Random Pictures: Washington D.C. Edition

Checking out the map of D.C. before we head out.

The Metro. It smells like London. I know it's just the smell of a subway, but I like it. :)
The Washington Monument (apparently growing out of Zack's head).

Zack shows his patriotism by enjoying a cool lemon ice. Abraham Lincoln and all his minions.
The closest shot we could get of the white house. I can totally see the chandelier!

This is the part where I salute the Washington Monument. Playing cards while waiting for "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" to start. I know, Doug. I know you said it was bad. But seeing it AT the Smithsonian made it good!

On the way to the metro station. So very government artsy.

Eating at the Chilis in the Atlanta airport. Ahhhh, fries. You never tasted so good.
My view at Chilis. :)

Random Thoughts - Maryland Edition

So Zack and I have been in Maryland for the past 6 days or so. Zack had to go for business. I only travel for pleasure. This post is my random thoughts about our trip.

There are lots of trees in Maryland. You know how people are always talking about how we're destroying nature by cutting down trees and building our big cities and roads and suburbs and whatnot? And I always thought that's a bunch of crap because before my city existed there was just a bunch of dirt and weeds and now there's lots of trees so in reality we're helping by planting trees. Well, I totally get it now! In Maryland you have to cut down a forest in order to build a shopping mall. Whereas in Utah you are actually helping nature when you build a strip mall or a suburb! Yeah for us Utahans! Boo for Marylanders! (All nature activists, tree-huggers, people of Maryland and Rocky Anderson don't send me hate mail. I'm just kidding! Kind of...)

Speaking of the trees....you are surrounded by forest when you're on the freeway in Maryland. It's really pretty until you realize you can't see anything except trees and what you really want to see is some place that will feed you after 9:30 pm. Seriously, do they hide the restaurants on purpose?

Our rental car was a Pontiac. When the trip was over and we were driving home from the airport (and Zack was talking to his car, telling it how much he loved it) I asked Zack if he wanted a Pontiac like the rental car. His response: "I will never want a Ponti-ANYthing."

Our trip was divided into two parts: 'Before Zack had to work' and 'After Zack had to work'. Before Zack had to work we had a hotel in Virginia that was next to a metro station so we could go into D.C. and do some sight-seeing. After Zack had to work we were staying in Timonium, Maryland and we had Zack's co-worker, Lyle, with us. (Or, since I was the one who technically wasn't supposed to be there, I was hanging out with Zack and his co-worker.) Zack and I wanted to go to the D.C. temple during our stay, but the only time we could go was during the "After Zack had to work" phase which meant Lyle was with us in the evenings and would have to come with us if he didn't want to be stuck at the hotel all night. He's not a member of the church but was nice enough to drive the hour it took to get to the temple and wait outside while we went in a did sealings before we all had dinner. In the temple we met another family that was there to do sealings. They were from Idaho Falls. We told them we were from Bountiful (It's just easier that way. Usually we just say Salt Lake.). They said they had three kids waiting in the visitor center while they did sealings. We said we had Zack's non-member co-worker wandering the grounds while we did sealings. This lady's response was "Wow! A non-member from Bountiful? There's not a lot of non-members there, right?" (Seriously, lady?) My response to put her mind at ease, "Oh, he's not from Bountiful. He's from Park City." We keep all the heathens up there.

Speaking of the D.C. temple... The temple grounds are basically more of the woods that you see in Maryland. They have little paths going through the woods for people to walk on. It's really pretty. Can you say tall green forest, twilight, and fireflies?

While Zack was at work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I had to bide my time at the hotel. This consisted of sleeping in, watching T.V., reading books, going to the fitness center, eating peanut butter sandwiches and ramen noodles, and playing on the computer. Not bad at all.

Two hour layovers in Atlanta aren't bad if you have a Chili's where you can eat lots of good food and you have someone fun to eat it with.

I got to have dinner with Zack and some of the guys he's working with in Maryland on Wednesday night. One of the guys asked us if we had any kids. We told them about our adoption and he proceeded to tell us how great and not great it was to have kids. He has 2 kids- a 4 1/2 year old and a 2 1/2 year old. He asked us if we had family living close by. Um, yes. Try a mother 15 minutes away, a brother 7 minutes away, parents 5 minutes away, a brother soon-to-be 2 blocks away, and a sister up the street. You could say we had family close by. He said he and his wife have no family close by and they haven't had a night alone together for 4 1/2 years. Wow. He needs to join the church, if nothing but for the social network and potential baby-sitters. :) I kid, I kid!

Speaking of being lucky because family is close by..... Our family really helped us out while we were gone. My parents watched our puppies the entire time and pretended like it was so much fun. And Danny saved us a lot of time and money when we realized (in Atlanta) that we'd left the key to Zack's car and our house key on the rental car keyring...which was in Maryland. He drove to our house, "broke in", got our spare key and took it to us when our plane landed at midnight. Thanks, Danny!
Zack's comment after he called Danny and asked him to help us out, "What would we do if we didn't have family close by?" I don't know. We're pretty spoiled.

Our dogs missed us while we were gone, but I think secretly they like to be at my parent's house more than ours. They're moping right now.

(Next post: Pictures!)

I Will Never Want Cable

But I do feel more connected to my country....for better or for worse.

In the past three days I've seen:
3 movies (Oceans 11 and Secondhand Lions....great shows...and 3 Men and a Baby)
Jon and Kate plus 8 (It's not octuplets, it's twins and sextuplets, right?)
Cash Cab (How does that guy manage to drive, ask so many trivia questions AND manage to be a nice guy all at the same time?! He kind of reminds me of Mikey.)
I've seen at least 5 homes remodeled on a dime, for $1000 or for $45000.
I've seen 4 babies being born on some show called "A Baby Story".
iCarly
Some show starring the Jonas Brothers
Some golf
A travel show about Honduras
And a few cooking shows.

Seriously, who has time to watch all this stuff?
Oh yeah. Me.

The Story of a Boy and His Car

Zack bought this car when he got home from his mission, just a few months before he met moi. (It wasn't his first car. His first car was a '78 Honda named Jitnee that he talked the seller into giving him for a sweet $400 in cash...but that's a whole 'nother story.) He didn't intend on buying the car when he went to the dealership. He was there with someone else who was looking at cars. But it just so happened that the stars lined up that day for him. The car was on sale, it was the right price, and it was exactly the type of car he'd wanted: sporty, hatchback, silver, Acura Integra. Thus began the story of Zack and his car.

He and the car were inseparable. Wherever Zack went, the car went with him. They were like two peas in a pod, destined to be friends, the moon and the shine, the ying and the yang, the..

Anyway, he and the car made a pretty good team. It has served him well over the past 7 years. It also served his family well. At one point it was the only car his family had and so he willingly let his mom and his brother take it when they needed it. He has taken really good care of his car. I'm not quite sure where he learned all the stuff he's learned about cars, but he knows a lot of stuff. The scary thing is he doesn't even know where he learned most of it. I think he has some sort of weird osmosis that causes him absorb every single piece of information around him in a 50 foot radius.

Zack loves his car. After living with him and the car for over 9 years now, I love it, too. It is so versatile. We called it Zack's "truck", that is, until we got a REAL truck. Now we just call it the "kind of truck". We've transported 2x4's, sheets of wood and even a mattress and bed springs in that car. I had no idea hatchbacks were so amazing. With the trunk up and two big pillows in the back it makes a nice place to lie back and watch a drive-in movie. It makes a great "kennel" for our dogs on long trips, and even doubled as a hotel room for Zack when he visited his dad. :(

When he started taking a girl (me) with him to visit that practice stopped.

His car is almost 14 years old and at the beginning of this year, while we were driving home from Colorado, somewhere between Fort Collins and Laramie it reached 200,000 miles. This was an event that Zack has been anticipating for some time. So we took pictures and video.

Here's Zack and all his glory. Interestingly enough we hit 200,000 miles at this "Point of Interest" sign. How did they know?

And here's the mileage in all it's glory.

We hope the car lasts for a long time (five more years?).
And, as Zack is currently changing the rotors, calipers, and break pads on it as I type this, we plan on those lasting for a long time as well.

Your World

Zack and I found ourselves in a quandary last week. We had planned a trip to San Diego as an attachment to a business trip he was going on. He'd leave on Monday, I'd fly down on Thursday (Valentine's Day) to meet up with him, and we'd spend the weekend playing on the beach, visiting museums or zoos, and playing with my little bro and his wife. Buuuut mixing business with pleasure doesn't always work. The business trip was pushed back a week, and then it was pushed back another week. And then it was undecided. That works great if work is paying for the tickets and all the change fees. Not so great for us. When we realized that our weekend trip to San Diego was going to cost us twice as much, we started looking at other options. We could go anywhere we wanted to for a 4 day weekend (that was cheaper than San Diego.) We finally decided on a road trip to Colorado to visit Zack's dad. To make it more fun, we broke up the 11 hour drive by staying at a place in Glenwood Springs. It is home to the largest hot springs pool in North America. You know it's a fun place when there are signs on the pool deck that say "Pool deck may be icy." It was really fun to swim in hot hot water while my head was freezing freezing cold. We had a really good time. Semi-spontaneous trips can be fun... if they're planned right.

A few weeks ago I had my kids answer the following question: If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and what would you do there?

Their answers ranged from the daring....

To the not so daring...

To the imaginative...

To the interesting.

And some just wanted to make friends around the world.

A while ago Zack and I asked ourselves the same questions in the form of a challenge. The challenge was this:

We have 3 weeks to come up with 3 different places to travel to.

At the end of the 3 weeks we had to present our ideas.

We had to say where we'd stay, how we'd get there, give ideas on what to do, and have a rough estimated cost of the trip.

Our ideas ranged from caving and whale watching in Canada to Broadway shows in New York to an RV trip down the California coast. Not that we're going to do any of them anytime soon, but it never hurts to have a vacation idea rolling around in your head.

Now I'm asking you the same questions. If you could go anywhere (and I mean ANYWHERE. We're talking dream vacations here.) in the world, where would you go, why do you want to go there, and what would you do?