Tropical Storms and Stormy Toddlers

Today I experienced my very first Tropical Storm as did Ryan and Gavin (I don't think his baby calendar has a sticker for 1st Tropical Storm). Tropical Storm Hannah rolled through Great Falls, Virginia last night and stayed through the early part of this afternoon. Last night we had tickets at Wolf Trap, an outdoor theater, to see Les Miserables. My sister-in-law bought tickets for Ryan (and me) for his birthday and for her mom and step-dad for her mom's birthday.

The theater was quite amazing since there is outdoor seating and covered seating as well. My sister-in-law bought covered seats since it was predicted to rain that night. Good call on her part. It didn't just rain, it rained. It was a veritable deluge. The poor folks on the grass got soaked! But the show was so great they stayed through the rain. Unlike the rain we get at home it wasn't cold, the air was warm and the rain didn't chill.

Just before we took our seats I gave a brief synopsis of the story for the group and Ryan filled in the gaps. Last night was my third time seeing the show and it was Ryan's fourth and I can say without hesitation that we would go again in a heart beat. It is our favorite show. "Cats" is our least favorite show.

If you have never seen Cats, don't bother. Blech. B-o-r-i-n-g. Correction. It is B-O-R-I-N-G!
We stayed for the first two hours of the show and left at intermission.

OK, maybe the first part of the show was less than two hours but it felt like an eternity. We couldn't follow the story, the music, eh... except for "Memories", it was the last song before intermission.

If you have never seen Les Miserables you should GO, GO, GO, now! Get the music beforehand and familiarize yourself with the music, read the book, watch the movie. It is FANtastic!

But back the fierceness that is Hannah. The thick of her storminess came late this morning, just in time for my niece's birthday party. Local streets were flooded, power went out but we didn't notice because my sister-in-law's has a generator for such events and flash floods were predicted. If there were flash floods we didn't see any. It got pretty windy but I've seen windier conditions. The rain was pretty heavy so we were all quite impressed which puzzled the local East Coasters.

Ryan and I were sitting in the screened in porch listening to the cacophony the pouring rain was creating when someone stepped out and made small talk with us. I told him we were just enjoying the downpour since we don't get much rain like this at home. You could see the question on his face before he asked, "Don't you live in Seattle?" My brother-in-law asked the same thing, "Don't you get this all the time in Seattle?" Nope. Ours is a more constant drizzle, we don't often get the rain that blows in sideways by the bucketful.

Other than the tropical storm today we've had it pretty good as far as the weather is concerned. It has been hot, high 80's, low 90's and there has been humidity but not taking a bath humidity. It was pleasant enough that we were able to go the Great Falls National Park yesterday (long before Hannah rolled in) and walked high above the Potomac River where George Washington rode his horse and devised a plan to make the river navigable to increase trade and solidify the ties between the then sovereign states. His company made canals to circumvent the impassible portions of the river and locks to get boats and ships from the top of a fall to the bottom of a falls. I was a good tourist and read the placards.

Great Falls is very impressive. You can't think of Multnomah, Silver or Snoqualmie Falls as a comparative falls as they have an impressive height from which they cascade down. Great Falls can't hold a candle to the Northwest Falls height but the 'our' falls have nothing on Great Falls in terms of width. The Potomac has a great span, I would say you if you lined our falls side by side to cross the Great Falls you would need at least five of them.

On Thursday we drove in to D.C., less than a thirty minutes drive, and toured the National Crime and Punishment Museum. I would recommend this museum IF you have already been to D.C. and toured all of the free museums AND if you find Law & Order (pick one), CSI (pick one), Cold Case, Without a Trace, any crime show really except Matlock. If you like Matlock you probably aren't going to be up for hoofing it around D.C. anyway. I would not recommend buying the audio portion of the tour as it is really lame. After going through the EMP (Experience Music Project) in Seattle and listening to that audio tour nothing compares.

Friday we went back to D.C. with my Karl and Suzanne, (FIL & stepMIL) and went to the International Spy Museum. I would highly recommend this museum, even if you have not been to all of the free ones. We saw a camera that could take a picture of a document and reduce its size to that which would fit in punctuation, like this period: . Really. An entire document. The camera was called something along the lines of a dot camera, pretty creative.

So here I sit after the storm, after the party filled with toddlers who turn stormy after food, fun and candy and cake and ice cream. Gavin ate a dinner of oatmeal with mashed up blueberries and raspberries and bananas and one prune - just one prune. It was such a messy, sticky affair and as a result he got a bath tonight where he is really getting the hang of splashing the water. Fun for him, wet for me. OK, I have fun too, even when he stands up and hangs onto me with his slippery wet self.

He is now asleep and I'm ready to crash even though it is only 8:49 pm. My sister-in-law and her family are upstairs putting Erika to bed and they have Anna, the new baby we are here to meet. Ryan, his mom and step-dad are playing Hearts in the kitchen and Ryan's dad and step-mom went to a park. That leaves me alone in the living room and do you want to know what that means?

I JUST TURNED THE TV OFF!!!

Woo-hoo.

We are in someone else's house so the TV doesn't bother me too much but when it's at my house and people are visiting it drives me bonkers but I never want to say anything because they are my guests and they are usually on vacation so why shouldn't they watch TV?

That is one other reason I want to move the TV downstairs. That way if someone wants to watch TV then they can go downstairs and watch to their hearts content and I can stay up stairs and not have my ears subject to the constant noise of the TV. That and I tend to get sucked into the programs.

Everyone eventually returned to the living room, I finally had a chance to hold Anna while she slept. Ryan programmed Kristi & John's new cell phones and I went into the kitchen to finish this post. I guess I'm being anti-social right now. Oh, well. We can't all be together all of the time.

Tomorrow is Anna's baptism and another party. It should be great since the storm is passed and the sun is set to shine again. Maybe we can play some croquet although I'm a bit afraid to go out in the grass because the have ticks out here and copperhead snakes.