Our First Thanksgiving

Michelle and I had a really fun Thanksgiving break. It was the first Thanksgiving we have hosted and planned ourselves. All in all everything was great! One of Michelle's best friends and her husband drove up from Florida to stay at out place for the break so luckily we had them to help us plan, cook, and figure everything else out. I guess I should stop saying that 'we' cooked and 'we' figured everything out, it was really the wives that did all of the planning and made the big decisions and did the important cooking. The only thing I can really claim credit for is washing a lot of dishes. We also had a couple friends from Syracuse over for Thanksgiving that recently moved down to Virginia near where we live. It was great to spend Thanksgiving with good friends. Michelle and the ladies really put together a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. We made a turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, home made pumpkin pie, rolls, stuffing, and a nice salad. None of us had really made a turkey before so all you veteran Thanksgiving chefs can probably guess the rookie mistakes we made. We ended up not thawing it earlier enough so that set us back a couple hours and somehow we also didn't realize that only having one oven would make things a little tricky. We cooked the pies while the turkey was defrosting and then cooked everything else after the turkey. It worked out just fine though because we had plenty of appetizers to hold us over while everything cooked. We also played the Wii and had some really intense games of our favorite game Big Brain Academy. I think playing it with six people was the most fun I've ever had playing the Wii. Thanksgiving dinner was outstanding. Everything was delicious, a little too delicious maybe...I think I might have gained a couple pounds just from that meal.

Having friends stay with us over Thanksgiving break also motivated us to get out and see a lot of cool stuff here in DC that we hadn't seen yet. On Friday we waited an hour outside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to get a tour of where they make money. The tour was very interesting. We literally saw millions of dollars being made before our very eyes. Apparently the people working there have a good sense of humor because there were lots of signs on the walls that said things like "How do you think I feel? I see my lifetime salary get made every couple of minutes." Another sign said "So close yet so far." Michelle and I toured the Mint (where they make coins) in Philadelphia over the summer so it was nice to see where they print the money. After that we went to Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. It is always cool to see airplanes and space shuttles and tons of artifacts related to them. They have a neat exhibit there right now about the Wright brothers. I don't know how, but they've got the actual plane there on display that the Wright brothers flew for the very first time. I can't decide which is more amazing: what the early planes looked like and the fact that those things could actually get off the ground or how far technology has progressed and what planes/space shuttles look like now.

On Saturday our friends had to leave to go back home but before they did we took them to the National Archives where over 9 billion documents are stored, including the Constitution, the Declarationof Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta. It was a real treat to see these sacred documents and learn a little bit more about our nation's history. You honestly can barely read some of those old documents but its still nice to see them. If you've ever seen the movie 'National Treasure' with Nicholas Cage, the National Archives is where they went to steal the Declaration of Independence. While at the National Archives we decided to go into the research area and look at some of the old books they have. Frankly, I am surprised they let the public look at and touch some of the older books. Granted you have to have ID and sign in but it just seems like you should be wearing gloves or something to handle some of the books in there. One interesting book we found was an 85 year old 'Yellow Pages' from the DC area. It was massive, but pretty similar to what they look like now.

On Saturday night Michelle and I volunteered at Ford's Theater Ford's Theater is where President Lincoln was assassinated. The theater is kind of a double treat to visit. You get to see and learn about a historic (although tragic) place and moment in U.S. history and they also still put on phenomenal productions there. We were the ticket scanners for the play that night, which was 'A Christmas Carol.' I must admit it was amazing. I would give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend going to see a play there to anybody. When Michelle and I first volunteered at Ford's theater a couple years ago (when we were interns in DC) they didn't have the museum about Lincoln's life that they have now. It is a great little museum and they've got John Wilkes Booth's actual pistol that he used.

"DC things" we've been up to lately

We are continuing our quest to see and do everything in DC. In the past couple weeks we have visited one of the Smithsonian museums and the Holocaust museum. Here are a few pictures from our trips to these museums:Us on the Metro. I thought this was a cool picture because you can see my arm holding the camera in the reflection in the window.
My cute wife standing in front of the Holocause museum. There are no pictures allowed inside so this is all we have. This is a remarkable museum. It is quite moving and not easy to forget.
Here I am with the real Raphael at the Smithsonian American History Museum. This is a really cool museum because they have sections of the museum dedicated to things like American movies and music.

Michelle with the real Kermit. In real life he looks just like he does on TV and he hasn't aged a bit.

¿Verano en Sudamerica?

A couple days ago the ESL teacher at the school I work at told me that she was thinking about visiting her home in Bolivia this summer. She said if she does it she would fly to Peru and then take a bus to Bolivia because flights to Peru are incredibly cheap right now. She told me they are only $300 right now, and I, being a generally skepticle person said I thought that would be amazing if it were true but that I would have to see for myself before I accepted that round trip flights to Peru were really that cheap. I looked it up that day and to my great surprise she was right. Flights are around $300 and after taxes the round trip flights from DC to Lima and back are under $400! Michelle and I were trying to decide what we should do with our summers off from teaching. We could make a few extra bucks teaching summer school, or we could utilize these summers before we have kids while we are both still working and go on some extended once in a lifetime vacations. We most likely wont be teachers forever and thus we feel we should make the most out of these two years tht we get two month long paid vacations each summer. We were really on the fenec about what to do until we learned how cheap it is to go to Peru. I have no idea why it is so cheap to fly to Peru. Quito, Bunos Aires, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, and everywhere else I looked are all at least twice as much. I honestly wouldn't be able to explan it but it is true. We would love to tour some other countries besides Peru and fly home from another country but even just a return flight from another country is much more expensive. We are still thinking about it, spending a couple weeks making sure we make the right decisino and not rush into anything (as we did last year and were very forutnate to get refunds on plane tickets to Peru). We would probably go for a month or maybe even 5 weeks and try to at least visit some of the other surrounding countries. Since we would have plenty of time we would be able to save boat loads of money on transportation throughout South America by taking the bus instead of flying. I served my mission in peru and am pretty familiar with how much it costs to fly versus take a bus to different regions. It costs a couple hundred bucks to fly from Lima to Cusco but only a small fraction of that to take a bus. You lose a day on the bus but if time is not an issue you don't have to worry about it. The bus rides in and of themselves are scenic and you get to stop at some neat places. Bolivia is close enough to not have to fly to, but I am not sure about Chile and Ecuador. Wherever we went we would have to make sure we were back in Lima to fly home though. So we have a lot to consider, this would be a kind of big deal and you can't really change your mind. Pay off student loans or spend a summer in South America?

Halloween in Alexandria

Yesterday was the most fun Halloween I can remember since when I used to go trick or treating, which when you are a kid is basically the most amazing thing in the world (free candy!). We started off Halloween by going to our ward's Halloween activity because we are part of the activities committee. There was a chili cook off and lots and lots of other good food! Michelle and I helped man the station for little kids to make ghost suckers (blow pops with a tissue wrapped around it a scary face drawn on it). Oh and I should mention that Michelle and I were crayons (non toxic ones of course) for Halloween. We got the idea from a website online for easy costumes. After the ward activity we went to a really fun party that some friends of ours from the ward put together. They organized games and lots of great food there too! Michelle and I were on the winning team in a scavenger hunt/survivor/fear factor type of game that was a lot of fun. Michelle and I were the last leg of our eight man team and we brought home victory by popping all the red balloons and forming the word 'skeleton' with the letters in all the balloons. We were awarded a gift certificate to five guys! Also, the award for funniest costume was awarded to a girl who came as Nadya Suleman ( better known as Octomom). It really was hilarious, she had those big red wax lips, a wig of long black hair, and carried a bunch of cabbage patch kids around in a blanket or in her shirt or something. She deserved the prize. Also funny is that her husband came as a TMZ paparazzi. She is easy to spot in the picture of all the girls.