Washington DC

Now I have started with the Road Signs (see Niagara post) I must try to continue - for consistency sake - lets see for how long I can keep it up.


At the dinner with M and K who visited us last week.


Here we are about to get into the limo for our drive into DC for the dinner.


Waiting for the Metro.


We are on The Mall, with the big house in the background.


That pointy thing is the Washington Monunment. Nothing in DC can ever be taller than this, nothing even comes close.


This is a replica of the rover on Mars - they used this to practice and simulate what was actually happening with the rover on Mars.


The Apollo 11 fellows are the three on the right, with Neil, buzz and michael (collins) - poor fellow not too many people remember his name. J was impressed since she has been learning about them.


Apollo 11 re-entry vehicle, they certainly did not have much room once they were on their way home.

We spent a couple of days in Washington DC. More acurately we stayed in Virginia, since this is the place our friends are living and they kindly offered to host us for a couple of days.

It took about 5 hours to get there and we had the pleasure of travelling on the New Jersey Turn Pike, the definition of a Turn Pike is a Main Road that you have to pay a TOLL (it was actually in caps) to use. Well, I say, we certainly paid a TOLL, in fact we paid over $15-00 in TOLL'S each way...

The NJTP is an experience in 'driving in traffic'. At its most narrow it is just two lanes each way, this is the NJ end. At its widest (the New york end) it is 10 lanes wide 2 each way for trucks and busses and 3 each way for cars. Mostly the traffic is doing about 130-140km hr and the speed limit is about 110. We did 120 just so that we would not be pushed off the road. It did not seem a problem since all of the police cars we saw just cruised past us. We saw lots of people pulled over from time to time and reckoned that they must have been driving really fast to warrant stopping by the coppers.

We stayed with M and S and their three lovely children, our three were in awe of the big kids and had a very nice time. They managed to get soaked to the kness a couple of times in the creek behind the house - supervised of course, but still wet.

D and I went to the welcome drinks at the Embassy and met up with quite a few people we know. There were a couple from Staff College which was nice. We also got to pay a visit to the staff locker which is a highlight. The children have been enjoying the nutrigrain for breakfast and look forward to the coridal at special treat time. They only had little bottles and they are at an outrageous price, but I tell D it is all worth it. I also bought some wheat bix, a BIG jar of vegimite, some scotch finger biscuits, a few chocolate bars - so given my propensity to procrastinate about eating chocolate they will be here for months(I still have the left over toblerone from the pavlova on Australia Day). I also bought some pink and yellow from Yellow Glen and they had Moet for $28 a bottle, so I got a couple of them too. D could not resist the Scotch and Irish Whiskey. OH, and I bought the biggest tin of milo in the whole wide world, now I don't have to pay $12- for a normal sized tin from the catalogue!

On Monday we went into DC and visited the Mall and the Air and Space Museum. The Smithsonian's are very cool and actually need more than a couple of hours to visit properly, but the chn were impressed and enjoyed the early flight exhibits and the space exhibit.

We returned home yesterday to see the excavation of our backyard has begun, in an attempt to foil the plans of any future flood water our LL has begun a significant project of drainage and retaining walls. Fingers crossed that this will mean no more floods in our basement. In the short term all it means is no treasure hunt in the back yard on Saturday for J's birthday. Our baby girl will be 9, and then 6 days later our baby big guy will be 7. M said to me today, "then I have to wait for ages don't I mummy?" He has always been a little upset that we have J's birthday, then W's but not his. Last year I consolled him by telling him that his birthday would be after Daddy got home from Q8, of course this meant that on his actual birthday when people said "happy birthday M" he would tell them, "its not my birthday until Daddy comes home".

On a sad note, we learned today that our friends dog Buddy has moved on to doggy heaven, he was their first and only baby for nearly 13 years and only left them after the recent birth of their daughter. I guess he knew that he could leave them now and they would be ok.

I'll add photos now - which of course you see first and then I might head off to the kipp.