24 hours

What to do when your husband's overseas on business for a couple of weeks, you need a little boost, and you have a relatively empty weekend calendar, a brother & sister to visit, hotel points to use, and a gorgeous weather forecast in the northeast? 

Take a spur-of-the-moment road trip. A 24-hour energizer. 

John's Pizzeria.
Last-minute, cheap Phantom of the Opera tickets.
Listening to RadioLab, helping Sam learn his lines, laughing together in the car.
Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, Macy's, and the rest of the city decked out for Christmas.
City walking, walking, walking. 
NY Public Library.
Exploring Wired magazine's awesome pop-up store (with an amazingly high quality photo booth!). 
Meeting Chris for brunch.
Watching Harry Potter on tv in the hotel. 
Good talks and (after the kids fell asleep) nice quiet thinking in the car on the way home. 

It was just the thing.

Those 24 hours will fuel my next 24 days.

p.s. Miss you, G. Miss you, Lauren. Come home soon!

Snippets

"No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today" ~ Fra Giovanni

1. I'm going camping in New Hampshire tonight with the family.  G and Sam planned all of the dutch oven meals, shopped for the supplies, and packed us all up. Apparently all I have to do is pack my sweatshirt, pajamas, pillow, and toothbrush. Heaven.

2. This morning I sat in the September sun on a bench with a good friend. We talked for two hours and felt the breeze and twinges of autumn. It was so restorative and helped me remember to look upward and outward more. Heaven.

3. I'm giddy with anticipation for a girls' adventure starting Monday. Christie and I are heading out on a long-planned, much-postponed and eagerly anticipated journey to London and Paris for eight lucky days.* (Believe me, I know how lucky I am. Europe? In October? With Christie? For a whole week? Heaven.) My happy dance looks like this:

Note: I don't know about the song's hypothesis about the relationship between wifely ugliness and any subsequent husbandly happiness that springs from it. I just like the dancing, not the message. But, oh, what dancing!

4. What I do know, however, is that I married a terrific man who really is willing to find ways to build bits of heaven for us here on earth. He continues to amaze me with his kindness and support. He not only tolerates my pursuits and wanderings he nudges me to do them, knowing me as he does. Here's to G. Heaven to me.

. . .

*please let me know what your Londan and Paris faves are. I admit I've been to London a few times but I've still got a lot to see and learn about that city. And I've only been to Paris once, when I was 18. What to see/eat/walk/experience?

There's no place like home...

Naturally we had to make a pilgrimage to see Dorothy's ruby red slippers. There was a time when 4-year-old Maddy had a particular obsession with all things Wizard of Oz, including her own pair of sparkly red shoes that she wore EVERYWHERE.

We also toured Georgetown University, went to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving (which we never did in all the years we lived there), attended Eryn's wedding and reception, shopped for school clothes, and had breakfast at Eastern Market with Brigham (my cousin), Jennie, and Dalton (off walking during this shot) before heading home.

It was a good last hurrah for summer. Although we did hit this on 95 while driving home (note the people out of their cars and lounging around on the shoulder; this was completely stopped traffic for about an hour):

Ruby red slippers, where are you when I need you?

p.s. We made it home in one piece. First day of school: tomorrow.

Stone of hope

We were happy to be able to check out the newly opened (but not yet dedicated, thanks to Hurricane Irene) Martin Luther King Jr. memorial while in DC.  It was a gorgeous evening--my favorite time between sunset and dark.

This is the entrance out of which that middle part becomes this:

the stone of hope with MLK facing across the pond to Thomas Jefferson (a little irony?). There are a handful of MLK quotes on the surrounding interior wall like this one:

When we lived in Washington DC, our architect friend called from the other side of the country and asked me to go to a certain point on the tidal basin, across from the Jefferson Memorial, and take a few photos. His firm was submitting a design for the competition for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial that was slated to be located there and they wanted a few more visuals of the area.  Fast forward a decade+ and it was really amazing to see how the memorial ended up (though not created by our friend's firm after all).

On the other side of this statue is a paraphrased quote (I was a drum major for justice peace and righteousness) that has stirred some controversy; Maya Angelou said it makes MLK sound like a twit when the lengthier passage demonstrates his truer humility. I do like the longer quote better but, of course, that wouldn't have fit on the statue.

Either way, it's a lovely tribute on the whole.  Jefferson + FDR + MLK + Lincoln are not bad company for an evening walk.

Going postal

We decided to make a quick jaunt south to Washington DC before the school year starts next week. The daughter of our longtime friends (the Fifes) was getting married there so it seemed like the perfect time to have a road trip.

Since we used to live in DC, we wanted to mix in some new-to-us sights. Our first stop was the National Postal Museum. Sam had read about it in the Smithsonian Magazine so we thought we'd check it out. 

It's housed in the beautiful old post office headquarters building:

We had it pretty much to ourselves (as with most of the other DC attractions).
Early September travel is lovely. 

Maddy was especially a fan since she's a perpetual post service booster and loves getting and sending real, stamp-and-mailbox letters.

LOVE the mailboxes.    
Next up, the new Martin Luther King memorial...