at the new ocean hall and stopped to say hello to this guy.

Heellllooooo, Miiiiisssteeeeer Whaaaaale
(we're bilingual)

Then it occured to me that the girls had never been to the Freer Gallery and had never seen the peacock room, so we  crossed back over the mall to the Gallery.
If you ever get a chance to see the peacock room I highly recommend it.  It's fascinating.

And it has a great story too, which kind of goes like this...

Mr. Leyland:  I am so incredibly rich and I have so many priceless chinese vases, how shall I display all of them?  I know!  I shall ask my guy to build display shelves.

Construction guy: Sure, Mr L, I got it all under control.

Mr. Leyland:  Now I shall go on a long expensive vacation while you work.

CG:  Not a problem, Mr. L

Weeks pass and all goes well, but unfortunately, Construction Guy can't figure out what color to paint the shelves, so he goes to the resident painter, James Whistler.

CG:  Yo, Whistler!  Ya got any ideas on what color to paint dees?

Whistler:  Don't you worry your little head, I've got a plan... an awful, evil, WONDERFUL plan!

So Whistler paints and paints and stops only to send Mr. Leyland a note saying that he won't even recognize the room when he gets home.

Sure enough... when Mr. Leyland got home, he was ummm... shocked.

Then he got the bill...

I think that's where it all went down the drain.

There were arguments... there was drama... there was even more painting, resulting in a great museum exhibit with a great story.

Here's the real story and some great shots (that I could never get with no flash allowed) of the room.

http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/peacock/default.htm

Here are a few other exhibits worth looking at.

Tired yet?  Have I lost you?

No?

Okay... let's hop on the carousel.

Now, normally, this isn't very exciting, but on this day, the workers were trying to trouble shoot a problem and the girls found themselves whirling around at top speed, then slowing down, then speeding up again.

Best carousel ride ever!!

Hop off the carousel and trek down to the National Gallery of Art. (The modern art side.)

Now, we've been to the NGA a million trillion times, so it's begun to feel like home.

There are a few things we must always do:

1) Ride the light fantastic, aka the light tunnel with the moving walkway

2) Eat lunch... best museum cafeteria on the mall

3) Shop the gift shop

and....

4)  Lose Quincy.... we always, always lose Quincy.  (She is very good at hiding in plain sight.)

It is at this point that I realize that I have not only lost Quincy, but I have lost my cell phone!

Ugh!!

So, once Quincy is found, we retrace our steps, back to the carousel, back to the Freer Gallery,

where a very nice security guard points us toward a gazebo in which he says there is a security office.

Okay... no problem.

At the gazebo we are told to go to the third floor.

HUH?

We're in a gazebo!  Where would the third floor be?

Ohhhh... the third floor down.  Okay.

So, off we went, round and round, down a spiral staircase to the bowels of the universe, or DC.

Instead of being dank and scary... there were even more exhibits of modern art, and a look at the panama canal, and finally a security office, which amazingly actually had my phone!!! 

Not only were we able to find my phone, but we found new exhibits  

and we found the National Gallery of African Art.

We'd never been there!

Bonus!!

By this time, we were pretty tired, and didn't get to see everything, but we're looking forward to going back again and finding more of DC's hidden places.

Thanks for walking with me!

Winter trip to DC (and an ornament)

What a day!
Quincy had an art class to attend at the National Gallery (they're free!!), so we all hopped in the car and spent the day in DC.
The weathermen called for rain and snow, but that didn't deter us. In fact we were rather excited. We've never been to DC in the snow.
This is a picture of the drive in. Look bad? NOPE!
Dan loved it!
He said that it was nice to drive this road when traffic was actually moving.
All the wimpy drivers stayed home.

A few of my favorites at the museum.

I'm a sucker for mobiles.

The art museum's lobby is always decked out in seasonal flowers.
Christmas brings pointsettias and Christmas trees.
But it didn't bring a smile to Grant's face.
When I asked him about it, he said that he didn't think that every picture needed a smile, sometimes a serious face will do.

She caught a few flakes!

Love that snow.

We liked the way the capitol dome was barely visible against the sky.

At the air and space museum, Dan umm... spaced out?

If you really want to space out, you have to check out this moving walkway that takes you to the gift shop. The kids love it! They'd have gone back and forth all day if we let them.
I took a short video, but didn't catch some of the cooler light displays.




And finally!!! My contribution to the 25 days of Christmas Ornaments is this one that I bought while we were there.
We try to get souvenier ornaments from our favorite places and places that we've lived.
I figure that this encompasses all of DC in one ornament.