Weekly Review January 23 '15

Frank and I enjoyed our "getaway" last weekend.  First we went to see the movie Unbroken.  It was really good.  I read the book recently, and I thought the movie stayed pretty true to the book, although nowhere near as detailed, of course.  

After the movie, we drove down to Tyson's Corner, Virginia, where we went to dinner and stayed at a Residence Inn.  So we had this huge room to ourselves:

(We didn't even use the kitchen at all because we were only there for one night.  Oh, except I did put my leftovers from dinner in the refrigerator, intending to eat them for lunch the next day but then I forgot they were in there when we checked out.  Oh well!)

I can count the number of times we have been away from our kids overnight on one hand, and it seems like most of the time something goes wrong when we do.  Why are we so unlucky?  This time everything went great until Frank was taking his shower Saturday morning and the hot water suddenly ceased.  The water was so cold that even Frank (who doesn't mind cold water anywhere near as much as I do) couldn't stand to rinse off in it.  So he was stuck sitting in the tube with soap all over him for nearly an hour while I called the office, the maintenance guy came and fixed the hot water heater, and we waited 30 minutes for some hot water to be restored.  Even then, the water wasn't very hot (just warm) and since I hadn't showered yet, my shower was pretty chilly too.  (Although nowhere near as bad as Frank's.) And I HATE cold showers, people!!  I like them steaming hot.

Waiting for the hot water problem to be (somewhat) resolved slowed us down quite a bit and we were worried that we weren't going to be quite ready to leave at check out time so Frank called the front office (again) to let them know we might be a little late and they were so sorry about the cold showers (on a very cold day in January, by the way) that they gave us the room for free.  So our incredibly inexpensive room (because we got it for half the Marriott employee rate to start out with) ended up being even more inexpensive than we thought it was going to be.  So that wasn't so bad.  It was definitely better than the time the people in the room next door kept the movie Independence Day on super loud...all night long!

So anyway, we checked out (only a few minutes late) and spent the day exploring the National Portrait Gallery.  I'm still not sure how we ended up spending so much time there, because it actually wasn't incredibly interesting.  I think we both liked the courtyard (where we ate our lunch) the best:
  

Frank eating an incredibly overpriced sandwich.

After the museum, we took the long route home, seeing a few DC sites and ending up on "Embassy Row", where we saw a bunch of cool embassy buildings.  Washington DC really has a lot of great architecture everywhere you look!  I tried to get pictures but I admit none of them are very good...mainly because we were moving.  DC traffic is crazy so you don't mess with it!!  Anyway, here are a few of my attempts to capture all the beautiful buildings:

(not sure why the Capitol Building has scaffolding on the dome right now)

Some of the embassies (they all have flags flying in front of them, but most of the time I couldn't tell what country it was):

We did enjoy our time away, in spite of the cold water issue!  I wasn't really ready to return to real life yet, but didn't have much choice.

Sunday was nice though.  The sister I visit teach did come to church again, and this time she brought her daughter and they stayed for all the meetings.  That made me happy.  Jared had a fireside that evening.

Everyone was home on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.  I helped Jared sign up for the ACT and the SAT, and took Tanner to his work to fill out some paperwork so they could start putting him on the schedule (Except they haven't put him on the schedule yet...he's not working at all next week!  He's trying to find out why.)  Anyway, the paperwork ended up being a lot more involved than we anticipated so I was stressed because we were having the Elders over for dinner and Tanner was going with them afterwards to an appointment.  Thankfully, Frank made dinner and then the appointment got cancelled so I wasn't worrying about us being late anymore.  We got home about the time that everyone else finished eating dinner.

It snowed on Wednesday...we got about three inches...but guess what?  They DIDN'T cancel school!  That doesn't happen very often.  It was mostly the timing of the storm...it didn't start snowing until late morning and the snow mostly stopped before dismissal times.  Seth enjoyed playing in the snow after he got home from school:

(Our neighbor built the snowman in his backyard.)

And good news...Seth got to put those new snow pants to use, so they weren't a complete waste of money!  I am glad to be wrong about that!

We did have a 2 hour delay on Thursday morning.  I guess the roads got a bit slick overnight, because they weren't bad at all Wednesday evening.  I don't mind delays nearly as much as snow days...they don't cut into the time we'll have off over the summer and when you're awake at 5:30 am and then find out that you can roll over and go back to sleep for an hour or two...well, who isn't going to like that?!
Tanner was gone most of the day on Wednesday...he volunteered to fill an assignment at the Bishop's Store House.  He left at 6:15 am and didn't get home until nearly 6:00.  I think he enjoyed it, though.  It was nice for him to have something productive to do for once.

Most of the week was busy with the usual chores, errands, taking kids to appointments, and RS stuff.  I had a presidency meeting, went to a scout committee meeting, and did a few visiting teaching interviews.  (I'll be doing many more of those next week.)  I made an appointment to take Tanner in to apply for a passport.

I finished watching a movie about Queen Victoria and when I could I squeezed in some reading.  I have a couple of books on my new tablet, and this week I finished Northanger Abbey (Jane Austin) and started A Tale of Two Cities.  (I had never read the former before but I did read the latter one a long time ago.  Such a good book, though, so I want to read it again.)

That sums it up for this week.  January seems to be going by fast...only one week left!  I am not complaining about that either, since it's not my favorite month.  Every day that passes brings us closer to spring and WARMTH!  Just thinking about that makes me smile.