Harper's Ferry

Two weekends ago, Heather and I went with our close friends Ken and Nichole to spend a day in the historical little town of Harper's Ferry, which is in the western part of Virginia, also known by some as the state of West Virginia (that was for you, Tys). Heather did some amazing research beforehand, so we knew some of the more interesting points of the town and fun things to do. We had a great day.

We started out with a nice little hike up a few of the hills surrounding Harper's Ferry. Heather set a pretty brisk pace, but we somehow managed to keep up. Here you see everyone pointing to Harper's Ferry below. It was a great vantage point.

Next, we bought some incredibly delicious homemade kettle corn and cinnamon roasted almonds and drove into town and. After Kenny found an awesome parking spot, we started walking around. Harper's Ferry is famous because George Washington picked the site to be a federal arsenal. As a result, gun factories lined the river in this city. A man named John Brown attacked this city in 1859 and held it for a little while before Robert E. Lee (a colonel at the time) led a detachment of marines and overcame Brown's band. Brown apparently raided city and in hopes of taking the weapons, sparking an armed slave revolt, and overthrowing slavery in the US. Ironic thing is, the only person killed by Brown's group during his raid was a free black man who wouldn't abandon his post. I never did quite figure that one out.

Anyway, below is a picture where Brown made his last stand before his death. It was a pretty emotional place (not really).

I took the next pic from a lovely spot overlooking the river. It was close to the very spot where Thomas Jefferson in 1783 said the following: "The passage of the Patowmac (yes, he spelled it funny; how's a guy supposed to know how to pronounce this stupid word with all these funny spellings!) through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature... This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic."

We certainly thought that the scenery was nice, but realized that Mr. Jefferson was definitely prone to exaggeration.

We ate dinner in this pleasant little cafe.

Our highlight of the day was a ghost tour that we did at night. The tour originated with a woman who moved to the town in the late 70's to open a small cafe. Not long after moving there, some weird things started happening in her cafe (I won't go into the details; you'll have to take the tour to find out what happened). She started asking around about the history of her cafe (which was built before the Civil War), and discovered that many people had had similar experiences in other town buildings, some long before she had showed up. So she compiled all of the stories into a book and gave tours around the city at night relaying these stories. She recently stopped doing it 5 or so years ago, but this nice gentleman pictured below picked up her baton and now runs the ghost tour. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to end the day.

DC Fun

(This was written by Heather on March 30th. She just never got around to posting it, so I'm helping her.)

So- you have all heard about the marathon from Todd, and I am so proud of him for his accomplishment (although seeing him train, I too have come to a sure knowledge that I will never do a full marathon!). It's my spring break right now, and I wanted to take a minute to share the fun I had with Todd's family who came to see Adam and him race. We definitely enjoyed watching the race, but that was not the end of our adventures. Oh no.

During the race, we all (Nate, Sarena and the kids, and even me with my pregnant belly) had to run several blocks to make sure we were going to be at the right spots at the right time and luckily we never missed seeing Todd and Adam. I took a lot of pics, so that's why I am not in many!

After the race, we all had our sack lunches under the trees while the kids enjoyed some big blow up jumping things. It was the perfect day for this. Next, we said goodbye to the boys, and Sarena and her kids, Meagan and Chris and their little one Wendy, and me all decided to do a little touring. We started off going to the capital for a tour. Annoyingly enough, they allowed absolutely no food or drinks inside the capital. You couldn't even have an empty water bottle. I asked the security guard if that was really necessary and he said "for safety, no, but I guess they want you to buy the food in there--so sorry mam." Very annoying since we had brought food to munch on through out the day. Meagan really didn't want to trash all her food, since she is nursing and needs the sustenance, so they waited outside in the nice weather with all the food.

The capital was pretty cool. I had never been inside before. They showed us the halls of statues, the dome, and the most awesome part- we got to see the House in session. We got to watch the preceedings for a couple minutes and even got to see a little bit of "frustration" on the part of one house representative about how vague a particular vote had been. It was neat to see how they cast the votes and how it shows on this screen with colored lights indicating who voted. I am sure it was even more crazy there the next day when they voted for health care.

Speaking of...

(This is not a picture taken of the protest we saw, but something I downloaded off of the internet that is akin to it.)

On our way out, we immediately realized something was different. The way we came was barracaded and an officer with a machine gun was standing at the top of the capital stairs. Snipers were on the roof of the capital and huge crowds were surrounding the capital. Apparently we had the priviledge of being a part of the Anti-Health care rally. It was actually pretty awesome in some ways to be in the middle of such a huge controversy, we even got into it a little with some chants as we were trying to wield our way through the crowd to get to the air and space museum like we wanted. Finally we came to a stand still. We saw that the police had made a pathway for house reps to walk to their vehicles and both sides were lined with people yelling and screaming (at this point the kids especially were a little scared and worried-- some of those people were really mad!). So- I did the only thing I thought I could-- squirmed my way to the front and told the police officer how I was here with my family and we weren't a part of the rally, we just wanted to get the air and space museum. He said "you are going to have to go all the way around the crowd and cross way over there." Then he looked at my stomach (yeah for pregnant me) and said, "Ummm actually just go right this way." And that is how we ended up walking right behind different house representatives in the area blocked off to other people besides them. I wish I would have recognized some of them, but I didn't. There were a couple who we had seen in the capital in the house room voting or speaking though! I'd like to say it was smooth sailing from there, but we still had quite a time, crossing streets and getting through a couple more areas. All the policemen were quite on edge as well. It was crazy!

The rest of the day we saw some of the museum and by that time we were all pretty exhausted. Sarena and I took the kids home on the metro and finally got home where we enjoyed much needed rest along with Kentucky Fried Chicken and ice cream. The whole day it was really a lot of fun to spend time with my neices and nephews and to be able to see a little more of the city. Nevertheless, I think we did our own kind of marathon, not to take away from Adam and Todd--- it was a great but pretty grueling day for everybody!

Catching Up

Several things have happened over the last couple of weeks that we have been too busy (or too lazy) to write about, so here we are catching up. First, I had a little photo session with Heather the other weekend (at week 31 of our little fetus). She was sitting on the couch looking absolutely radiant as a pregnant mom, and I felt I just had to capture the moment. So here is a sampling of the pics I took that night.

What a hot baby-momma!

A few weeks ago, we had a rare chance to see one of our close friends, Brett. We don't live close to most of the friends we grew up with and went to college with, so we get really excited when we get the chance to see one. So we were pretty thrilled to meet up with Brett for a late brunch. He was visiting a good friend of his, and he was really nice about letting us interrupt his vacation for a few hours. His friend recommended we eat French toast at Carlyle's in Alexandria, and he did not over-sell the food. The French toast was amazing, and it was really good to catch up with a friend that we enjoy being around so much.

Also, we had the chance to go down to Richmond for a quick trip to attend Griffey's baby blessing a little while ago. Although it was a short trip, we love hanging around at Alyson and Nate's and rough-housing and playing Disney princesses with Trey and Jayci. We didn't get too many pics this time around, but I love this pic of Griffey. He sure bulked up fast these past few months!