As if we didn’t have enough going on during those last couple weeks of March, one day we got a call from our friend Kimberly to say that she and Mark and the kids would be in town and would love to get together with us one evening if we could manage it. If it had been someone else I might have told them regretfully that we were so busy we couldn’t squeeze them in, because even though we were having fun with Brenda & Bug and meeting blog friends and visiting with family, by that point I was tired.

But for Mark & Kimberly and their kids, I was glad to drink an extra latte and make a couple of pans of lasagna! For one thing, we had not seen them in almost five years, which is just unbelievable. For another, Mark & Kimberly are pretty much framily. (You know, the kind of friends who are like family but without the baggage.)

Troy and Kimberly were good friends in college, where they were in the same Navy ROTC unit and many of the same computer-science classes. Kimberly graduated a year before Troy and was already working on a Navy ship when we got married. When we drove out to San Diego as newlyweds to look for our first home, we spent a week sleeping on Mark & Kimberly’s living-room futon in their tiny Point Loma apartment. For the next two years, we hung out with them a lot.

We went to Sea World and played miniature golf together. We had cookouts on the beach and cooked each other Thanksgiving and Easter dinners. We hiked and swam and went out to eat and carved jack-o-lanterns and talked and laughed and even studied together on occasion. Their first baby, Theodore, was born right before Troy left on the first six-month deployment of our marriage, and I probably spent more time with him in the next six months than anyone except his parents. (Now that baby is almost as tall as me and about to enter junior high.) We had other acquaintances and co-workers in San Diego, but Mark and Kimberly were our only good friends. I’d even venture to say they were great friends.

The last time we saw them was when we stopped for a visit in their town as we were moving from Arizona to Maryland when Annalie was a year old. The first time Annalie slept all the way through the night EVER was when we were visiting them, actually. Their daughter Lillian was almost 3 at the time and had just started her first ballet class. Theodore was only a little older than Annalie is now!

I’m not sure how we managed to let so much time go by between visits because we had just as much fun with them as we always do. And we really enjoyed getting to meet the newest addition to their family, Marcio, too. Even though I was tired, even though it was the 17th visit in a row, I’m so glad they happened to be in town and stopped by! I’m already looking forward to the next visit, which I’m hoping we can squeeze in before Theodore gets his driver’s license.

Dana and Leo came to visit us last weekend! Yep, when Brenda and Bug were still here. They were supposed to have gone back to California by then, but since they extended their stay we had a full house. Which was totally fine with us, that is often how we roll.

First item on the schedule Saturday morning was for Dana to go to an eye exam. For complicated and boring insurance reasons, she had to come to DC to do it. Once that was taken care of, we headed out for some sightseeing.

Of course, the Cherry Blossom Festival started that weekend, which meant that there were tons of people downtown. We didn’t really feel like fighting the crowds, so we stuck to the Virginia side of the river. Our first stop was at the Air Force Memorial, which is so simple but very cool. The three silver spires stretch into the sky, like flight paths given physical form. I have a couple of personal connections to the Air Force—my Grandpa Adams was in the Army Air Corps, and my Uncle Allen was in the Air Force—and I was thinking about them as we walked around the memorial site.

Troy looking at a brochure, Annalie squishing something on the horizon between her fingers.

Dana doing a little photobombing.

I was trying to get Bug to walk towards me so I could take a photo, but she was scared and insisted that her mom come lift her off the wall. Annalie offered to show Bug how it was done, but even then Bug was not interested.

Of course by then we were all feeling a bit chilly, so it’s understandable that Bug wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. As you can see, we were up on a sort of bluff that overlooks the river and downtown DC and it was pretty windy up there. The girls had to snuggle up to Troy for warmth! Then Brenda and I were laughing, so of course they hammed it up and hugged him even tighter and more theatrically. No wonder Annalie and Bug get along so well. They both, shall we say, are of a dramatic bent and usually respond well to an audience.

See?

I tried to get Leo to come down and be in the photo with Troy and the girls, but he wasn’t interested in doing anything other than scooting slooowwwly along the wall. I love the photo I caught of Dana’s expression at being unable to hurry him along. Haven’t we all felt this way about our kids (or significant others, or siblings, or co-workers) at one time or another? But in the end I caught Leo smiling anyway.

I took a shot of my reflection in the very shiny top of a fire hydrant between the memorial and the parking lot. It was, of course, the day after 7 Days had ended. That’s when I always seem to find the best shiny surfaces.

Our next stop was Arlington National Cemetery. We were barely past the visitors’ center when Dana realized that she was going to have to drag Leo around, that he wasn’t in a walking-around mood. She told us to go ahead, that they’d meet us back at the visitors’ center when we were done.

We originally planned to go see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, but due to me misreading a map and Troy not taking the hint when I shoved the map at him and said, “I’m terrible with maps like this. Here, you read the map,” we headed to the Tomb of the Civil War Unknowns instead. By the time we figured out our mistake it was too late to make it to the ceremony, which wouldn’t be repeated for another hour. So we just took a different route back to the visitors’ center and enjoyed the blue skies and sunshine.

When we were still trying to get to the ceremony, we took the Custis Walk uphill, which was kind of crazy of us. It’s basically a long, long, long staircase. It’s a fairly gentle incline, but it’s still many many steps, and we were trying to hurry at the time.

I was alternating between hurrying to keep up with Troy and Annalie, and hanging back to walk with Brenda and Bug (you can see them behind me in the photo of me above). When I slowed down, I’d take photos of whatever caught my eye. Like, say, this grate in the sidewalk that was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Why can’t we have more of that in this world? Or maybe that’s just an American capitalist tendency, to worry more about the amount of time and money it takes to build something, rather than all the people who’ll have to look at something ugly for the next however many years. Big-box stores, anyone?

For the record, I’m in favor of capitalism and I love shopping at a variety of big-box stores. I just rarely like looking at their outsides.

This gravestone of Edward Maynard Day’s caught my eye because of the inscription: “Distinct as the billows/Yet one as the sea.” I wonder if old Ed was in the Navy.

Oh look. A signpost pointing us in the direction of the real Tomb of the Unknowns. Might have been handy if we’d seen one of these when we were headed in the wrong direction!

Even though I’ve been to Arlington Cemetery several times, I never get over how the gravestones just stretch on and on into the distance. Also, isn’t it funny how spring buds are often autumn-colored?

We made a point of explaining to Annalie and Bug when we first got there that we had to be quiet and respectful; that even though a cemetery looks like a park, it isn’t a normal park, it’s a place where we go to remember people who have died. And Arlington is a place where we especially remember people throughout our nation’s history who were willing to sacrifice their freedom and lives to help keep the rest of us safe. They both took it in and did a great job of being as quiet and respectful as an almost-6-year-old and a 4-year-old can be.

We met back up with Dana and Leo and headed home after that. The rest of the weekend was spent mostly just hanging out, cooking, playing, talking, relaxing.

I made granola bars, what I think was my best batch yet.

Annalie went to the store with Troy for some reason, and they came home with these cardboard popcorn boxes that Annalie had convinced Troy to buy. Annalie ate various snacks out of one of them: potato chips, carrots, goldfish crackers…but oddly, no popcorn.

Leo was very camera-shy all weekend, and I had to get creative to get him to smile for the camera. He had been teasing Bug by saying, “Bug is 5 years old!” and then laughing when, every time, she got annoyed and replied, “I’m NOT 5, I’m 4!” To get him to look at me and smile for this photo I asked him how old Bug was. Still looking away from me, he said, “She’s 5!” I replied, “Noooo, she’s only 4, you stinker!” He cracked up, and I got my shot.

Brenda made veggie-ladas (basically chicken enchiladas with lots of veggies in them) for dinner, and they were delicious. I helped a little. (Brenda blogged the recipe here!)

I had leftover rice in the fridge, and wondered if I could use it to make Spanish rice, even though usually Spanish rice is made with uncooked rice. So I asked Madge, who I happen to know makes a mean Spanish rice. She gave me some tips then said, “I hope it doesn’t end up a gooey tomato lump. Let me know how it turns out!” You’ll be glad to know, it turned out beautifully. I blogged the recipe in case I ever want to do it again or any of you want to try it.

After dinner there was some snuggling going on. There was some reading going on too, but I didn’t get any photos of that for some reason. Dana started innocently reading a book to the three kids, and the next thing she knew they were all running back to Annalie’s room for more books and she had read a half-dozen books. It was really quite adorable.

Next morning, we had aebleskiver for breakfast, as we often do with guests. We also had bacon because BACON. And strawberries, because the local grocery store had them on sale all last month for a ridiculously good price. We’ve been eating lots of yummy strawberries lately!

Kids pretty much always approve of aebleskiver because they’re encouraged to dip them in sugar. This time we also had whipped cream on hand for the strawberries.

Not to mention bacon, which was a hit with everyone. Did I mention the bacon? Bacon.

Sorry! It’s getting late and I’m getting a bit loopy, but I’m determined to finish this post before I go to bed. I will bang my fingers relentlessly on the keyboard till I’m done, much as the woodpecker hammers his beak on the tree…oh, speaking of woodpeckers, here’s a photo of one eating from our birdfeeder. We’ve been seeing lots of cool birds. Dana isn’t a bird, she’s just out there on the deck trying to get Leo to come out of the cardboard castle and pose for a photo.

Somehow I managed to catch him both smiling and facing the camera. I think it was a combination of surprise and continuing to take photos after he’d turned away. He turned back to me, laughing at his silliness in turning away, and ta-daa!

That Leo is so crazy. Also, so cute it’s crazy.

Here are all three kids completely mesmerized by SpongeBob Squarepants. What is it about that show? It seems like kids of all ages and temperaments will sit totally still to watch it. They must be embedding hypnotic messages in the animation or something.

Anyway. It was a fun weekend! We saw some sights, we ate good food, Dana got the chance to meet Brenda and Bug for the first time, and we squished a lot of visiting into a short weekend. Best of all, we know we’ll get to repeat the experience again soon, now that we live just a few hours apart.

We left San Diego Saturday night, after spending the day cleaning and running errands (thanks a million for the help, B!) and then a late dinner. We drove just across the California-Arizona border and stayed the night in Yuma. Sunday we drove across Arizona, the southern end of New Mexico (Land of Enchantment) and West Texas, so the view was similar to this for most of the day. At one point Annalie exclaimed, I’m so tired of seeing nothing but land…I wanna see BUILDINGS!”

Our intrepid driver. I always offer to drive anytime Troy gets tired or just sick of driving, but he does 98% of the driving on all road trips. He just likes to drive.

My mom and Annalie and a bunch of tchotchkes for sale at a gas station somewhere in Arizona.

Hola, Señor Saguaro!

Annalie’s portrait of Señor Saguaro.

She used her new colored pencils to draw the cactus in her new moleskine, both of which were part of a very cool art kit that Sonja made as a going-away road-trip present. I made Annalie wait till the trip to use the kit, and she was so excited when she finally got to use it.

Mountains in New Mexico.

Sunset reflected in the rearview mirror and on the side of the minivan.

Road trips are often a blur.

After I twittered about losing the coffee-cup sleeve that I purchased from BeachMama a few years ago, Sonja and CC both gave me new cup sleeves. As you can see, they work perfectly. Thanks, amigas! (I turned the one on the right inside-out so it would be less-girly for Troy.)

Texas morning.

Troy got in the backseat for some reason or other at a gas station and said, “I guess Gramaw’s driving now!” Annalie thought that was hilarious.

This photo sums up the whole road trip so far. (No, not really…but it’s funny.)

Troy doesn’t get many chances to be lazy and let his beard grow, so he takes ‘em when he gets ‘em.

My girl. I love this photo.

As Troy drives, my mom reads and Annalie colors or writes in her workbooks, or they watch DVDs together (so far this trip we’ve been alternating between Avatar: The Last Airbender and Dr. Who). I’ve mostly been crocheting. This is only a sample of what I’ve made so far; in total I’ve made two potholders, four headbands, and half an Easter basket.

Katy is often out of her carrier as we drive. Lily tends to just curl up in her carrier and stay there till we stop moving.

We made it to Troy’s mom and stepdad’s house last night. We’ll spend a couple of days here visiting, and then we’ll hit the road again.