Weekend Trip to Visit The Jones's

Some guys get more handsome with age

My roomie from college and his family have been overseas for the past three years in Japan. We finally got to go up and visit them in DC over the weekend. This weekend coincided with the first big snow so we got to spend a lot of time indoors catching up. It was wonderful to be around Nate's wife, Lindi, and their great kids. Little Ryan played checkers with both of us and beat us both badly. And we were both trying our hardest.


We did get a chance to go out with the kids and play in the snow. Here are a couple videos. We love you guys!

24 Hours in Washington DC

We took a quick trip on Friday night. Cheyney's sister, McKay, has been in town visiting and so we decided to use the weekend to go up to the capitol, which is about a four and a half hour trip from Raleigh. We left work a little early and made it up before eight. Our L.A. Litigator friends will be jealous that we got to meet up with our friend Dan Oakes, who is in law school at GW, for dinner in Georgetown. It was so nice to see Dan again. We haven't seen him since our wedding and he's still as cool as ever. Coast to Coast, LA to DC, Dan seems to know how to do it all.



After dinner we went to the Lincoln Memorial and later crashed at a Marriott near Arlington National Cemetery (thanks mom for the gift cards). The next day we got up early and went on a Segway tour. I totally recommend it. We covered about six miles in three hours and those segways are sure fun and easy. Both Cheyney and I managed to fling ourselves off it once, but only because we were goofing around. We got to pull around in front of the White House and see the motorcade of the President of Brazil.






The tour guide was cool and we finished the tour just as it started to rain. After lunch we went to the National Museum of American History. They have remodeled and we couldn't find the Sun Stone or Prince's guitar, but were able to see Dorothy's ruby slippers, US presidential items, First Lady gowns, and C3P0. Being a tourist was tiring and so we headed back to Raleigh after that.

We've been to DC multiple times and still haven't seen half of what we want to see. There are so many great museums we need to hit. We still have to go to the Zoo and maybe a baseball game. Also we want to tour the White House and the Capitol. So we'll be back, but were happy to spend a day up there with McKay and Dan.

Westerners on the East Coast

This past Friday and Saturday we had a chance to meet up with friends in the area who are out here in the DC area.
We met up and went to the Alexandria Red Cross Riverfront Festival. Here Cheyney is pictured with two fellow travel nurses from our ward out in LA, Laawna and Sarah.
After walking around, we watched the band "Bowling for Soup" perform. They were OK, but they interrupted their song to talk too much. There was a really nice fireworks display after the show (I wish I had a picture but I was too mesmerized).
We took the subway back and this is the Masonic lodge near the stop where we got on. Ben (Sarah's boyfriend) told me this was George Washington's original lodge. I like how this looks at night. Our friend from LA, Renee used to live around here. She told me a story once (one of her favorites) about how she went sledding next to this lodge in the winter and had an accident. I like this Temple because it reminds me of the LDS one in LA.
On Sunday after church we had Chris and Sarah over for dinner. They were engaged in LA at about the same time as we were. They seem really happy. We had haystacks and yummy desert Sarah made.