After our return from China with the Speizmans on June 21, I embarked on my new role as VISTA for FIRST in Maryland. My first milestone was a four-day VISTA bootcamp in Philadelphia starting July 14. I was able to wander a bit around Philadelphia on my own, including a seeing the outside of the Philadephia Museum of Art, its famous Rocky Steps and the Fairmount Water Works. I also enjoyed snagging food at Reading Market. The AmeriCorps training was OK, too, I guess, other than having a roommate share the hotel room.
Before heading to Philadelphia, I took Allie to her three-week Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Camp at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. This was her main “away camp” for this summer; her course was “Principles of Engineering Design” where she would learn about designing bridges, buildings and other structures. I was impressed she chose a more technical course than in previous summers.
Barb and I won a July 13 sneak preview of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince through the Baltimore Sun, much to Allie’s consternation.
I bought tickets to take Allie and a friend to see Jason Mraz at Merriweather Post on July 25. When her friend crapped out, we were able to enlist Gerard to come to the concert. It was a memorably odd evening but Allie had a good time and Gerard was a good sport. Allie tried to make videos of several songs but I will spare you the results.
A couple of days later, Allie and I drove to Rochester, NY, to retrieve Kristen from a hockey camp. We brought her back down to Maryland for a couple of days before putting her on a plane back to Denver. It was great to get the cousins together. Allie had missed out on a beach week in North Carolina with Kristen, Sara and their Embrey cousins because Allie was at camp.
On July 29, we took Kristen for a busy day sightseeing around the Washington DC Mall. We started with some obligatory tourist poses.
Our first stop was the Holocaust Museum which Kristen wanted to see…but we didn’t take photos there. Our next stop was the Hirshhorn Gallery sculpture garden for a bit lighter mood.
There was a special exhibit at the Smithsonian Castle that featured lots of stuffed animals (I’ll spare you many photos of them…though I can’t recall the exact theme of the exhibit).
Then we went to the Air and Space Museum.
It rained while we were in the Air and Space Museum but once we got out the Capitol was especially pretty…so time for more photos!
After just a couple of nights with us we tucked Kristen on a plane back to Colorado. We wished it could have been longer but she needed to get home and we had places to go: Barb, Allie and I flew down to Riviera Beach to celebrate Mom’s 90th birthday. Sue came down as well from Gainesville. We had a nice steak dinner at Morton’s, I believe…or possibly Raindancer. The dinner itself was nice and we tried to make it special, but Mom and Dad were both getting might creaky…and it doesn’t appear that we even took any photos. We tried staying at a new Riviera Beach hotel, the Singer Island Resort (which later became the Marriott Palm Beach Resort). It had a fancy pool and was a cut above the Singer Island Hilton where we more often stayed, but it was also considerably more expensive. I don’t think we went back there.
Laurie was also in the country, visiting Boston and Philadelphia but couldn’t quite manage getting to Florida for Mom’s birthday. She was able to pop down to Maryland for a few days in early August and it was good to see her. She later spent time with Mom and Dad before heading back to Guatemala. She was not loving her teaching assignment there but had one more year commitment on her contract.
I made my first trip to Manchester, NH, in mid-August for my VISTA orientation training at FIRST. Things got off to a fun start attending a minor league baseball game featuring the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. I made sure to get Barb a t-shirt.
In mid-September I snapped these photos of Allie and her new haircut at Nika’s hair salon. Allie was fully a high school teenager, 13 going on…something. And I wasn’t much of a photographer. Allie was officially a 9th grader and earned a spot on the varsity tennis team, such as it was. She was also playing tennis in a youth league at Cattail Creek organized by her friend Jeff Curran’s mom, Terri. I was playing on a USTA men’s team led by Duncan Brown and a mixed team led by Deb Dettmer (who at this point was also the school nurse at GCS). Allie also started working several afternoons each week at Kumon. Daily calendars and scheduling got increasingly complicated.
To further demonstrate my lack of skills with a camera, I took a bunch of selfies trying to get a head shot suitable to use for FIRST. These were the best of the bunch.
Allie had a quiet birthday. Being a big-time high schooler she didn’t have a big party, just a sleepover with one friend and a fondue dinner at The Melting Pot. It made life easier for all of us.
In October, Gerard and I went to a concert featuring Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III. It was my first time at the Goucher College Kraushaar Auditorium which was intimate and we had very good seats. Both performers did excellent solo sets and a few songs together (Setlist). Loudon had just put out his album on Charlie Poole, a 1920s singer I knew little about. The whole evening was one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve ever seen, capped off by Gerard getting an autograph from Richard Thompson. I was too cheap to buy any of Richard’s merch.
Halloween and pumpkin carving time came around again. Allie celebrated along with Harry and enjoyed a pretty sunset with handstands in the driveway.
Through the fall and into the winter I got progressively more consumed with robotics activities. Allie was busy with school, tennis, dancing at B.Funk, Kumon, and being a 9th grader. Barb was in the thick of the Affordable Care Act legislation. Everyone was busy but we didn’t take many photos other than of robotics events. Thanksgiving was spent at home with Nana Leila as our dinner guest.
In early December Barb and I attended the wedding of her colleague Victoria, a chance to get dressed up.
On December 18 and 19 we had a blizzard that dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on our little home which forced us all to take a couple of days off to shovel out and have some fun.
The aftermath:
Shoveling:
Snow fun:
Poor Georgie:
On December 23, Allie and I went to the National Geographic in DC to see a special exhibit on the terra cotta warriors from Xian. I don’t recall much about the exhibit other than it was way less impressive than seeing the actual site in Xian, but by now we knew how to pose.
While at the National Geographic Building, I took a selfie with a copy of one of the Mars rovers. I was becoming more interested in all things robotic. On the same day, Barb was at her office’s holiday party but managed to not take any photos of herself.
Christmas Eve, time for photos! Seeing as we were relatively dressed up, it’s a safe bet we headed to Auntie Jessie’s (or was it the Diamonds at that point? Not sure) for the traditional get together and carols.
We had Christmas dinner at home with Leila (and her dog Pepper), Leslie, Jean and Emery. It was the first time Leila met the Staffords, which gave Leila and Barb something to talk about later. Beyond that, it was a relatively quiet Christmas season as I got ready for the official kickoff of the high school robotics season the first weekend in January.
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