Day 1 in DC

It was a good, very full first day in DC today! We had a great day and the boys are both snoring away as I type. They were both exhausted and ready for bed. Overall the train ride went well yesterday. Even though it was late leaving Raleigh, it made up some time one the way. The only big problem is that Alex didn't want to fall asleep on the train. He finally fell asleep late in the afternoon, around 2:30 or so, but not until he had cried some, unfortunately. He slept for most of the rest of the train ride.

We did well taking the subway from Union Station to the hotel, except that we hit the Metro during rush hour and weren't quite prepared for the number of people or how fast we would need to board the train. We missed the first train because the doors shut on us right as we were about to board! This surprised me and really upset Johnny, and all the noise of the subway trains and the number of people were a lot for him at first. We ended up putting him in the stroller and Alex in the carrier to make it through the train rides!

The hotel is very nice, and though it was not where we originally wanted to be, it is a really nice area, with plenty of restaurants and lots of outdoor park and play space, which has been awesome for the boys! We went to Gordon Biersch for dinner last night, which was good, and then took a walk down to the waterfront where we discovered a great boardwalk and then a huge wading pool and waterfall, and another splash pad closer to the hotel. Johnny and I went back out when Andrew was putting Alex to bed and took the metro one stop up to buy some snacks and drinks. That metro ride went much better since it was less crowded and he was used to it by then. Today he really enjoyed going on the metro.

This morning the boys woke bright and early and we went down and had breakfast in the hotel. We came back up and the boys played in the room while Andrew went and worked out. The Smithsonian doesn't open until 10, so I got the boys ready and we went down to the waterfront wading pool this morning, and they had a great time! The water was really cold, but it didn't seem to bother them. Andrew joined us, and after a while we went back to the hotel to get dry clothes on and head to the Air and Space Museum.

We had a great time at the Air and Space museum, and I think Johnny really enjoyed it. They had an interactive area about all the science concepts behind flight, and while I don't know how much of all that Johnny took in, he really enjoyed pushing all the buttons! We had lunch there in by far the most efficient food court I have ever seen.

I had forgotten our pass for the U.S. Capitol Tour back at the hotel, and we weren't allowed to take any food or drink at all into the Capitol, so I went back to the hotel to get the pass and drop the food off, and Andrew took Johnny and Alex to the Art Museum (National Gallery, I think?). Alex took a nap, finally during that, and we met up (after some confusion about where it was) at the east side of the Capitol Building where the Visitors Center is. The tour was OK. We were losing Alex at this point, and Johnny was getting tired. And we really only got to see the Rotunda and the Statue Room. But, it was still pretty interesting. Afterwards, we had ice cream and let the boys run around on the Mall for a while, which was much needed :)

We came back near the hotel and picked up a picnic dinner, which we ate at the little park right by the hotel. It had two water features - a splash fountain - for lack of a better description. It was just a puddle-depth amount of water running kind of like a stream. And then a splash pad. So, we played there for a while before calling it a night. Whew!

Tomorrow I think we are planning to go to the Natural History Museum and then we have passes to an open-topped bus tour. The weather was glorious today - sunny but not hot at all.

Having trouble getting all the pictures uploaded - just a few more below- more to come later! Off to bed to rest after all of the walking today!

Johnny at the north end of the wading pool

Johnny checking out the rotunda in the capitol building :)

Alex enjoying the wading pool :)

Time to ride!

We are on our way to DC this morning! The boys are sooo excited. This morning I was explaining to Johnny how he needed to bring just his backpack, soft bear, and only 1 blanket because we would be riding on the train, then walking, and then taking the subway and that I would be pushing the stroller and Daddy would be pulling the big bag. I told him "everything you bring you have to carry yourself", and then I pointed to Alex and said "everything you bring I have to carry", and then Johnny said "and everything you bring, Mommy, Daddy has to carry!" We thought that was really funny. We made it to the train station in Raleigh in plenty of time. Unfortunately, the train was about an hour late. We are on our way now, though, and the boys seem to be enjoying the train ride. 

Alex on the train

Johnny playing Angry Birds Star Wars in Daddy's phone

Reading Mr. Brown can moo. :)

Alex's 6-month & Family Pictures

We just got the link from Gretchen for our new family pictures!

http://gretchenmathisonphotography.com/viewing/?slideshowID=350035

It will only be up for a week, so enjoy!

Prague update from Andrew

I've been working off and on to write about my trip here in Prague, but I haven't had a whole lot of free time. I finally got a chance to finish things up this afternoon and post it. So here goes a summary of my trip so far...

Day 1 (Saturday)
Travel to Prague was an adventure. It was Friday the 13th when I took off. I didn't sleep very well the night before I left so I wasn't exactly running on all cylinders all day on Friday. On the way to the airport I told Liz that I felt a little nervous and that I didn't normally feel that way before trips. Maybe it was a premonition. All in all, the trip over went fine. I'm making it sound like the plane crashed and I had to paddle a row boat to Europe. In reality, I forgot to check my bag all the way to Prague originally and the plane was very uncomfortable from RDU to London. They were able to find my bag and check it to Prague before I left RDU so that was awesome. There wasn't much to do about the uncomfortable plane except to grin and bear it. Just meant that I didn't get much sleep on the way to London. And airplane sleep is never good sleep, at least for me. Maybe 30 or 40 minutes at a stretch before you wake up confused and sore.

We had a long layover in London and it was uneventful. We did have to go through security again after we landed even though we had just gotten off the plane and never left a secure zone. But it was just walking through a metal detector and having your bag scanned. We didn't have to change terminals at Heathrow which was nice. The strangest thing was that they had a huge waiting area in the middle of the terminal where you had to wait until they posted the gate for your flight. They posted the gate right before boarding time so that was kind of strange. I did get to eat a Bounty bar for breakfast so that was pretty awesome!

I slept pretty hard on the flight to Prague from London. It was only an hour and a half flight but I ended up sleeing for about half of it. I got my bag with no problem from baggage claim. Transportation to the hotel had been arranged so there was a guy holding a SchoolDude sign outside baggage claim. We ran into about half of the KL team at the gate in London so we had a pretty good group of us on the flight.

After checking in we walked around down on the square for a little bit and took in some of the sights. There were street vendors with little stands where they were cooking ham, sausages, and bread that also sold beer. I had a beer and then went back to the room and took a nap for about an hour.

A group of us, I guess 11 or 12 in total, went out to supper. We found a place that was recommended and had an awesome meal. I got to drink Pilsner Uquell which was one of my goals here. It was good! One of the unique things they eat here is what they call pig's knee. It's essentially the leg of pig from the joint down. They do cut off the hoof so you don't have to see that. They slow roast it and it's really good! I didn't get that this time but a lot of people in the group did. I ended up getting a schnitzel that was really good.

After supper we went to a place called the Propaganda Bar. It had a lot of propaganda posters from the Communist days. Kind of interesting. We had a beer and then called it a night.

Day 2 (Sunday)
Sunday the only thing we were doing was a half day city tour. I thought it was going to be a walking tour but we ended up riding a bus for most of it. We walked around the square here in Old Town and the tour guide told us about the clock and the church here in the square. Then we got on a bus and rode to Prague Castle. On the way the guide would tell us about various famous buildings that we passed. We walked around Prague Castle for about an hour. I tried to take a lot of pictures on Monday but the battery in the camera died after a while.

The tour included lunch and we went to an awesome place to eat. I hope we can find it again because I'd love to eat there some more. They brewed their own beer and it was a really good dark beer. We had a really good soup as a first course, then some smoked pork with dumplings (which are like pieces of bread, really), and an apple strudel for dessert.

After the tour I took a nap and then we meet to go get some drinks. We went to a place that was a boat on the river. It was permanently docked. I had some more Pilsner Urquell and then we went to dinner.

We went to supper at an Italian place called Club Architecture. At least that was the English name. I can't begin to say or spell the Czech name. Czech is a really hard language. Nothing sounds like it reads. After supper I headed to bed.

Day 3 (Monday)
Monday was the first day of meetings. Our meeting room was in a restaurant. It was an old wine celler (built in the 14th century) that had the most uncomfortable chairs in it. It was like going down to the dungeon and sitting on a medieval torture device. The meetings were fine, but it was a long day. We started at 7:30 AM and went until 6:00 PM, although we did get a 2 hour lunch.

We ate supper on another boat restaurant. It was an Italian place again. I had a really good pizza but it took a really long time to get my food. The service was really, really slow. Then on top of that, they messed up my order so they had to go back and cook my pizza after everyone else got their food.

We went out after supper and bought some cigars. I got a nice Cuban Montecristo #2. We were going to go to a bar and smoke them and have some beer but we were all tired so we lost momentum and went back to the hotel.

Day 4 (Tuesday)
Another long day of meetings. 7:30 AM to 6 PM again.

After the meetings we went out to supper and found a place that had cheap beer and awesome food. I should say that they beer here is really cheap anyway. Usually on the order of $2 to $3 for .5 liters of beer. This place had .5 liters of beer for 29 crowns which is about $1.50. I got one of the pig's knees here and it was awesome. There's a good amount of meat on there.

The CEO went out with us that night and ended up picking up the tab at supper. We came back to the hotel and had some beer and he picked up that tab, too. That was cool!

Day 5 (Wednesday)
Wednesday I went for a run with one of my co-workers. Felt nice to get some exercise after just eating all this good food and drinking beer. We just ran for 30 minutes. Then it was back to meetings all day.

After the meetings we went back to supper at the place we went the night before. We thought it was so good then that we wanted to try it again. The food was still really good but about halfway through the meal a tour group came and sat in the room we were in. They were really, really loud. They were Spanish and were yelling Spanish back and forth to each other and had some really loud toasts. Somebody had a decibel measuring app on their iPhone and pulled it out. It was over 100 decibels in that room!

After supper we decided to walk around and find a place that served Budvar. It's the original Budweiser. We found a place pretty close to the hotel and had a couple of Budweisers. Definitely better than the US version but it wasn't the best beer I've had since I've been here.

Day 6 (Thursday)
Today I went running by myself in the morning. Did another 30 minutes, although I didn't have a watch and didn't really know how long I had been gone. I guess my internal clock is pretty good!

Today was the last day of meetings and we wrapped up around 5 PM. We're meeting for supper at 7 PM so I finally had some time to write about my trip.

Good Morning - mostly the backlog of pictures ;)

Good morning! I didn't take the time to blog last night because I went walking with Elizabeth. We actually each pushed one of her kids in strollers since Leslie was gone, so it was a great workout. When I got back, I talked with Mom and Dad, and the next thing you know, it was 10:00! So, I went on to bed. The biggest news is that Alex slept all night last night! Went down around 6:45, and slept until a little after 5:00, so that was awesome. We also had a much better evening last night. Tuesday night did not go well, as you will see in the pictures. I am at work, so I will write more tonight to let you know what has been going on.

Andrew says that he went for another run this morning and that was really good, and that today is the last day of meetings! Tomorrow is either a free day or sightseeing.

More tonight, but here are some pictures - I finally found the red camera and downloaded the ones from it and from Mom and Dad's camera...:

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

Videos and pics of Alex from yesterday

I got a couple of pictures of Alex yesterday and some video. There were some pictures of Johnny, but they are all on Mom and Dad's camera. I still can't find the camera, so these were all taken with the iPod. Johnny seemed to have had a good day at school yesterday, and Alex's fever was totally gone, and he seemed to feel much better, but really didn't nap well at all. I think he may be ready to drop to just 2 naps a day. I'm going to try that on Friday, maybe. Mimi and Gramps came mid-day and went to pick Johnny up from school. Johnny and Alex both had fun with them, and we had a good afternoon, overall. We love you, Andrew/Daddy! The videos are at the bottom :) The second one is a little less exciting if you are pinched for time :)

These were tricky, but I managed to eat a few of them!!

This is fun! :)

  

Mmmmm

 Videos:

Update from Andrew

I got this update from Andrew this morning about his Tuesday night. The trip seems to be going well!

From Andrew's e-mail sent his Wednesday morning:

I'm up [early] this morning because I'm going to go for a run!  We'll see how it goes.  There are a lot of cobblestone streets and narrow alleys in this town so I'm exactly sure how running will be.  There is a group of 3 or 4 of us going running this morning.

We had a pretty good time last night.  We went to a really good restaurant we stumbled across that had awesome food and amazingly cheap beer.  Beer was 29 crowns for .5 liter.  The exchange rate is around 20 crowns to 1 dollar so that beer was about $1.10!  I ate a pig's knee last night and it was awesome!  I forgot my camera but I got Steve to take a picture of it.  Hopefully I'll be able to get a copy of that picture.  The food was really good and it came a lot faster than the night before so that was cool.  Kent was with us last night and he ended up picking up the tab for supper.  That was very nice!

After supper we came back to the hotel and had a few beers here.  We didn't really do anything exciting, but we still had a good time talking and laughing.

I hope you sleep really good tonight.  I need to head downstairs to meet for our run.  I think we're just going to try and run for 30 minutes and see how that goes.  I love you very much!

Love,
Andrew