Obama's 2nd Inauguration - Mama.

We stayed down in the city with Miss Sara because the following day was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and also the 2nd Inauguration of President Obama.  Never one to miss an event, we decided to head into town and check it out.  

Our original plan was head down to the Mall and see what happened, but Miss Leah happened across an opportunity for tickets to a restricted section of the parade.  So before 8am (that's early for me these days), we'd already gotten up, stopped at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and coffee, ridden the bus as far as it could go before the streets closed and were waiting in line to get into the orange parade zone.  Once we finally got through security, we were greeted by a barrage of police officers and soldiers.  Check out the snipers on the roof.

Major kudos to these soldiers who were lined up every 10 feet on both sides of the road.  They stood at attention from 8am until when the parade actually ended what seemed like 100 hours later.

Here's our group of revelers.  Henry, Miss Kathleen (Leah's cousin) and Miss Leah.  We all made sure to have at least some swag.  

We staked out our spots on the bleachers by 9 and started our wait.  By 11, I was itching for something to do so I took a walk down the parade route.  We were in the orange ticketed section, but as long as I stayed within the security boundaries I could head to the free access part of the parade route.  (First disappointment of the day.  I was hoping that once we got our seats, Henry and I could go see the Mall.)

Out in the cheap seats, I found lots of people who were pumped for another Obama term.

It was about 25 degrees, so people found their own way to keep warm.

I wished I had some coveralls too.  I found a CVS and stocked us all up with candy bars, chips and hummus for our afternoon wait.  (We'd already bought a bunch of those hand warmers you put in your gloves and socks earlier.)

When I came out, the Presidental motorcade was driving by to take the Obamas to the Capitol for the ceremony.  (Look at how excited everyone is!)

And I headed back to our lonely ghost town of the orange section.

We learned that if you have the connection to get orange tickets, you don't have to show up 8 hours early to get a seats.  So we remained the only ones on our bleachers. 

At least they had loudspeakers set up and broadcast NPR's coverage of the swearing-in ceremony.  I got a little peaved that they spent the full half hour preceding the ceremony speculating on what Michelle Obama would wear and commenting on her new bangs.  Then I came across this bag and had something of a feminist fit.  Michelle Obama is a lawyer, for crying out loud! and though she may not practice law now, she's certainly done more that just earn the nickname "First Lady of Fabulous."  Now please give me a moment while I climb down off my high horse.

Finally, things were getting started.  Henry and I took the oath along with Vice President Biden and settled in for some speech making.  

Here's some of the President's speech, along with a good view of what our part of the parade route looked like.  If you're keeping track, we were right in front of the Treasury, right around 15th and G.

After the ceremony was over, we went back to waiting. 

They started piping music through the loudspeakers and we all got pumped up.

 Doesn't Henry have a great voice?  And so you know, we don't listen to Katie Perry at our house.  Henry says they play this song in his gym class.

Henry made friends with a sweet little 5 year old named Eva, who kept us company for the afternoon.

They got pretty goofy while we waited.

There was a bunch of goofing off.  Henry is pretending to be the Statue of Liberty here.  Here comes some buses of important people from the Capitol!  Surely this parade has to start soon!   (Quick side note, if I could offer a suggestion to the planning committee for the next inauguration:  take it easy on the volunteers.  For the first 6 hours of waiting, we were outnumbered 4:1 by overeager Boy Scouts who spent a lot of time telling Henry not to sit in the aisles of the bleachers that were occupied only by us.  They were tiny, prepubescent tyrants that eventually got on my nerves so much, that I told one to go away and leave us alone.  In my defense, he was telling us that we weren't going to be able to stand up during the parade (for the 4th time).  It was 2pm, a good hour before the parade would start.  I'm not to proud of yelling at a 12 year old, but that kid had it coming.)

Then they set up a limbo line.  At this point it was well after the 2:30 start time of the parade.  According to our sources (people watching everything on TV), they were all still at the luncheon listening to each other give speeches.

Still no parade.  And by now, we'd been listening to the same 8 songs for about 3 hours.  Come on already!!!!

Finally at 3:30, we got word the parade had started.  It took about 45 minutes for the Presidential Motorcade to make it down Pennsylvania Avenue to us.  

Now we were getting really excited.  We had fancy, expensive, well-connected people seats, right?  Surely the President was going to get out of his car and walk for the final stretch of the parade by us!  It was a sure thing!

Except that he didn't.  There goes his car with the very dark tinted windows.  I did get to see a vague outline of the First Lady, but that was not at all what I was expecting.  Then, about 50 feet after us, they both got out of the car and walked.  Ugh.

So Henry and I did what anyone who has been waiting for 8 hours in freezing temperatures would do.  We went under the bleachers of the next section down to try to catch a glimpse.  

If you look closely, just to the right of the statue, you can see Michelle Obama's blue jacket.

We did it! (Sort of.)  We headed back to our seats to see the rest of the parade.  Unfortunately, the rest of the parade can't start until the President is in his box to watch.  Which meant another hour of waiting.  (Did he take a nap or something?  My feelings toward politicians was getting pretty low at this point.)

At 5pm, we finally got to watch the parade.  We were super excited to the the Miami University Redhawk Marching Band!  And true to our alma mater, all of the flag girls were practically naked.  Well done to those girls, who also had to wait until 5pm to get this party started.

Still, I love a parade and even my sore feelings couldn't resist a good drum line.  

But then, luck turned our way.  As it turns out, rich, fancy people can't be troubled to wait for a parade, and certainly won't be troubled to watch the rest of the parade once the President is past.  So we were able to climb into the bleachers right next to the President's Box and watch the parade as he saw it.

And if we went all the way to the edge, we could see the family inside.  Pretty cool.  (Miss Leah got this shot!)

The parade itself was pretty great.  They had a P-51 Mustang as flown by the Tuskagee Airmen. (Though the announcer pronounced it "Tuscoogoo."  Seriously?  I was feeling pretty low.)

It didn't even occur to us to turn around and look at the lawn we were sitting on!

We got to watch the parade from the President's yard!  (I also got to watch all the guys with rifles standing in the shadows of every tree.)

Aunt Jenni, you'll love this!  NASA sent over models of the Orion deep space capsule AND the Mars Rover!

And Virginia Military Institute sent out what must have been their entire student body of cadets and they marched in such close ranks!  There was seriously no room for error.

Henry was a pretty good sport.  The parade didn't end until after 8. And I'm known for being a stickler about waiting until the very end so that last poor marching band at the back has some fans.  Seriously, by they point, we were probably about 2 of the last 50 people left downtown.  

On the way out, I taught Henry about bargaining for souvenirs. (He was incredulous that they said $3 and I only paid $2)  A man selling posters on the street walked up to him and said "Tonight only, free posters for all kids."  Henry was ecstatic.  The world is full of good people, after all.  We celebrated our returned good spirits with a trip to Five Guys for burgers and unlimited trips to the digital pop machine that allows you to mix and match flavors.  Here's Henry drinking pop for the first time- grape Sprite.  Gross.   

In the end, I made Henry walk the almost two miles back to Sara's.  It was cold, but nice to be moving and fun to watch all of the sorely under-dressed revelers on their way to Balls.  We finally got home around 11:30, a 16 hours after we set out.  

The long cold day took it's toll on me.  I was pretty upset about the experience for quite some time.  Looking back, I think the main problem was that I let myself get my expectations WAY up.  And, as it turns out, I don't deal well with disappointment.  Especially when it is presided by 10 hours standing in the cold.   President Obama, can I make one suggestion?  I know you can't walk the entire parade route, so next time ask the Pope if you can borrow the Popemobile.  Then everybody wins.

Date night in the city- Mama.

Our Sunday started out great.  I spent the morning in the kitchen preparing a full Sri Lankan spread.  It doesn't look like much, but each of those glass bowls contained about 17 ingredients that had to be chopped and fried in some fashion.  Our spread included seeni sambol, coconut sambol, appa (fermented rice hoppers) with a steamed egg and pineapple curry.  

This much cooking certainly penetrates a little apartment.  The seeni sambol uses a large quantity of dried (and pungent) maldive fish.  After tempering some strong spices (including a lot of red chili powder) in mustard oil (everyone's eyes were burning), Henry runs into the kitchen and yells "I know you have the spirit of India, but you CANNOT just cook spices however you want!"  Such is the suffering of our children.

Luckily for Henry, it's not all pain and suffering.  Our friend Sara came to eat our Sri Lankan meal with us and Henry and I drove her back into the city.  We decided to stay and spend the night at her apartment.  Sara lives very close to Meridian Hill Park, so we decided to venture over here at dusk.  We were taking pictures with Brandon's tiny samsung, so they didn't turn out great.

But if they had, you'd be able to see the Capitol on the left and the Washington Monument on the right.  We're looking down on a 13 basin cascading waterfall that was, for the season, turned off.  We're going ot have to make sure to head back there in the spring.  

Since this was our night, I told Henry he could go anywhere for supper.  Terrible idea, as he chose McDonalds.  

I was hoping he'd chose Ben's Chili Bowl.  As it turns out, McDonalds was a wise choice as Ben's had a line out the door and around the block.  It was the day before MLK Day and the Inauguration.  So really, it should have been no surprise the line was that long.  We've heard that the line is always out the door.  I guess we were really lucky when we headed down there right after Hurricane Sandy and slipped in with no line.  

If Henry is predictable with McDonald's, I'm no better.  Whenever I'm close to Sara's, we always eat at one place:  Restaurant Judy's- a Salvadorian place just around the corner that serves excellent papusas.  

Before we headed in for the night, we realized Henry had no hat.  We remedied that quickly by stopping at a temporary souvenir shop on U Street.  There we pitted kitsch dealers against each other and talked them down from from $15 to $8 for this fetching Obama scarf and hat set.  A night does not get any better than that- fried cheese and bargaining on the side of the street. 

Quiet January- JoJo.

After a few extra days relaxing with Grams and PawPaw, we decided to come back to Rockville and relieve mama from the agony of having too much free time.  

We were all pretty happy to be back in our quiet little house.

June was really excited, because January meant the start of dance lessons!  Also note that June (and all of us) seem to have grown about 2 inches in the past month.  That means we now have a lot of too short t-shirts and leggings.  June took no mind to that and added a pair of leg warmers to cover up that strip of skin around her ankles.

When lesson day finally came, June made sure she was ready.  This must be some kind of hippie yoga ballet fusion.

Mama put beads in her hair and colored it with chalk.  

June was very happy that her friend Rachel from school is also in her class.

And this about sums up the whole class.  Sweet little girls in their pink tights and dresses.  And June looking like a crazy person in the middle.

At home, mama had a jar of pomegranate molasses burning a whole in her cupboard.  Her magic bullet died, so she put Henry to work in the kitchen chopping up 2 cups of walnuts.

The final result: a persian dish called fesenjun, that is sweet, very tart, and nutty.

As for me, I've just been hanging around.  Before Christmas, I had a strong suspicion that mama and papa were on the verge of leaving me at a fire station.  I'd gotten pretty reliable with my constant crying and whining and demands for attention.  But since we've gotten back, I've been much more agreeable.  

Mama started listening to an audio book and crocheted me a hat while she listened.  It's supposed to look like Cabbage Patch Kid hair.  Mom, you are so embarrassing.

It's not like I don't have any hair of my own.  It's just that it's growing in in two distinct layers.  Over Christmas, mama got tired of my Tom Petty scraggly hair and made Grandma cut the long layer to even it up.  Grandma didn't want to cut off my curls, but mama eventually convinced her that it was time. 

Now I just need to get that front under-layer grown out.

I'm not the only one who has undergone a mood transformation.  June and I are often at odds, but lately we've been spending more and more time playing together.  This works best when I'm doing what June wants me to do.  For example. June likes to put on dance classes for me.  Or sometimes we pretend to have a sleepover.  But there are other times that we're both playing by ourselves.  Then June looks over and notices I'm playing with the Polly Pockets, or some other toy that she has at one time also played with, and immediately comes sprinting over to grab it from me.  Needless to say, I do not agree with her behavior and can scream and yell just as loud as she can.

This looks like a mug shot after June and I got busted for fighting.  Really, I think she's trying to show off her new shoes.  It's just a really unfortunate picture.  Mama left her beads in for a few weeks.  Papa thought they might turn into dreadlocks so he pulled them out one night when mama was out.

Remember these dresses, Aunt Jenni?  This green one has been through quite a few of our cousins.  The elastic on the tights is so stretched out that I have to wear it with some lacy bloomers to keep them up.  And I think June's dress is Annalise's old dress 'Rose." 

 *NEW VIDEO*
 Georgie has been working hard on her letters and has even learned most of her letter sounds. Thanks, assortment of electronic learning toys that mama uses to keep me occupied on car trips. Keep listening to hear me talk about my name, or "Jo-nana" as I like to call myself. Since Christmas, I've really started talking a lot. And everyone has fun having conversations with me.
 If you're wondering what we're working on, Henry decided he wanted to exchange Martin Luther King, Jr. Day presents with his sisters. (What, you don't celebrate MLK with presents?) He bought June a coin purse in the school store and we decided to make him presents too. I put perler beads in a bowl and mama melted them down to make him a bead bowl for his Zune. And June colored him a picture of a dinosaur. We had a nice time of it until mama asked too many questions and I knocked the camera out of her hand.

Mom and Henro time-Mama.

NOTE:  There seems to be some problems with the videos on this page (they're not showing up).  Check back later, you're going to want to see them.

So we got home on Wednesday afternoon and had 3 glorious days alone before Papa and the girls got back.    The possibilities of what we could do were endless!  As it turned out, the excitement of the Christmas holiday left me wanting to do nothing more than lay in bed, read books, and sleep all day.  And I must said, I did a magnificent job.  I'd drop Henry off at school and the hours flew by before he got back.  And Henry was pumped because he got to play the new Lego Harry Potter game he got for Christmas.  We were so lazy, we even went out to McDonald's for supper.  And we never take the kids out to eat, so that was a big treat.  

But on Friday night, my guilt of having done absolutely nothing overcame me and I was determined to have at least one fun night of doing something you can't do with little sisters. 

 Enter: ice skating.  Rockville's Town Square sets up a skating rink right next to the big Christmas tree (remember the tree lighting?) .  

 Neither of us had ever been ice skating, but Henry was actually excited to try something new, so we gave it a shot. 

 Here's what Henry looked like at the start of our evening.

Look at how idyllic this looks.  Surrounded by tall buildings and Christmas lights!

They even piped in early 2000s Nora Jone's music.  How could you not feel warm and nice after an evening of this?
 

And here's Henry's progress by the end of the evening.  It was a really great time.  We both fell a bunch, but we can now successfully navigate a stretch of ice without too much terror.  (And my rollerblading skills came back, and not to brag, but I was able to pull off a pretty good spin.  Pretty good for me, at least.)  We celebrated our night with a trip to the toy store, pho for me and more McDonald's for Henry.

On Saturday, the lack of little girls was starting to get us down, so Olivia came over to our house to give her parents a day and night out in DC.  We went to the library and picked out a movie (Tangled) and had a movie night pancake dinner in front of the tv.  Henry was eager to prove how responsible he was and put Olivia down for her nap and got her ready for bed.  Olivia thought she was pretty big stuff getting to be with Henry.