Family Reunion

We had a fantastic awesome time on our trip. It was so good to see everyone I had not seen in a very long time. My uncles, my aunts and my cousins. We went on a tour of the White House. While not super exciting for me as an adult (although just being in the White House was a little awe inspiring) I think it was far more exciting for the Oldest and his cousin. They are 8 and 7 and I think it was more meaningful/impactful for them; at least hopefully so. I know the Littlest will not remember being there but hopefully the Oldest will.

It was a lot of go go go and not much sleep for anyone but we knew that going in and it was fun nonetheless. I tried to spread myself around evenly, getting to talk to everyone at least a little bit. When you are trying to balance your kids lovingly (even when you are feeling stress for getting all things done) and tour around, make sure you are at certain places at certain times, enjoy the gathering itself, it's hard to pick everything apart and be one thing to one person, even yourself. But I still enjoyed myself thouroughly and we got to see things I wanted to (except the Lincoln Memorial which one day I will). On our way to the Vietnam Memorial (Wall of Names) the Oldest had a nose bleed fittingly as he approached the copper memorial to the nurses of the Vietnam War. At least I thought it was fitting. As the Littlest napped peacefully we walked up and down that wall of names and it was somber and quiet and so many folks just standing with their hands on the wall staring, staring aimlessly at a name on the wall. Someone they know? Maybe. Maybe not. Somber just the same. It's something to be there and see 75,000 names engraved on that marble slat of never ending wall knowing that because of Agent Orange many more died after the war whose names never even made it on that wall.....

Our final night there was too much fun. I made Sangria which I'm not sure if folks liked or not but I did and had a glass or two of it. We had three games which everyone participated in; The Pie Game (family quiz game), the Family Line Up game (line up in some order your team decides but do it with no verbal words), and the Who Am I game (each person had to write three uncommonly known things about themself and we all had to guess who it was). Fun.

We walked our legs off, we taxi'd, we metro'd and it was a trip well worth it. Saw the National Zoo, the World War II Memorial (beautiful), the National American Indian Museum and of course, the Vietnam Memorial. In as many days as we were there, you'd think we had gotten to see more but our time was filled with many other things and it was an appropriate fast and furious. I think the Oldest favorite thing in all D.C. was riding the Metro's. He thought it was the coolest.

Overall a good time, no hugely funny stories but just good old fashioned fun. Let it be written, let it be said, the Summer 2007 H Reunion has come to a close. Here we are on the last night.