We start out the month with an overnight visit from Aunt Martha and Aunt Nancy. They are on a tour of family members starting in NC and making their way up the coast to MA. We were fortunate to have zero sports activities going on the night of their visit and had a wonderful time!
Jim is training for a Rim to Rim to Rim hike of the Grand Canyon. He has been training for months. It is happening later this month so he is ramping up some trail work. He decided to take Lucy and Ben with him on one of his workouts. While he is running the trails, they are on bikes. It is raining. Does not sound like fun to me. However, they are all smiles!
Oscar has changed his habits recently. I am not sure if he knows he isn't coming to Japan with us. The veterinarians all recommended he not make the trip. It is extremely stressful on the pets and I am concerned it would shorten his life expectancy. He has won the kitty lottery and is going to live with my mom dad in Swansboro. With that being said, he is soaking up all the love we can lavish on him. Almost every evening he ends up in Lucy's room lounging on the bean bag listening to music. Without fail, once I come upstairs, he will come back to my room, but it is nice to know that he seeks out someone else when I am not available. I will worry about him while I am in Japan, but I know he will be loved!
The kids and I had our medical screening appointments one afternoon and instead of sending them to school and having to go through the PAINFUL process of extracting them from school to get them to the appointments on time, I decided to take them to the National Portrait Gallery. We decided to take the metro over because who in their right mind wants to drive into DC? All went according to plan until I realized I had the wrong opening time for the gallery. I thought it was 11:00am and it was 11:30am. Whoops! Oh well, no big deal, we walked around China town and checked out the sights.
The big thing at the Gallery for me was to show the kids the portraits of the Presidents, but there are sooo many awesome portraits in the building so we were able to squeeze in a few other wings. However, it was a short visit because we needed to get to the clinic! We have several shots in our immediate future!
So, totally random event ... I was getting in the car the other morning and luckily happened to look down before opening the car door to find this carcass.
It is a faceless fish. We live pretty close to the Four Mile Run which dumps into the Potomac River and according to my neighbors, we have several osprey and eagles that live nearby. We are assuming this was dinner for one of them and they lost their grip while flying over the house. I asked my immediate neighbors if they had ever been gifted like this before and they both said no. I guess we are just lucky! I am glad that I wasn't standing next to my car when the "gift" fell from the sky!
Lucy came home a few weeks ago with an application to apply for National Junior Honor Society. In typical tween fashion, she wanted nothing to do with it. Jim and I insisted that she complete the process and we are happy to announce she was inducted! We are extremely proud of the way Lucy has adapted to 7th grade. We look forward to her continuing to shine next year too! She is the first Wellons child to have the honor of being inducted. Poor Lilly will have to set her sights on joining the National Honor Society in High School. Crane Middle did not have a chapter and unfortunately for Lilly, Gunston Middle waits until the end of the year to induct new members and therefore she missed it. I have suggested Gunston should look into figuring out a way to include the qualifying 8th graders who have transferred in during the year, but I am not sure my suggestion was received favorably.
Don't feel bad for Ben though! He is getting to do fun stuff too! He got to leave school early one Friday so he could go camping with his boy scout troop! I decided to pull him early enough so we could have a lunch date at one of his favorite spots - Basic Burger. He originally wasn't sold on going, but with his daddy doing his R3 hike I needed Ben to go camping so I could cover the girl's sports commitments by myself! Sorry Ben - you need a boys weekend, and I really need a girls weekend.
That is right, Jim is FINALLY doing his Grand Canyon Hike! I am sure excited for him to be able to do it. He has worked so hard and has a great group of guys doing it with him. He has so many great pictures from it, but I will only post two. Mostly because we weren't with him so if he wants to write a blog post about it he can. I would love to do a Rim to Rim of the Grand Canyon with the kids, but at a more leisurely pace. Also I think I want to do a South Rim to canyon floor back to South Rim. Mainly because I don't want to have to take the shuttle back to where I started afterwards. That and I would like to spend the night at the bottom and enjoy it. Not sure how much enjoyment the guys experienced in their epic 18 hour hike.
It was a fairly quiet weekend with just me and the girls. I made some headway in organizing the move, purged some clothes and basically had some time to take a few deep breaths. Not going to lie, it was nice. Sunday I picked Ben up from his camping trip and then headed up to Oakridge Elementary School's Spring Fling Celebration! There were games, and bouncy houses, snow cones and a cake walk! Lucy decided she wanted to enter in these lovely cupcakes for the cake walk. Just to give a little back ground info - Ben's school has an owl mascot and their colors are blue and green. I think she nailed it!
As soon as we arrived, Lucy decided she wanted to participate in the cake walk. I told her I would go in with her and of course she won! There were several cakes to choose from and she choose a lemon flavored one that was DELICIOUS!
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| Ben and Lucy racing through the bouncy obstacle course |
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| This is just a funny thing I saw in the neighborhood. It really has no story behind it other then I thought it was interesting. |
While we were on base we got to see the horse drawn caisson they use during the military burials. I had seen the horses while on base, but never pulling the caisson. It was very moving. We also saw the soldiers putting out the American flags in preparation of Memorial Day. We participated with the wreath laying in December which was powerful. I wonder why they don't open this up to the public as well.
Memorial Day Weekend is upon us and we were fortunate enough to visit Jim's brother and family at Lewes, DE. The kids fell right in with the other families as if we had been vacationing with them for years. I just love the way our kids are comfortable enough to be able to do this. Of course they enjoyed hanging with cousins Josephine and Kemble as well.
While there was quite a bit of family time, the grown ups were able to squeeze in a sensational dinner out in town. We certainly have been spoiled having family so close. It will make leaving all the harder.
Even though it is end of May, we are still getting some chilly days. I doubt we will have many of these in Japan. Good thing we were able to take advantage! Next month the whirlwind continues...
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