Goin' Postal

No pictures right now, sorry - maybe tomorrow. We'll work on it.

We got to Virginia last night around 11:10 pm and stayed up pretty late so Gabriel could eat and play with his Grandpa and Grandma Gail for a while. He had a horrible night's sleep, waking up every couple hours. He is still a little bit under the weather but only as far as sleeping and eating. It could be worse. Today he didn't keep much food down, but he seemed pretty happy anyway.

Today, we went with Dad A to Union Station in Washington, D.C. for lunch. It is a beautiful 90-some-year-old train station that has a mall and lots of restaurants in it. They have concerts there sometimes, as well. We bought a red Gerbera daisy at KaBloom and headed down to the food court, which was the nicest food court we've ever seen and even had a movie theater in it. We got some Japanese, Mexican, Greek, and American food and left speaking in tongues.

The next place we went was the National Postal Museum, a Smithsonian museum. We got to print our own postcards and mail them. We learned that federal duck stamps raise revenue for an extremely successful conservation program to protect the nation's waterfowl. There were a lot of really interesting displays, including postal artifacts from 9/11 and historical newspapers (which were cheaper to mail than letters so that news could more easily be disseminated). The most striking thing about the museum, though, was how it looked. It was amazingly beautiful. Just to think that people once actually went there to mail letters and pay bills transported us to a more romantic time.

While we were on the subway to D.C., we missed a call from Jack. He said that he will try to call again tomorrow after 4:00 pm our time but that he never knows for sure if he'll be able to get to a phone at a certain time. He sent happy birthday wishes and sounded dry but okay.

For dinner, we went to Cracker Barrel so we could see Tracey. She was our server and brought us a very tasty dinner. She has gotten humongous, but it's all baby. Aiden is going to be a very large baby! If you trust his grandfather's analysis of the sonogram, he will have a forehead below his mouth and a chin above his eyebrows.

After dinner, Gabriel ate and promptly threw it all back up, so we let him play for a while before we tried to feed him again. Meanwhile, we played Flight Simulator and successfully flew a Boeing 737-800 from Washington Dulles to Newark.

Thoughts on turning 30 (by Patty): I have been getting very stressed out about being 30 years old. It's not that I objectively think it's old; it's always seemed like a very young age to me. It's just that I've always been traumatized by milestone birthdays, because I've always thought, "I will never again in my life be __ years old." Matthew has led everyone we know into making this past week or so as easy as possible, and honestly, it has made this whole thing very painless. As it's gotten past midnight, I have noticed that wrinkles have not in fact broken out on my forehead, I have not grown more chins, and I haven't gotten a hunchback... yet. It's still early in the day.

Seriously, though, I'm actually starting to look forward to the day. I am so grateful to everyone for the support, and I am especially grateful to my beautiful husband for making me look forward to all of my ages.