Will and his duck (DUKW)

Patrick and Will got to spend some guy time today, without Mommy and the girls.  They took a long metro train ride down to Union Station and then enjoyed a long ride around Washington DC and into the Potomac River in a DUKW.  They're refurbished amphibious military vehicles from the early 1940's and they're one of the many tourist vehicles in town.

Here's video of us rolling in the river, complete with one very happy boy.

Here's the happy boy and our "Lucky Duck."

Check out Will's smile as we made our way down the Potomac.

After the fun train ride, the neat trip into the water, seeing the President's helicopter pass over us, and more monuments and construction vehicles than he could count, Will passed out on Patrick's lap.  For Patrick, it was the highlight of the trip.  Just a content little guy snuggled in with his Dad.

National Building Museum

The five of us spend Saturday afternoon at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.  The entire museum was hands-on exhibits for kids to learn how to build various things.  The volunteers couldn't have been nicer or more patient and Will had a blast.

First, he learned about woodworking and he got to use two different planes.

Then he did some spackling with Mom.

Will talked all day about sitting in a Bobcat but when the big moment came, he wanted Daddy to sit with him.  Daddy was all too happy to oblige.

Will even got to lay some mortar and place a few bricks.  Mommy might have helped a bit.

Will also really liked fitting pipes.  He bellied up to the tower that kids were building with pipe parts and he added his token couple of pieces.  He really liked this wrench but it weighed almost as much as he does so it didn't get much action.

Peace Corps night at Nationals Park

Wednesday night was Peace Corps night at the Washington Nationals park.  Traditionally, before that game the Peace Corps staff and alum carry out flags celebrating the countries where we've had a presence.  Traditionally, the Nationals were horrible and the flags were displayed to about 5,000 fans.

Now that the Nats are the best team in baseball, this game and the ceremony are pretty special.  Patrick carried out the Kenyan flag (he's second on the left below) before 26,000 fans - he was even on the jumbotron for a moment.  

Patti sacrificed her sanity and brought the kids down for the game and met up with Patrick after the pre-game flag ceremony.  Between the wrangling of the kids and all of the usual commotion, we managed to watch about two innings but the kids LOVED it.  Maggie clapped every time anything happened, Stella sat happily on our laps, and Will enjoyed his pizza and attention from our friends.

Hooray Daddy!

For all of his hard work for the past three years, the Director of the Peace Corps gave Daddy and each of his teammates this award today.

From the size and shape of it, it might have to stay on Daddy's desk at work for a while...

Will's first day of 3's

Will is turning four next month but he's technically a 3-year-old for school. So he went back to nursery school as a 3 today.

Patrick dropped off Will today. After a couple minutes, Will said "why you still here Dad?" No crying or anything.

Hey Jude

The kids' favorite song right now is Hey Jude by the Beatles.  Will asks for us to play it in the minivan and Patrick sings it to Stella and Maggie to get them to go to sleep.  It doesn't hurt that it's one of Patrick's favorites too...

Maggie and Stella singing Hey Jude

Will singing Hey Jude

Good excuse to try the new car seats

Maggie and Stella are still light-weights (21 and 22 pounds), but they're growing like beans.  So much so that they outgrew their infant car seats.  We ended up getting the same seat for them that Will uses but with girly pink accents (Will thinks his black and red one is pretty cool by comparison).

They got their first real taste of them today when we drove to Annapolis.  We beat out the incoming rain storm and had a good day of boating on the bay, dining on mussels and watching fire-trucks.