Bonus Points

AmyE. was the first to respond, and provided a good translation: Virginia Empire.

However, I believe StacyS. was the first one with the correct* translation: vampire. +10 StacyS =)

Props to TheGardner who also repsonded with vampire.

*Since we didn't stop and ask, Jill and I both thought vampire was the correct answer. Although VA Empire was a creative response

A Life Update via Photos (and some text)

So, we've been pretty bad about uploading photos we've taken on our escapades. Not that we've taken a whole lot of photos. But I just pulled off a bunch of photos from my phone and uploaded them to Picasa to keep. The following is generally chronological and is not intended to be a complete and accurate record of our goings and comings ... but it is a recap of some of the things we've done this year.

In February we had a crazy snow storm. If I remember correctly, we had one whole week off from work, plus another day or two here and there because of the other storms around this time. I already posted some pics from the storm, but these are never before seen pics from Snowmageddon:

February 2010: Snowmageddon

Right after the crazy snow storm we decided to take a road trip. Well, we had the road trip planned before, but hadn't anticipated snowmageddon. As Jill mentioned obliquely earlier -- that we had "opened the door" on adoption -- the real purpose of the trip was to meet with someone to learn about the LDS Family Services adoption process. We stayed Sunday night at a hotel in Richmond, had our appointment Monday morning, then drove back home Monday afternoon. We had a good visit at our appointment, although we were nervous. On the way home, we stopped at an awesome BBQ place for a late lunch, called Buz and Neds. We had BBQ sandwiches and brought home BBQ beef brisket and pork to freeze and have later. It rained a lot on the drive home, but we made it back ok. Sorry, there's not really a lot of pictures. Just a cool phone from our swanky hotel and some sights from the drive. The hotel had a full kitchen - and Jill made a delicious steak dinner, salad, corn, and dessert. She brought it all with us in a cooler and cooked it at the hotel.

February 2010: Richmond Valentine's Trip

Some random stuff here. Tree down at Jill's work, after-effects of the storm, lights off at the White House, lunch at chef Spike's Good Stuff Eatery, and stuff Jill made: FHE board, rolls, yummy pulled pork, and a motorcade headed into the White House.

February/March 2010: Random DC Stuff

Jill blogged about this before, but here are a few more pictures from our fun St. Patrick's day party and other things we did to celebrate. The cookies were from a co-worker's wife.

March 2010: St. Patrick's Day

We had Easter dinner at our home teacher's house. Their daughter dressed up as the Easter Bunny - she picked the outfit out all on her own and made the "mask". But of course we didn't know she was the bunny...

April 2010: Easter

In April, I had the opportunity to reunite with a mission companion and participate in a fireside with him. He did the speaking and the singing, I did the playing. It was a really fun night, and we did some moving songs. These are a few pictures we took after the fireside with Brydon and his girlfriend, Jessi. The next weekend, we drove out to Southern Virginia University (in Buena Vista) to hear Brydon's last performance with Fading Point, the university's a cappella group.

April 2010: Music and Brydon Brett

The end of April was big for us. Jill already blogged about the embryo transfer. Then came the wait, then more waiting. And lots of shots:

And lots of homework.

And awesome license plates (bonus points to the first person who correctly "translates" this plate in the comments).

And sticky rolls with Kevin and Syd.

This license plate is a little easier...

Then, in May, we had some of Jill's family come visit, and a friend of ours got us a private Capitol tour. I had never been before (since middle school), so this was especially a treat.

May 2010: Capitol Tour

We went to the dress rehearsal of the Memorial Day concert with our friend, Chance, and some of his friends and roommates.

Memorial Day 2010

Saw this guy on a drive (I think on our way to the little book shop we discovered):

In June, on our fourth anniversary, we found out that the last round of IVF we did was working. In the past, we hadn't told people when we were starting a cycle, but this time we told our family and some close friends. Many, many prayers were offered up on our behalf, and many of them also fasted. It's definitely a miracle and a wonderful blessing that the pregnancy has continued on since that time.

For the Fourth of July, the wards had a pancake breakfast and invited our neighbors from Trinity Lutheran. The scouts did a tandem flag raising at both church flagpoles.

[[Aside: The flags were raised, then lowered to half-mast per presidential proclamation.]]

Senator Bennett spoke before the breakfast and shared some interesting thoughts about our country.

I'm just going to paste the notes I took on my phone (since I'm still procrastinating homework I really need to get done today); maybe in the future I'll fill in the gaps.

== 2010-07-03 sen bennett ==
Won our freedom (decl of ind)
Ordered our freedom (constitution)
Keep our freedom (gettysburg address)
* gettysburg dates (2, 4 july)
* Lincoln speech an afterthought
* documentfor the keeping
Still our responsibility (keeping)

For Pioneer Day, the Stake had an activity out at the Marriott Ranch in Hume, VA. The youth had spent the previous few days on a pioneer trek for youth conference. It was slated to be a very warm weekend, with a heat index around 110 degrees. We drove out, dropped off our dessert at the picnic area, then waited alongside the "trail", in the shade. The youth trudged up pulling their handcarts and most found a reserve of energy to sprint the last hundred yards or so past the waiting crowds to the field where the carts would be disassembled. After that, everyone moved over to the picnic area for a yummy BBQ. We had lunch under a tent with some friends. There was one casualty: one member of our group was stung by a rather large bee that flew up his shirt sleeve. As lunch was wrapping up the breeze started to die down and it was getting really hot. We decided it was time to go; we skipped the outdoor activities like stick pull, tug-o-war, and other pioneer activities.

Pioneer Day 2010: Hume, VA

Jill already blogged about and put up a few pictures from our awesome weekend at the lake at the end of July. She didn't put in the creepy picture of the truck we saw on the way there, though:

At the beginning of August we lost power for about three days. Of course, this was the month where we had decided we'd be better about our groceries and actually make a budget and a shopping plan -- so we had gone out shopping just a day or two prior and filled the fridge and freezer. Most of the stuff in our fridge was lost, but we managed to save some of the freezer items (probably thanks to the fact it was pretty full of frozen solid food). We ended up replacing lots of the food over the next few weeks. The power went out some time on Thursday, if I remember correctly. Saturday afternoon the power company finally came by with a few trucks to resolve our issue. I snapped a few photos of the men at work clearing branches off and re-stringing the power and cable lines.

August 2010: Power-less

To have fun while the power was out, and keep cool, we went out to Alexandria with some friends and toured the George Washington Masonic Memorial. We caught the last tour, but missed out wandering the grand hall because it closed early due to a wedding reception that was getting set up while we went on the tour. It was a really interesting trip.

August 2010: GW Masonic Memorial and Old Town pics

After the tour, we went to Old Town Alexandria and wandered around the shops. Bumped into some other friends who had moved out of the ward. Went to Candi's Candies. Listened to the glass harp player, Jamey Turner, for a while. Spoke to him briefly afterward and he basically bore his testimony to us about how he felt guided to get into music.

Turner also plays the hand saw and giant wrenches, which emit a loud "clang" when they're whacked with a rubber mallet. These talents, and the glass harp, landed him on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

"Did a duet with Carson, I played my saw and he played the wrenches. And, Jimmy Stewart was on that night, and he said, 'You know, Johnny, my father had a hardware store. Little did he know he also had a music store.'"

Then we went to a scrum-didly-umptious dinner at Mai Thai. We split a bowl of tom ka gai soup, I had the Musaman curry, I can't remember what Jill had, and we also had some mango dessert. The food and the service were amazing. But we probably spent a little much, considering we had to replace most of our fridge contents...

The Sunday following our Old Town excursion we returned to Alexandria for dinner with friends. We picked up some supplies for their son's party the next weekend (i.e., a Darth Vader costume). The next weekend we were back out there participating in the party (e.g., letting little padawans become real Jedis by fighting, and slaying, Darth Vader). Hopefully we have some other pictures from the real camera, since there were some pretty good Star Wars costumes. Who knew the Lucas trilogy would continue to live on?

Your Powers are Weak, Old Man

We went to the Arlington County Fair and participated in the Family History booth that the church sponsored in the inside exhibit hall. Members of several local congregations volunteered several hours at a time to staff the booth and introduce people to the familysearch.org website. We had fun wandering around the fair before our shift.

Arlington County Fair

And that about gets us to the end of August. Consider yourself caught up! =)

Stocking Up

My mom is great. And, like all our parents, is very excited for the arrival of our little one. So excited, in fact, that she started buying baby clothes even before we knew that we were having a little girl. Due to motherly instinct / wishful thinking / inspiration, she decided to buy a handful of baby girl outfits. Thankfully, that's what we're having, so she sent them along recently. We've now started a little box o' stuff. Below are a few photos she sent so we could be excited with her about them before they arrived.

(sorry - I forgot to rotate before I uploaded...)

Also, her neighbor sent us this great blanket that she made for us. It's tied up very nicely in a bow and it has a lot of green (Jill's favorite color!). It also goes in the box o' stuff.

More Good News

♫ My Shepherd Will Supply My Need ♫
My Shepherd will supply my need:
Jehovah is His Name;
In pastures fresh He makes me feed,
Beside the living stream.
He brings my wandering spirit back
When I forsake His ways,
And leads me, for His mercy's sake,
In paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death,
Thy presence is my stay;
A word of Thy supporting breath
Drives all my fears away.
Thy hand, in sight of all my foes,
Doth still my table spread;
My cup with blessings overflows,
Thine oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be my abode,
And all my work be praise!
There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger, nor a guest,
But like a child at home.

We've been busy lately trying to find a new place to live, going over budgets, getting ready for school to start (tonight), actively participating in church (singing in the stake choir, book club for Jill, EQ stuff for me, etc.), trying to get our doctor visits in (dentist, eye doctor, et al), and--oh yeah--going to our jobs.

[One of the songs we sang for stake choir is above. I'm not sure of the text source, but it reminds me of Psalm 23]

Then, on Monday for FHE, we reviewed our August spending and started making projections for the future. We knew it was going to be close once the new year came, but I guess we didn't realize just how close... It spurred some thinking and plans to make a few changes in our habits, but it was somewhat of a stressful evening.

The apartment search has been a little frustrating; can't find something that matches our two or three main criteria (cost, location, and dishwasher), although we've toured a handful by now, including 3 yesterday. And our budget meeting didn't help the frustration factor when it came to what we were trying to look for.

I left work a little early yesterday to look at apartments with Jill, so I just barely (6 minutes) missed an email from work that said I needed to call in to the mothership (I spend most of my time off site on my current project). I called in this morning and received some very good news. I couldn't believe my ears! And stepped out to call Jill to let her know that, pretty much out of the blue (since my company is on an annual performance cycle), HR and Management had approved a raise, effective next paycheck.

Whereas I was having a little trouble concentrating yesterday because of the whole apartment search, this morning all I can think of is the song we sang at stake conference and how grateful I am right now. So I had to take a minute to write about it. Surely my Shepherd hath supplied my need, and my cup still runneth o'er. His sure provisions doth attend me in my days.

It's not your parent's Cold War anymore...

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took a break from bilateral meetings at the White House on Thursday to make a burger run.

Traveling by motorcade, the two presidents ventured to Ray's Hell Burger in Arlington, Va., a popular hamburger joint just outside the nation's capital. Obama ate there last year with Vice President Joe Biden.

The U.S. president had a cheeseburger with cheddar cheese, onion, lettuce, tomato and pickles. His Russian counterpart had a cheeseburger with cheddar, onion, jalapenos and mushrooms. Obama drank ice tea, Medvedev sipped a Coke, and they split fries.

Read the rest of the human interest story here.