A packed weekend! Now I need some time off, lol. I was semi-determined to do one family outing with Vince home and on Friday, we went to the African American museum downtown. This museum is free, but you needed a timed ticket entry which can be hard to get, so before Vince got home about a month ago, I reserved tickets for 12:30 pm. To make it as painless as possible, we had lunch at home, drove downtown, paid for parking at the nearest parking lot, walked only 3 blocks in the hot August sun and enjoyed the museum for just-enough-time, which means that we left without seeing everything, but wanting to see more. And then we got expensive ice cream and went home. Hahaha. I enjoyed the museum and I hope to see the rest of it later.
Here we are enjoying ice cream. Jeremy has been working hard on his Asian squat. This is a man who, a few years ago, could not touch his toes and now he’ll squat to eat ice cream like a proper old Chinese man. Now all he has to do is take off his clothes and wear only his undershirt and boxers and some cheap sandals and the transformation will be complete.
On Saturday, we had Eliana keep Edda company at home and we went out with Vince and his friends to play Pokemon Go. It was the finale of the 2022 Go Fest (don’t ask) and we bought tickets to the “event” and went to downtown Rockville where we bought the kids lunch and had way more fun than I thought we would. Pokemon Go is a game where you walk around to various landmarks and work together to catch Pokemon. So we walked around and caught Pokemon together. Some of these kids we’ve known since they were in 1st or 2nd grade and now they are grown up and we converted our names from Mr and Mrs Martin to Jeremy and Doris and we played together. It honestly was the first time it was neither kid-driven (like a scout camp out) or adult-driven (visiting a long-lost family member). We all wanted to be together to do this weird thing and had a lot of fun.
Town center was filled with people playing the event. I think if you didn’t know it was going on, you wouldn’t notice, but once you knew, you saw lots of people walking around and staring at their phones with portable chargers (which both Jeremy and I had, lol). We did this for three hours (!) until our Edda-care ran out. We had more stamina for this than the museum, for sure.
Jeremy and Gunvir trying to catch Pokemon.
Elka came along and thought it was the weirdest walk ever. We went in circles and paused for long periods of time for no reason she could tell.
Sunday morning, I was out early to do a trail run as marathon training continues. It is a struggle to do the summer long runs, I have done them on the treadmill which can be incredibly monotonous but gloriously climate controlled, I’ve done them starting too late in the morning and had to abandon the effort when it got too hot/sunny. This trail run was a lot of fun, 100% shaded the whole way so even at 10 am, I felt fine. Happy. I would not mind training in the summer under the tree canopy. But you’d have to let go of running for a particular pace, I’d just do it by effort. Though last night Jeremy suggested I start further north on the C&O to get good shade to do some long runs with a particular pace in mind.
Jeremy’s parents flew in from New Mexico on Saturday night and they went out Sunday for a short walk and to pick up peaches.
Sunday night dinner was enormous, lots of people in town – 18 people together.
This morning was the first day of school for Edda (we are a little under prepared for this), and our 24th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated after we put Edda on the bus. A piece of left over cake from Sunday night dinner that is very similar to our wedding cake and a wish for another 24 years!
Edda’s teachers texted us that Edda arrived at school deeply asleep. Oh well. We are all sleepy this morning!