Worn Out

Busy couple of day, and the heat is wearing us down.

We've taken it pretty easy this week. Jacquelyn is here so some shopping, some eating, some playing around is our daily routine. The park system closed the pool on Monday, so no swim practice. Only made it through 30 minutes of practice on Tuesday before thunder rolled and the clouds opened up. Wednesday, no practice, so the younger girls and I shopped for nearly 5 hours and returned home worn out. Ian was home so he took the boys to the lake for some swimming and fishing. Apparently the fish were biting so much that when Nicholas caught a little one he didn't have time to pull it out before a bigger fish came by and ate the little one off the hook. Sheesh. Thursday, finally a normal swim practice. Then Friday came.
Friday everyone dressed in their finest to go the Main State for the Foreign Service Youth Foundation awards ceremony. Every year there is an art contest, essay contest, KidVid contest, and community service award, along with recognition for the local kids who have a parent serving in an unaccompanied post. This year they added the Haitian UNICEF highest fundraisers. Jacquelyn was accepting the award for her brother who won 2nd place in the art contest for his age group. The topic this year: On the Move.
His art was on stage.

Unfortunately the room is so dark and poorly lit, and I didn't bring my big lens, that all the photos were blurry. But the Benjamin Franklin room was a very pretty room.

Jacquelyn sat up with the other award recipients. Very few were present for the ceremony, as is expected when submissions are sent from all over the world.


Some tasty treats before we checked out the rest of the floor and the view from the balcony.


The other rooms held such artifacts as Thomas Jefferson's desk and this unusual painting (not blurry in real life) of the Treaty of Paris. On the left, Americans. On the right, well, that's where the Brits were supposed to go but they wouldn't agree to be part of the portrait.

After all the pomp, we crossed the road to Ian's office building and changed clothes. He had a couple more hours of work to do the kids and I took off towards the Mall. First stop was the WWII Memorial, the first time I made it there. It was far too hot to do all the walking we did, so we took a breather at the fountains.



I admit we cooled our feet in the cool water. I'm sure that's against the rules too, even though the signage only stated no wading or coin tossing. After the respite we made our way to the American History Museum with a stop for drinks along the way. Yeah, really really hot and muggy out. Some little guys hung out with us while we took (another) break in the shade.


We know they were just looking for a handout.
Finally, into the blessed cool of the museum. It wasn't long before Ian called and said he was ready to go, but we did get to visit the hands-on science and see Julia Child's kitchen. Rebecca and I enjoyed Julie&Julia so it was fun to check it out.


And then back into the heat armed with lemon ices (and Gatorade... and a hot dog... and water).

So how obvious is it that my white balance is completely off??

That was our Friday in a nutshell.
Saturday morning - swim meet of course. The kids did great, I'll post their times in another entry. For now, I need to take a nap. The alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. and it was so very hot outside by mid-morning. Bring on the thunderstorms, we need them.