Washington DC, in a nutshell

This trip was absolutely amazing. We stayed with Byron's cousin on his mom's side, Bob, and his wife Suzy. They were wonderful hosts, making us feel like we belonged there. Jack and Max became fast friends with Rachel and her Wii, and Lucy loved her girly toys. Their adorable two year old Daniel took to Sam and his blond hair and Sam loved the attention. It was so great to push ourselves seeing sites all day then return home to a great meal and a relaxing home where we all felt comfortable. What a vacation! None of it would have been the same without the Halls. We so admire these great people (and still can't belive they have a married daughter and two sons on missions! Suzy looks younger than me! How pathetic for me!)

So in a nutshell, we hit the museums: Aero and Space (camera was dead), Natural History, Library of Congress, the National Castle, the Holocost Museum and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. All of them were amazing in their own ways, we think the Library of Congress might have been the coolest, at least in Jack's eyes. The building is absolutely amazing. It was pretty impressive, though, seeing millions of dollors being printed right before our eyes. Wow. We saw a stack huge stack of money and decided it was around 32 million dollars (pennies from the stimulus package...)

We hit the Monuments and Memorials:
We picked the warmest day of the week to hit the outdoor sites, and even were lucky enough to be able to meet up with our friends from Ann Arbor, the Elders. It was beautiful weather and great company for a perfect way to experience DC.
We saw it all.

The Washington Monument.We went all the way up, which was fun to be able to see all of DC from a bird's eye view.
Max "holding" the monument. So clever...

The World War II Memorial
Lucy and her cute posing friend Ashlyn. The had a great time (respectfully) running around.
The memorial was very neat, but the fountains were dry and not running, as was the reflecting pool, which was a bummer.
We still imaged it all, including the blooming cherry trees. It was truly beautiful!!
The Arizona/Michigan rivalry in our house lives remains strong.

The Lincoln Memorial
Our favorite!
This is so, so, so impressive.

favorite picture from DC

Man, where are those parents????

The Garn Family Goes to Washington

This is what we have been up to for the past couple of weeks. We made this "Giant Overwhelming To-Do List" of things that needed doing before our house could go on the market.

As you can see we pretty much did it all!!
(editor's note: We did do it all, and a ton more, and thanks to my Mom, cause without her we couldn't have done even close to what we did!!)
And so . . .

Our house is on the market!
(click on the picture to see our listing on Realtor.com)

The kids have this week off from school and with the house ready to sell we decided it would be a good time to get away. Saturday morning we got up early and left for Washington DC. We were glad to be getting out of town before a storm dropped 6 inches of snow on Saturday. The drive took about 9 hours, which included stops for eating. The kids did great!





We stopped for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory which is a favorite of ours and a place we would usually not "waste" on the kids, but this was vacation and a special occasion. Unfortunately, Sam had a huge BLOWOUT poopy diaper that got literally on every piece of clothing he had on (including socks and shoes). Given the choice of buying expensive clothes for him or rummaging through luggage in the car I decided that having him wear a pink sweatshirt of Lucy's and a diaper was best.

After all of that we arrived at my cousin Bob's house. He and his wife Suzy are saints for being willing to take in a crazy family of six.

Sunday was church and family day. We drove to my Uncle Byron & Aunt Hazel's home in Alexandria, VA. It was great to have a visit with them.

Finally, we drove up to the temple where my Aunt Nadine and Uncle Bob are serving a mission in the Visitor's Center. The temple was beautiful all lit up. We had a great visit and Lucy took a quick liking to Uncle Bob (who doesn't?).Now we are ready to see the sights of our nation's capitol. More to come . . .

Lucky Seven

Seven must be a lucky number for this dude.

Max turned seven this week and was treated like a king. Breakfast in bed, out to lunch with mom and Sam (not Lucy per his request...) and dinner with the family at the traditional birthday spot, Red Robin. Wow, do you think food is important to this kid? I wonder where he gets it from...
So if all that wasn't enough, today he had his friend party. He wanted a DRAGON party, so we went with the whole medieval theme complete with saving the princess and all of her accessories. The boys had a great time and were very well behaved. Sometimes it is scary thinking of 10 boys in your house for two hours, but they were really delightful. They played a ton of games, had pizza and cake and ice cream, and of course battled with their new swords. Max said his favorite part was opening presents, so we might only do that next time. He is so glad to be seven, and we are glad he is ours to spoil!One quick story about Max. Byron was reading to him the other night before bed when Byron noticed it started to get quite stinky. He asked Max if he needed to go to the bathroom and Max said "Yeah" and hopped up to go. Byron said he came back THREE seconds later. Byron asked him if he already went. He replied, "no, it was just my underwear pulled up too high." Haa! What a great kid!

Can you say SPOILED?

We can. Dang spoiled. This is where we were last week. This is where our kids werewith this amazing woman.

Yeah, it ruled.

Byron had a conference at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. His conference, air fare and hotel room paid for. It was rough. Actually I still can't believe we were there! It is an amazing concept to me, we are so dang lucky.

The resort is located on a tiny island called Paradise Island. We decided that while we were there it was almost Paradise Island. It was uncharacteristically cold and windy. Now, lest anyone thinks I'm complaining, let me inform you I am not. I am just trying to explain why I came back from a 5 day trip to the Bahamas just as pasty white as your average midwinter Michigander. Believe me, I would NOT complain about a five day trip anywhere without kids, let alone to the Bahamas. It was absolutely wonderful, relaxing, rejuvenating, and downright fun. Just not in the sun.

We had two views from our corner hotel room.
We chose to look out the second one the most.

Byron had conference every morning, afternoons off, conference in the evenings, and nights off. That meant sleeping in for me, reading in bed, running OUTSIDE, and hanging out by the pools waiting for Byron and for the sun. This is how he typically found me. These were all the people who were joining me. Wimps. It wasn't that cold, it was in the 60's!

We took a ferry across the harbor to Nassau to do some shopping in the markets and found some yummy Bahamian food: conch fritters (mostly fritter, little conch).
We had a great time exploring the resort and all the marine life. We decided the sharks are much better to watch in the cool aquariums they have all over, not at night in the open pools just next to your sidewalk path. Cool, but creepy. We also had fun finding different places to eat and just being able to talk instead of shoving food into four other tinier mouths.
Friday the sun did come out for about an hour and a half. (Yes, we took a picture, it was thrilling!) We cheered, we warmed up and we did some sweet waterslides and rides. Saturday afternoon the sun came out and smiled down on us and amazingly enough, the clouds didn't come back. We actually applied some sunscreen, swam in the ocean, and soaked up what sun we could while trying to not get blown away. Sunday when we woke up to leave for the airport, it was all blue skies, not a cloud to be seen, with a nice island breeze. It was the Paradise Island we knew existed. Just our luck.
I guess we'll just have to go back another time...

He's the Man!

So Byron has outdone himself again. He is always the greatest in regard to help around the house and with the kids. I mean
THE GREATEST.

For example, a couple of years ago I went to the temple one night with a friend who's husband was on call so Byron was going to cover watching their kids if her husband happened to not get home in time. Well sure enough her husband was stuck at the hospital so she was bringing her four kids over to add to our three. Great kids, but not the typical dream night for a guy. My friend described it the best when she said something like this: It doesn't get much better that I can leave my kids with not only a pediatrician AND worthy priesthood holder but someone who will make homemade sugar cookies just because it would be "fun". That's right, he thought it would be fun to do sugar cookies with everyone while we were gone. I told him he was insane and to have fun with that. When we came back the house was spotless and I asked him if he decided not to do the cookies. Oh no, he did them, he said it was fun. Yeah, ok.
Things like this happen regularly. So it wasn't surprising when he decided to make cinnamon rolls with the boys. Once again, I was the scrooge not wanting to spend the time or make the mess, but he did it all without a blink of an eye.(These cinnamon rolls were DIVINE by the way, no surprise.)
But like I said, this is normal. But he has branched out over the past couple of weeks. We have been working to get our house ready to sell and he has become a regular plumber and handyman (crack and all...no picts, this is a family blog.) He has replaced two bathroom faucets, the kitchen faucet, the disposal and two toilet seat covers. This is a big deal, since we really aren't the fixer-upper types. I have been so proud. But what is even a bigger deal and makes me even more proud is that he landed the perfect job in the location of our dreams. That's right, we're moving back to Mesa! We found out just before Christmas, but as things are getting more solidified, we are still finding it hard to believe. So once again, Byron has outdone himself, not that anyone's surprised...

Birthday Stud

When I found out we would be having a baby in December, I felt horrible that we would be giving someone such a terrible birthday. I swore to myself we would not get his birthday lost in Christmas. Never. It would be special and separate and he would never get shafted. We're only at his FIRST birthday, and look, he already got shafted because his birthday post is AFTER a very lame Christmas post. Byron says, No poor Sam, he doesn't even know. I say poor Sam because I think it is just a glimpse of what is to come. Poor kid!

At least his birthday was great! This picture shows the very best thing about turning one: he is now a real kid that gets to travel like the rest of us. Way to go, little man!Sam had been cutting teeth for a couple of weeks prior to his birthday and had been CRANKY! But for his birthday he was back to his normal, happy, easy going self. It was great! I have always taken the camera into our kids' room on their first birthday so I could get a shot of them first thing. Here he is in his glory: Pink Binky and all... (fourth kid getting shafted with a left over older sister's Binky) The big kids were so excited for him to have his birthday, even if he didn't know the difference. So the whole thing was for them as much as him. They woke up to the table set up for a party with balloons and party hats, you know, the works! I decided to really spoil the kid which meant no errands! It was playtime at the mall with friends and chinese food for lunch.He loved dinner of black beans and rice (Freestone blood, I know...) and his "balloon" party. He got the biggest kick out of us singing Happy Birthday to him. He smiled so big and started laughing. We all loved it so much we did it again. He got his very own green balloon cupcake and devoured it way better than any of our kids on their first try. He didn't care much for his presents, but Lucy and the rest of us sure did. It was a fun day, and all in all, I don't think Sam Sam felt like he got shafted one bit. We'll have to see about future years when he will actually have an opinion... We sure love this baby!