Adventures from Washington DC

What a whirlwind trip! Two blinks, and DC had come and gone. Read on for a summary of our adventures:

My parents and I flew out to Baltimore on Wednesday night (the money we saved by flying in to Baltimore paid for my ticket...well worth the hour drive down to VA!) It was well past 1am by the time we arrived at our hotel in Fairfax, Virginia, and past 2 before we got to bed. We were up bright and early the next morning after about 4 hours of sleep, and headed off to my brother's final transfer meeting. The reunion was very sweet--he was happy to see us, and my mother was ecstatic. I will not lie...there was plenty of pleasant eye-candy among my brother's fellow missionaries, but after listening to their mission-speak for a while, I decided it's well worth waiting until they've been home for awhile and "normalized."

That afternoon we drove up to the Washington DC Temple. It was so beautiful--the sun was out, it was warm, and definitely the feeling of spring in the air. The weather was phenomenal all weekend long. At the temple, my family and the other missionaries went through a session. I'd been hoping to do baptisms for the dead, but the baptistry was closed. So I wandered the grounds and took pictures for awhile, then went to the Visitor's Center. It's huge! I talked to one of the sister missionaries for awhile--Sister Zhao, from Shanghai China--and then went to watch the Joseph Smith movie. They have a giant IMAX theater there...and I had it to myself. After the movie I rejoined the group, took a few more pictures, then we headed back down to VA. We had dinner at the mission president's home, then attended a fireside for the departing missionaries. I'll admit that I dozed through a good part of it. Between the jet lag and 4 hours of sleep, I was very ready for bed.

Early Friday morning, Kyle was officially handed over to us. We went first to Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington. Of all the places we visited, this was the only one I'd never been to before. It was fascinating! I learned a great deal about George Washington, his family, his lifestyle, and that period in our history. The artifacts they have at the house are pretty interesting--including his dentures! Too funny. Anyway, after Mt. Vernon we drove up to Arlington National Cemetary. This place has a very special place in my heart--I first visited there as a high school student, and it was a very powerful experience. I was glad when I had a chance to walk with my father through the graves...my mom and my brother were too busy catching up to really appreciate the spirit of the place. We visited the Tomb of the Unknowns, the Kennedy graves, and just took in the powerful sight--I read that 300,000 servicemen of various walks are buried there. It's something else.

That night, Kyle watched his first real movie in 2 years. Can you guess which one he picked? That's right--STAR TREK. A brother after my own heart. =)

Saturday was our whirlwind tour of DC. We started at the Smithsonian National History Museum. My brother is obsessed with flags--his room is covered in them--so it was a treat for him to see the Star Spangled Banner. Stuff like that kind of creeps me out, how people have torn off pieces of it for keepsakes, it's all ratty and falling apart now. But it was interesting. From there, we visited the White House Visitor's Center, which was brief and not all that exciting. After that we decided to take a bus tour of the city, which considering the amount of time we had, was an excellent choice. So we drove around and saw the sights of DC, including Union Station, the memorial for Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, the Vietnam Wall, the White House, and everything in between. We briefly visited the Smithsonian Castle, which was exceptionally eclectic and not all that interesting. It's bizarre to me how little pieces of history end up scattered through the plethora of museums out there. Bits of so-and-so here, pieces of such-and-such over here. We cling to the rag-tag ends of history like magpies collecting trash. The people of those past eras would probably be horrified to see the tidbits we cling to. I doubt very much that George Washington appreciates his dentures being gawked at as they are, as the man was well-known to be disatisfied with his teeth and smile anyhow. But we are nevertheless fascinated by the things they touched, used, wrote, wore and otherwise left some lasting impression upon. We are curious creatures.

That was pretty much it. On Sunday we attended Stake Conference in Virginia. It actually was a regional conference, broadcast from Salt Lake City. It's strangely comforting that the church is the same everywhere. Although, I have to say, there were an inordinate amount of pregnant women at this meeting. I swear to you, every woman I saw that appeared between the age of 20-40 was pregnant. It was bizarre. After the conference, we went to visit some families that my brother had lived with during his mission. We had lunch, we bought some girl scout cookies, and then we were off to Baltimore and on our way home.

As I always say, there is a profound difference between a trip and a vacation. A vacation implies relaxation. So I'll just say...this was a fast, furious and exceptionally fun TRIP.

Pics!

The long-promised pics of Writing Camp! The roomies and I, writing away.



My novel is coming along quite nicely. I hit 30,000 words yesterday and have pressed onward. Having good times!

Addendum to Hair

I do have to admit that with really short hair, it'd be pretty hard to do this:

pics from my friend Dixy's wedding back in May. This was a good hair day for Valerie.

Most days, I hate my hair. It's an ongoing problem.

We had a few guy friends over the other night, and somehow we ended up discussing hair (I think it was one small portion of a LONG discussion on dating and relationships). The young men expressed how they like long hair on girls. They find long hair to be more feminine and more attractive.

So, I've been growing out my hair. The purpose of this is multifaceted. The first reason is simply because I haven't had 'long' hair in a long time, and I wanted to try it out. The second reason is more complicated--my mother, bless her heart, has had the same hairstyle for about 20 years (although she's presently growing out her hair, and I'm very proud of her). Under absolutely no circumstances do I want to fall into that trap. I want to always be young and dynamic in my hair and dress (we'll see how that actually turns out). After wearing my hair the same way for 18 months or so, I decided that it was time to try something different. Since my hair couldn't get much shorter, it was time to grow it out. Beyond those reasons, however, was the simple desire to have 'long' hair (that's a relative term, of course) for my wedding...whenever that happens. However, it takes a long time to grow out hair, so it was worth starting.

My hair has been growing steadily, and I'm actually quite proud of the length I've attained. I can almost make a ponytail. I'm so close! I really really really want to be able to make ponytails again. I don't find them all that attractive on myself, but they will make Taekwondo so much less hassle. =)

However.

Almost every day, I think about cutting my hair. I really liked my old style. It was cute, it was spunky, it was very me. I don't know whether it would be considered feminine by these guys, or any of the guys I've gone out with. But I felt very attractive with this particular hairstyle. I am tempted all the time to return to it. But then all these months of hair-growing would be wasted. That's what I remind myself.

I don't want to be one of those women who has long hair, gets married, and then chops it all off. I think that's tacky. But I've had short hair consistently since I graduated from high school, so I don't think having short hair would be all that unusual for me.

My goal is to be strong for awhile yet. I want to be able to make ponytails. =) And maybe if it gets a little longer, I'll like it a little better. At any rate, we'll see what happens.


PS: I think boys are lucky, that they don't have to deal with this madness.

Watch the video, it makes me laugh

I went skiing on Saturday...

...and it was pretty awesome.

Valentine's Dance

A little domesticity?

Of all the things that I never really pictured myself doing, one of the most surprising turnarounds would be scrapbooking.

We really have to blame my "other-mom" for this. (I have settled on "other-mom" as the title for my birthfather's wife, Jenny, as actually explaining that relationship every time I talk about her is just tedious!) A couple Christmases ago, she gave me my first set of scrapbooking supplies. I suppose it didn't help that my best friend is also a frequent scrapbooker. At any rate, for almost every Christmas, and now birthdays, my other-mom has donated new scrapbooking materials to my cause, and so it moves forward.

The thing is, I find myself enjoying scrapbooking. There's something infinitely satisfying about turning my brain off for awhile, and just mixing colors and shapes and fun pictures. I don't claim to do it well, some of my pages are definitely better than others. But it definitely gives me this odd sense of satisfaction. Besides, I get to find new pictures all the time! Just last night, I was scrapbooking pics from the Juniper Hall days, from the Red Cliffs hike that year, and several from old shows.

In this realm, I have also made the jump at last--I am moving to 12x12 pages. I've been working in 8 1/2x11 forever, I missed the 10x10 jump, but now I am conceding to the 12x12 movement. The format is more open, and you can fit a lot more photos onto a single page. In this light, I bought some big packs of new paper last weekend while staying with Melissa, though I still feel somewhat limited by my resources. I hate to get involved in the sticker revolution, because you can seirously spend a FORTUNE on those things, or really any amount of scrapbooking supplies. Already I feel like I have too much, and yet I still reach out for more that aren't there. Urg! This is when I'm reminded that hobbies are time and money consumers!!

Memories fade

Home away from Home

About half of the reason I drove this year was so I could bring more stuff. I'll admit--I'm a 'stuff' person, I like having nice things, I like being comfortable. In comparison to last year
I think you'll agree that it's a nice change.




Please note the electric griddle and microwave...essentials this year.


And my biggest triumph of all!

Day 3: Photos Abound

It's not even funny how excited I was to finally see Wicked.

The Oriental was a beautiful, very ornate theatre. You never would guess from their exteriors how exquisite these buildings are behind the facade. If only I could have taken pics inside...

Thus these are mostly pictures of the marquee. I wanted to take pictures inside, but Nick couldn't handle the crush of people.







I had this thing with taking pictures of the theatres downtown. It was the only time I allowed myself to be a "tourist" and snap photos--because this is what I was in Chicago for: the theatre.





Overall, Day Three was brief and spent mostly at the airport. Nick left early in the morning to catch his flight. Then I had a great interview with Rick Cunningham from Delaware-PTTP. Just really great. This was after helping a little old man cross the street. I'd never pictured myself as that kind of person, the one to stop and help the little old people cross the street, but there I was in Chicago with an octagenarian on my arm, chatting about the snow and the public transportation system.

After checking out of the hotel, I took the El back to O'Hare, where my flight was delayed several times because of fog. I ended up arriving in SLC nearly two hours late, but my dear Christopher is patient, and came to pick me up once we had finally landed.

So I'm back in Taylorsville, heading back into real life again, keeping my fingers crossed for the next nervewracking month and a half before I find out about grad school, and who knows what else.

The days go by

After spending far too many days reading, watching movies, and otherwise wasting time, I decided I needed to find something relatively productive to do with my time, when not job hunting, interviewing, or mourning my idleness. Yesterday, I came up with scrapbooking. Now, its not really productive, but it gives me the idea of productivity...at least my hands are doing something.

There is something infinitely satisfying in scrapbooking. Sometimes I mock the hobby--the huge sections or entire shops filled only with scrabooking supplies. The intricate details. But on the other hand, I kind of like making the pages balance, just so, getting the colors to work, finding the right patterns to go with the pictures. Some of my pages are better than others, but it keeps my mind occupied and I enjoy it.

So, in the process, I have taken over the family room, as shown--this big table, filled with the associated products. My other-mom, Jenny Walles, gave me a big kit of scrapbooking stuff for Christmas, and thus I have put it to good use.

In contrast, this is how my little brother spends his days. He should be working. He claims to have had an ear infection...for the last five days...and so he sits, watching movies far too loudly. It amazes me that he does not weigh 300 pounds with all he eats. Next to him, I positively feel like the most active person in the entire world. :)

Memories