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Our last full day in DC was Easter. Jared and the Shark were singing in church, so we went to their ward. It was a lovely program–mostly just music. They sang a capella and I thought it was great.

At the end of the meeting, we stood up and I saw… a friend of mine from Brussels! I knew he was going to be in DC visiting. It was pretty random: he had emailed me saying he was going to Utah for Conference and asked if I was still living there, and I replied that I wasn’t and mentioned that I was going to be in DC (thinking there was a very small chance that he would be there, but it was worth asking just in case, since if you were to visit other places in the U.S., Washington, D.C. might be one of them). He replied that he was going to be there for a day, and it happened to be when I was there! Well, we didn’t really work anything out, and until Saturday I didn’t know what we were doing on Sunday anyway, and I could have tried texting his Belgium number but other than that didn’t have a way to contact him… blah, blah, blah. So I was so excited when I saw him from across the chapel! He was there with the friend he was staying with. I guess it shouldn’t have been shocking to see him (since if he were to go to church while he was there it would have probably been one of the local young adult wards) but it was still a very pleasant surprise.

Us with Sinoui. Adrian tried to make me speak French with him but I lack so much confidence in my French.

Me with Marcia, another friend that I hadn’t seen since leaving BYU. I knew she lived out there so I thought she might be in that ward, but this was also otherwise unplanned and quite fun.

On Saturday Jared G. had invited us to come over to eat Easter dinner with them at their condo, so after church we headed over there and hung out while Jared finished cooking and I made a lemon cake (since we were in a hotel without even a fridge it was kind of hard for us to contribute much… so Jared planned it and handed me the recipe with the ingredients). Jared F. brought over some rolls and asparagus to round everything out and we had a great dinner.

The picture is blurry so don’t look too closely. It was a good meal… though of course you may notice that while everyone else is about finished my plate in untouched because I was busy trying to feed Morgan. Haha. I’m getting used to that sort of thing happening now. She gets first priority, and by this point in the trip she was pretty tired and seemed to be needing a lot of down time.

Jared F. holding Morgan. She seemed to really like him and was for the most part really happy while he was holding her and playing with her. I got a kick out of watching it.

The next morning all we really had time for was finishing packing and driving to the airport. We had a pretty uneventul flight back. Morgan was once again pretty content, and it was wonderful to have a direct flight. With the time change we arrived in the afternoon and it felt like we hadn’t even lost much time. It was a pretty quick trip overall but it was great to see some of the fun sights of D.C. and most especially all the people we know who live out there.

I uploaded many of the pictures but it’s harder to find time to sit down and write it all…

Friday we first went to Diana’s new house (Justin’s house, which is now their house) to meet Justin and chat. I got to see her dress and Justin tried on different colors of bow ties to see what would work. It was good to finally meet him, of course. I realized that this was the first time a close friend was marrying someone I hadn’t met. Not that it mattered, but it was good to meet him all the same.

After that, I got my hair cut. Yeah, I spent my brief time in DC getting a haircut. But it had been a really long time–I think close to a year, because I don’t think I was yet pregnant last time I got it cut. I was hating it, and I couldn’t handle the idea of going to the wedding with my hair as it was. I wish I had some idea of what I wanted with my hair or a person I trusted to give free reins to. Anyway.

That night we met up with other friends who live out there (friends of mine from college, most of whom I met on my study abroad to London). We went to a Lebanese restaurant and then back to Jared and Shark’s condo to just hang out. Morgan K. came and met us which was always a treat, and our Morgan got to meet the second Morgan that influenced her name!

Us, Warren, Morgan, Jared G., Jared F., Shark, The G.s’ friend Amanda, and Morgan’s friend Dave. (By the way, I’m not just a neglectful mother: our Morgan had, um, gone through two outfits that day and all I had left in the diaper bag was a onesie. There were more clothes in the car, though.)

The next morning was the sealing in the Washington D.C. temple. The sealing itself was lovely, and I kept crying. I tend to stuff up my emotions as concerns myself, but it made me so happy to see them be married that I couldn’t help it.

It happened to be raining, which made pictures hard for them and us not really explore much. Therefore, I didn’t take a single picture of them, and this is the only one I took of the temple (out the back of the car after we were safe and dry inside):

Morgan K. came and met us at the temple so that we were both able to go. This was a big deal for me because it’s the first time I’ve been away from Morgan. The only other time was when for some reason we were driving two cars and she happened to be asleep in Adrian’s car. So even though we weren’t in the same car, we were also still no more than 20 feet from each other. Anyway, I tried to feed her a lot before and just prayed that she’d be okay. I was a little worried, but I tried to let it go and knew that Morgan K. would be capable of taking care of her (minus feeding her, obviously… I did bring the pump and everything with us but we didn’t have a fridge at the hotel and I didn’t have time that morning so I just had to hope she wouldn’t be hungry). Happily, Morgan slept the whole time we were gone.

Us at the visitor’s center after the sealing. It was so good to have Morgan there! Nice of her to drive all the way from Pittsburgh to see us, and then to come just sit at the temple so we could go, too.

After that we met up with Jared, Jared, and Shark at a burger place downtown. It was good, and the shakes were amazing. It took us forever to get there through the ridiculous traffic, and that was the time of me [first] losing it in the car because I couldn’t handle Morgan crying. I knew she needed to eat, but by the time we got there–feeling doubly bad because they’d been waiting for us, and we were really hungry, too–she had exhausted herself and fell asleep.

After all that we went back to the hotel to chill out a bit (you do kind of need to make adjustments when traveling with a young baby, and we weren’t doing that as much as we maybe should have). We all fell asleep and woke up around the time we should have been already in the car on our way to the reception, which would have been a major problem because it was on a boat so we really really couldn’t be late. Yipes! Luckily the traffic was clear as soon as we got out of downtown and we found a parking garage fairly quickly so we were okay. Hehe.

The boat left right around sunset, so I had fun taking pictures of it during the ring ceremony. (We were too far back to actually see them during the ring ceremony…alas.) Believe it or not this is through a window. Manual focus helps. Later, there were fireworks, too, which were conveniently going off that night for the end of the cherry blossom festival.

This is how Morgan spent a good part of the reception, snuggled with Adrian.

Of all the lame things, this is the only picture I have with Diana, and I didn’t take a single one with Justin, too. It was a bad combination of the rain at the temple and generally needing to pay more attention to Morgan than the camera. Just a little silly since that WAS the reason we were there at all. Hehe. This is at the end of the night as we were leaving the boat.

We had a great trip to Washington, D.C., for Diana’s wedding! We took a red eye out on Wednesday night since it was the only direct flight we could get and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. On the flight we watched “Yes Man” which also wasn’t as lame as I was expecting. So good news all around I guess. We arrived at 6 am their time, got the car, and headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Hey, it’s tradition! It was quite yummy. I got biscuits and apple butter as a side and it was the best I’ve ever had of  both. I’m now craving it… great.

We drove into the city and checked into the hotel, where they were kind enough to give us a room until ours was ready so that we could nap a little. We did and then got up and showered and walked the few blocks to the big D.C. sights. Morgan slept through it all in the wrap, so we took pictures as evidence that she did do some traveling in her babyhood. Not that she’d remember seeing the Korean Memorial even if she’d been awake, but that’s beside the point.

(Incidentally, after this trip she has now been to Washington–obviously, California, Virginia, Washington D.C., and Maryland. Not bad for two and a half months old.)

Me and Morgan in front of the White House

We then headed to the Mall and saw lots of the monuments and memorials. First we went to the World War II Memorial, which has pillars for each state. So we decided to take pictures with the state in which we were each born…

Me with California

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m pointing at Morgan, who was born in Washington

Adrian was born in Kansas, but they moved long before his first memories, and he’s never gone back since. Someday we’ll go just so he can see where he was born.

We walked down the side of the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial.

Of course it was so crowded inside and on the steps that it was hard to get a decent picture, but that’s okay. It was Spring break for a lot of places, apparently, because there were tons of tourists. Is it obnoxious to complain about the large number of tourists when we were also tourists? Hmm.

Adrian looking out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial towards the Washington Monument. I was being artsy with this picture.

I’m not the only one who likes tree shots! Adrian took this one. Sadly, this was as close as we got to the renowned D.C. cherry blossom trees. We actually never got to the Jefferson Memorial, and anyway we were told that the peak had already passed and then it rained after that and washed a lot of them away. Bummer. My dream was once again foiled. But that’s okay. This day was so gorgeous that I wasn’t complaining about anything.

Family self-portrait at the Vietnam Memorial

Good thing we hit up these sites the first day because after that besides driving through it we didn’t really see much more of the tourist hot spots in D.C. Remember, the point in going was for the wedding, and of course we got to see other friends, too…

…To be continued!

Last weekend we went to California and we had a great trip! I’ll do a couple posts, but here are our first two days…

Morgan was an angel on the flight there. And the one back, actually. We had a little incident at the airport where even though somehow we though we had all this time we actually were four minutes past the time to check bags. So we had to “gate check” (who knew you could do that?) and we must have been a sight, rushing through the airport with a giant carseat bag, big suitcase, and a five-week-old.  All that aside, Morgan was in the wrap almost the whole time and slept from the time we arrived at the airport in Seattle until we got to our rental car in Long Beach.

She looks so lovely and peaceful here. She’s not normally too excited to be in her car seat. However, she was pretty cooperative while we were in California. Friday we took care of tons of “errands” that we either needed or wanted to do, like a tax appointment, my dermatologist appointment, etc.  We also went to look at some houses we’d seen online, since we like doing that sort of thing, and one of them was conveniently left unlocked so we even got inside. Brilliant!

Here is Morgan with… Morgan! This is one of the Morgans who influenced our choice in naming our daughter Morgan. Someday I was going to write a post about how we chose her name, so I’ll leave the rest of that story for then. We were close by their house so we decided to stop by, and the whole family was playing outside.

We went to El Torito Grill with a whole bunch of friends. Santoshi, Arya, and Kamal are the lucky ones who got their picture chosen for blog inclusion because they have a cute baby. All the rest of you will also get your pictures posted when you have kids, so get moving! Haha. It amazes me how big Arya is. I think babies around that age are absolutely adorable.

Joe, Tawnya, and Morgan. This picture is proof that Morgan does not always sleep! Morgan continued to be patient up until way past bedtime. It was a good day and the rest of the weekend continued to be about as full…