More About DC

Hello,

One good thing about being in Washington DC is that we do a lot of walking. We walked the girls to and from school two days. Twice those trips included a loop past the library. The park, which is fairly close to their home, also meant a nice walk with a run around the track. The track surface is some softer type material. I was impressed how little that bothered my knees. Here we have two tracks in the neighborhood, but both are fenced in so we cannot use them. I am disappointed by that as I do not like running on cement. We walked to a cemetery that is probably about a mile from their house. There were many old graves there. Not sure we found the oldest, but some were from the early 1800’s.

We also spent one afternoon at an art gallery that had portraits in it. It was quite interesting to see the presidents of the US and to read some facts about them. I learned quite a lot that I had not heard before. Do I remember it? Do not quiz me on it.

We also went to Great Falls, VA where we did a moderate amount of walking. It is interesting to me that we had to wait in a long line of cars in order to get into the park to see the falls. Several million people visit this park each year. Even though it was a gray overcast day we were surrounded by people much of the time.We were privileged to see two kayaks doing maneuvers in the water below the falls. Apparently it is quite popular for them to come here to practice before meets. It looked quite scary to me. Some who have tried to go over the falls have drowned.

We also did some food prep while we were there. We made granola as well as ravioli. That was nice to make the ravioli as I rarely make that and almost never for just the two of us as it is quite a large recipe. It was also fun to have help from so many people. Sarah has an exchange student with them this year. He helped cut it. Some of it was put in the freezer for a later day.

Here are the children. This exchange student is 15. He was good at the cutting. I thought this was a typical picture of kids today. That is his phone that Lexi is looking at.

The Christmas cactus looked like this when we came home. It is 44 years old. We started with a little slip the first Christmas we were married.

Here is also a picture of us at Great Falls, VA.

Paula