Washington, D.C.!

I know Jordan already talked about my birthday, but I wanted to write about it also. For my birthday this year, I really wanted to go to Washington, D.C. I love that city and love doing lots of touristy things there :) We went up on August 7. The drive is less than two hours, so we got there in the late morning. First we went to the Anacostia Community Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian. The main reason I wanted to go here was because of the free parking, which is hard to find in D.C. The thing I didn't know, though, was that it was in the middle of the hood. Seriously. And we were planning on walking 3 miles through the scary neighborhood to the Metro to get to the other Smithsonians. Don't know what I was thinking - it looked good on Google Maps!

Then we discovered that there was a shuttle that ran for free from the Anacostia Museum to all the other Smithsonians! Yay! So we toured the very small museum, which told the story of a man who studied African American history, and then waited outside for the shuttle.

Anacostia Community Museum

The hood. I was scared.

Once we got to the Smithsonian strip and the Mall, things got a little easier. I knew where I was at least :) We then went to the African Art Museum, which was pretty sweet, and then tried to find some lunch. We went into the Smithsonian Castle (below) to see what they had. $10 wraps? No way! We decided to walk to a McDonalds and get tons of unhealthy food for half the price. And free drink refills!

The African Art Museum

The Mall

Then we decided to go to the American Art Museum. I was sad I didn't get a picture of it; it was by far my favorite museum of the day. We only could stay for about 20 minutes, definitely not enough time for that huge place. I could spend all day in that museum! There were original paintings of all the presidents, founding fathers, and historical figures from early America, in addition to sculptures, painted brooches, and golden coins from Spanish America.

After the American Art Museum, I discovered that the shuttle stopped taking riders 2 hours previously. Lovely. No matter, we had planned for the Metro anyway! We hopped on what we thought was the green line and ended up going in the opposite direction, on the yellow line. So we took the yellow line back to the green line and then ended up at our destination an hour later. Ha. Ha. Jordan and I took the wrong direction out of the Metro, so we had to walk underneath the freeway and down the highway to get to our car...3 miles away, remember? I wanted to take pictures of the neighborhood so badly, but I was scared that someone would try to steal my camera. Seriously.

Jordan and I played a game. Whoever sees the first white person wins. We were almost to our car when we saw the first white person besides ourselves...a police-woman. How ironic is that? Sorry if that sounds racist to anyone. It's just how it was! Some of my favorite memories of this walk were:

A door on the outside of a second story...with no steps.

A rotting house with barred windows and rotting steps, but was obviously being lived in.

Tons of trash littering this one little patch of grass.

Black people staring at us the entire time.

All the gangsta's driving their black Cadillacs.

Telling Jordan that no one will rob us because we look dirt poor anyway.

Point of the story: don't ever park at the Anacostia Community Museum just because it's free.

After getting to the car, we drove in heavy, heavy D.C. traffic to Woodbridge, VA so we could get home furnishings from IKEA. You already saw how loaded down the car was here, but this is how many things we stuffed in our car!

On my actual birthday, I was feeling sad because none of my family was there to celebrate, plus it was a Sunday, and birthdays on Sunday are never fun in my opinion. My sweet friends in our new ward, Alan and Lyanna, brought me cupcakes for my birthday. I was shocked! How I love good friends.

Jordan and his mom also conspired (sneaky, sneaky!) and sent me a Nothing Bundt Cake through the mail. It was SO delicious! Thank you so much for making my birthday special whilst we are far away :)

The Little Car that Could

Jordan blogging. Last night, we made quite a trip and I'm surprised that my car lasted. First, I should preface by describing our car: It is a Mazda 3 hatchback. What's special about it is that this car is that it has literally been totaled and put back together again into a functioning automobile. In other words, it's a rebuilt title. Scary to think that we drove this 2200 miles in just under 40 hours two weeks ago, but we did it. Luckily, this car hasn't had any major problems in the three years and 40,000 miles I've driven it. But last night...

For Melyn's birthday we drove yesterday to Washington D.C. On the way back, we stopped at Woodbridge, VA (about 80 miles from Richmond, our new home) to go to IKEA. Melyn loves buying furniture and other home doodads from IKEA. Since our house had very, very little furnishing so far, and since we also had a bunch of IKEA gift cards, we planned to get a bunch of furniture there. I assume you all know about how IKEA "flat-packs" everything, so we expected to fit alot into our car. I love the little bit of extra space that hatchbacks can give you when the rear seats are folded down. So, at the end of our shopping we had two carts jammed pack full of stuff. Melyn asked, "are you sure we're going to be able to fit everything into the car?" I responded, "Of course!" (Since my car survived the trip to Virginia carrying four people and all our luggage, I believed my Mazda was capable of anything). Well, when I drove the car up to the loading area to where our huge pile of stuff was waiting, my car suddenly didn't seem as spacious or capable as I remembered.

Fortunately, we had an IKEA employee helping us. But as we were loading, I knew not everything was going to fit inside. So, as you can see from the first picture, we had to tie one large box (an office chair) to the top of the car. The inside was so full that I (the driver) had to lean to my left as I sat in my seat. I could not see anythingtot my right while inside, so I had to ask Melyn everytime I wanted to turn right if my path was clear. And we had to travel 80 miles with all this stuff. This is the kind of moment where you say a silent prayer. Believe it or not, we made it home. And the office chair on top made it too. I think it's about time that I give my car a break.