Karen threw a 40th birthday party for me yesterday. It was well-attended and brought together several of my worlds: work, church, family, etc. It is a fascinating thing to watch those worlds interact. Today, I'm a little frightened looking at the pile of leftovers.
Kris played her first 5th grade soccer game tonight. The kids lost 0-1 to the school that won the championship last year, but they weren't really upset because they wanted to wish their coach a Happy Birthday.
Took a quick jaunt through the woods to pinpoint a fossil spot. In some areas I wished I had a machete. Here is a pretty pic I took on the way back.
The annual Peoria rock and fossil show is this weekend. I spent most of my $ on fossil mammal teeth, but I also donated some of my plant fossils to the show for their silent auction - not that I expected it earned much. There was a replica of the head of the T-Rex "Sue", which we saw at the Field Museum years ago.
The day after our big jaunt around the National Mall, we went to Arlington National Cemetery. We were pretty sore from the day before so we took the tram. We visited the Kennedy graves, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (watched the chnging of the guard - no pic I have can really convey that), the shuttle memorials, and Robert E. Lee's house. We also saw the memorial cairn for Pam Am Flight 103 http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/visitor_information/Pan_Am_Memorial.html(didn't shoot it, but now that event is in the news again with the release of the bomber).
After the all those monuments, we dropped off Kris's packet at the ranger station. The young punk there made us (unnecessarily in our opinion) get a bunch of stamps at the Washington Monument nearby, so we took care of that and Kris got her ranger pin. Then we strolled over to get a look at the White House. After that we went to dinner, followed by a look at Ford's Theater and the house where Lincoln died. Finally we cut back through the Mall to see some night views and caught the "M" back to the hotel.
After the Lincoln Memorial we visited the Vietnam Memorial (and looked up a name that Karen's stepdad suggested) and the Vietnam Women's Memorial. While Karen and Kris worked on her junior ranger packet, I visited the Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial on the Mall and the Einstein statue at the National Academy of Sciences.
Today Karen, Kris, I, and others volunteered to help do demos at the American Chemical Society tent at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. One of Kris's jobs was to attract attention by blowing huge bubbles. We had fun as we worked for about 4 hours, then hung out at the fair for the rest of the day. We saw a sculpture of a cow and a young Abraham Lincoln made of butter. We saw a Harley Dividson motorcycle with an Abraham Lincoln theme. We also attended a diving show. We sheltered under the grandstands for about an hour when the severe T-storm blew through at about 4 pm (no damage), then got interviewed by Channel 3 News in Springfield about it later on.
The next stop on the DC tour was the Lincoln Memorial, also one of our favorite stops. Tonight we watched the old version of The Day The Earth Stood Still. It was interesting to see all the location shots of the National Mall and compare them to what we saw a week ago. This morning Kris and I went fossil hunting in our favorite fossil hot spot. (After all, the Peoria Rock and Mineral Show is next weekend.) It was a bit warm and muggy, there was poison ivy along much of the path (so we had long pants), and there were lots of spiderwebs, but we found a good number of fossils. Kris did a very good job; I wonder if maybe her glasses helped. We also used our GPS to pinpoint the hotspot, which I compared with Google Earth to map the location. I have to report to work this week to prepare for classes - not that I haven't been doing that already. Kris starts classes on Thursday.
After the Washington Monument, we found the rark ranger station and Kris got her packet to start filling out to become a Junior Ranger. We only had a few hours and could not hit all the monuments, but I picked up lots of park brochures we could mine for information. Here are the World War II and Korean War monuments. The three of us thought the Korean War monument was one of the best we saw, though many of the other monuments made sure to make note of the horrors of war (e.g. both Vietnam memorials and the Civil War statues by the Capitol). At the risk of being disrespectful, I thought the wasp on this statue's nose was amusing. 
After walking around the Capitol we walked to the Washington Monument. We did not have reservations to go inside that, either, but we had fun there. My parents claim they walked up the steps over 40 years ago - that sounds quite ambitious!
