Henry's school hosted an International Night. It had crafts and a potluck dinner full of wonderful food.
Of course, I refused to eat everything, except half of a slice of bread I found next to a lasagna. Henry stuck to the ham and cheese tortilla rolls. Georgie again made us look bad and ate a bunch of red beans and rice and Indian food.
Henry ate with us, then ran off with his friends. We were all very surprised at how popular Henry is. Every time we turned around, some kid would run up to him to say hi. Once, we asked him who a boy he was talking to way, and he said "I'm not sure, he'd not even in the second grade."
After the food was gone, everyone headed to the gym for the program. It was a packed house! We sat on the floor and I got a front row seat. Some of the older classes performed dances from China and Mexico.
Georgie sat with mama and papa and for the first time in her life, she sat (relatively) still and quiet for the performances. Maybe she's getting older. Or maybe the whole crowd was so loud and moving that she didn't realize it was a show that should would normally cry the whole way through.
Finally, it was Henry's turn. He's in the back row, second from the right (next to his friend Unna). Yes, he's the one who is still wearing his heavy coat after two hours of being inside. The second grade sang the song "Shake the Papayas Down."
Here are the lyrics:
Mama says no play; This is a work day. Up with the bright sun; Get all the work done. If you will help me, Climb up the tall tree, Shake the papaya down.
Phew. Now that mama's crisis over ways politicians can disappoint you is over, let's get back to some fun stuff.
First, on an administrative note, Blogger has been incredibly buggy when it comes to embedding videos. So there have been a couple we thought we posted, but didn't go up. We just we caught most of them quickly, but we know there's one that didn't post right away. It's fixed now, and if you're a fan of videos where I talk, you're going to want to see this.
Go back and see a great video of me talking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the post, mama has the new video labeled.
Now that that's taken care of- back to the post.
For a few days after the inauguration, it got really cold! Never above 10 degrees cold! We had to bundle up! And that meant any exposed skin got instantly chapped. But I think my red cheeks lend well to my chubby Cabbage Patch Doll look.
Being all bundled up also lends itself to uncontrollable drowsiness in the car.
We got a little snow and we did attempt to play outside in it once. Supposedly a big storm was coming, so they let the schools out early. June and I walked with mama to get Henry from school. I was excited because Henry held my hand and I got to walk all the way home from school and watch all the kids throw snowballs at each other. June did not care for the cold and cried the whole walk home. (And in the end, we only got an inch of snow.)
What a string bean! I know, I'm old enough that I probably shouldn't haven't a nuk anymore. But when you've got three blabber-mouths in the house, it's nice to have a plug for at least one of us. Plus, I'm technically only allowed to have it at bedtime.
While trolling on Pinterest, mama found an interesting recipe for homemade butterfingers. According to the recipe, the bright orange filling is just a mix of melted peanut butter and candy corn. Since we had both in the house, mama decided to try it. It wasn't bad, though the thought of melted candy corm has temporarily cooled mama's taste for butterfingers. Mama's taken this approach to many recipes lately; if we have the ingredients on hand, she'll try it. She made whiskey-sriracha candies last week. Sweet and spicy. And a little weird.
Miss Sara surprised us with a cardboard rocket for Christmas. (Let's hope she never has kids and continues to spoil us!) We set it up in our room and have held a series of slumber parties inside.)
It's fun to sleep inside, but it doesn't lend well to our normal wake-up schedule. Henry is always the first one up in the house. But he's pretty quiet and can sneak out of the room at 7am without waking June and I up. We don't wake up until about 8. But when we're all in the rocket together, we're all up before 7.
On the first night, I wasn't allowed to sleep in the rocket. (I've since claimed some of the 4 square feet inside.) But I'm used to sleeping in a cramped space. I've got my bed so full of stuffed animals and books, there's hardly room for me.
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.
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.
