Last week before the end of the year...

Harold went back to work today. His 10 days have come to an end and we have entered into the last week before his deployment. We've known it was coming and we've slowly been trying to prepare for this departure, but it seems like we aren't making any ground. Yesterday it really hit me that after next week, Harold will be gone until the holidays. We spent Saturday shopping for summer clothes for Aden...and it made me really sad to know that Harold won't be seeing Aden in any of these clothes. By the time he gets back, Aden will be nearly 2 years old.

I know it's not helpful to focus on the negative, but I've been ignoring it for so long that I just can't help but feel a little overwhelmed right now. I know we will make it through this, and I know we will come out on the other side stronger and better off than we are now...but it's the getting there that is a little daunting. This is a lifestyle we chose, but right now it's really difficult to accept that 8 months of our lives will be given up to the needs of the Navy...

But at the end of the day...we will be strong and we will be able to move on to tomorrow and make sure that no matter what, no matter where we are or what we are doing...we are still a family, we are still loved, we are still in God's hands, and we will be just fine.

Washington D.C.

Harold had 10 days off after returning from his Jan/Feb underway, so we decided a long time ago that we would like to go on vacation during those days. We were considering a trip down to Florida, but we decided that we didn't want to spend so many of those precious days driving. So our second choice, a much closer destination, was Washington, D.C.!

From our house, DC is only about a 2.5 hour drive, with light traffic. Fortunately for us, nobody really seemed to be out on the road the morning we left. We packed up on the 25th of February and headed up to our hotel in Camp Springs, Maryland. We chose a hotel outside of DC, because we discovered very quickly that just about everything inside the city limits is 3 times as expensive as it ever should be. Anyway, it wasn't too bad because the Metro was very close to the hotel and it was about a 15 minute ride into the city.

Each day we were there we packed as much as we could into our schedule. That worked out really great because we were able to see just about all the major tourist sites but HOLY MOLY...I never want to walk that much ever again!!

We had a lot of fun touring our Capitol and it ended up being a really great vacation.
We have a few fun photos to share...most of them are on Facbook...Blogger is being difficult this morning and these were all the ones I could get uploaded today. Maybe tomorrow I'll try again. :)

We had planned on making a special trip to the Washington Monument so that we could ride all the way up to the top, but because of the earthquake that hit DC a few months ago, the Monument (as well as many other landmarks) were closed for construction. Harold was pretty bummed because that was the main thing he was looking forward to, but at least we got to see it! Here's Aden with Daddy and then Mommy at the Washington Monument. :)

Aden spent every morning before we left for the Metro (and every evening when we returned) running around the hotel room. He would run from the door to the window across the room and play with anything and everything in between. It was entertaining to watch him getting into everything. We gave him free reign of the room, and he LOVED it! There were two floor length mirrors in the room that he would sit in front of, just to have a little chat with himself. He would look at himself, admiring his cuteness, and then he would lean into the reflection and smile and laugh at the goofy boy he saw. Haha, it was so hilarious!! He is our little ham.

This was at the center of one of the Art museums. It was the COOLEST place we saw, I thought. It was so cold out the day we went here, and when we walked by this area and saw it through the windows, I noticed people sitting in t-shirts reading newspapers. We couldn't believe they were bearing the cold so well!! So we decided to venture out into the square to see what it had to offer...and then we realized that it wasn't actually outdoors. This room was HUGE and so warm. It felt like a greenhouse. And those big rectangle slabs on the ground? Those are fountains! Water was running across the floor! It was definitely one of the neatest things ever.

Here is our sweet boy on the first day we were in DC. He was such a trooper! After all of the traveling he has done in his short life, it's amazing to me that he still behaves so well wherever we are! It's always a little challenging toting a toddler around in big cities, but he sure did make this vacation so much more special!! We are so very blessed!!