AF Memorial

The glass has fighter jets flying in the missing man formation. It is just to the side of the large memorial.

While not an offical part of the memorial, we always enjoy people watching downtown. This girl had a huge tattoo on her leg of a zombie face.... ??? It seemed a strange choice....

Love,

4Vs

AF Memorial

Last Friday night we went to hear the AF Band play at the Air Force Memorial. The concert was great and the monument is beautiful! We had a great time!

Love, 4Vs

Elizabeth's 7 Eleven

We all have our crutches.... Mine is coffee. Gotta have it. All day long if possible....

E'beth needs one small coke slurpee before 10:30am. It is not too much to ask... We are happy to provide slurpees for design and house decorating advice! We love you E!

Love,

4Vs

White House

Here is our first glance of the White House- on our first weekend in DC! On the way to the front of the White House we saw Old Executive Office Building (now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) and Blair House. But of course, this was the building that we were most excited about!

Gracie was thrilled!

Love,

4Vs

Accotinck Lake

There are lots of outdoor concerts or concerts in the park type events in the summer here. Mike came home one Friday evening and we decided to go to one at a lake near our house- Lake Accotink. (we have no idea how to pronounce it!)

The kids brought some blue and green light sticks to play with and we had a good time hanging out at the park and listening to the National Concert Band. I have read in the paper that there are Bald Eagles at this lake and Mike and I have heard of a bike trail running around it- so we are planning a return trip!

Love,

4Vs

The Living/Japan Room

We are blessed to be in the position of having a little more house than we are used to. When you walk in the door, there is a formal living room on the left. It leads into a dining room. Next is the kitchen and then a family room. It is a great space.

Right now, we don't have furniture for a formal living, dining and a family room. So, we turned the dining room into an office, put our couch in the family room and did what we could with the living room.

Lucky for us- Elizabeth came to the rescue! She knew just what to do with this room and we have put many of our Japan treasures in the front room along with the piano. It makes the room look very nice and gives us a lot of open space to use as needed. We like it- Thanks E!

This is also one of Daisy's favorite rooms. She loves to monitor the neighborhood and bark as needed :)

Love,

4Vs

Einstein Statue

The National Academy of Science is located on the perimeter of the National Mall. Hidden in a garden in the front is this sculpture of Albert Einstein. The kids enjoyed climbing on Mr. Einstein and having their picture taken with him!

Love,

4Vs

First weekend

Our first weekend in DC, we were greeted by our friends the Mikkelsens. As you know, the 4Vs met the 5Ms while stationed at Randolph. Kristen made a wonderful brisket and they came over to the house to hang out!

On Sunday, we met Kristen and kids and went downtown. Gracie wanted to see the Sculpture Garden on the mall first.



Next we walked over to the National Museum of American History. We were happy to see an enormous US flag, Kermit the Frog, Dorothy's slippers and all sorts of great treasures.


We didn't get to see everything, so we will be headed back again to see more of the exhibits!

Love,

4Vs

Inside pictures!

We are working on inside pictures of the house and hope to have them up soon! Parts of the house are still a work in progress.

We have all the boxes opened and most everything sorted. We were blessed with a visit from Aunt Elizabeth on July 22nd. She was an amazing help in deciding where to put things, arranging whole rooms, keeping up morale and ensuring that neither Mike nor Mary Beth ran away during the initial weeks of complete chaos at the house! Thanks Aunt Elizabeth!

Love,

4Vs

Deck

We have a great deck behind the house. You can walk out from the first floor to the deck and then down some stairs to the back yard. It is a really nice place to have dinner and hang out in the mornings!

The deck chairs that Mike and Danny Harris and Ryon made in Kansas look great on the new deck!

The backyard is steep and tiered into three levels. Our landlords very graciously closed off the back fence on the first level so Daisy dog has a small yard. Daisy enjoys the yard pretty well but really gets excited to stand up on the deck and bark like crazy at anyone who walks along the trail at the bottom of the hill! She also enjoys sunning herself up on the deck.

We are thrilled to already have hummingbirds at our feeder on the porch. Plus, in the very early mornings, we have lots of little bats that fly around out there. Mike wants to build a bat house!

Love,

4Vs

Our new house!

We really got lucky to find such a great house to rent. The owners are retired military and have been really easy to work with. The house is in a cul-de-sac that is filled with military, retired military or military affiliated families. There are lots of kids and everyone has been really friendly!

Here is the front of the house.

The kids are really enjoying the basement, Mary Beth is glad to have space to spread everyone out a little bit and Mike's favorite part is his garage!

We live in front of a green belt with a creek and a walking trail. Lots of nature. In fact, the house comes with a woodpecker nest in the front! (To be fixed at the end of the summer!)

More to come!

Love,

4Vs

Virginia at last!

On our third travel day, we made it to Virginia. We met our new landlord at the house that afternoon and spent our last night in a hotel in Alexandria.

The next day, Wednesday, our movers arrived with all of our stuff and the fun began. We had all of our stuff from OKC and storage delivered. We don't think anything was stolen on this move, but we had lots of things broken. In fact, this has probably been the roughest move yet on all our furniture. Oh well, it is just stuff right? We have repairmen and AF folks working with us to fix/replace and re-buy.... It will just take some time!

Love,

4Vs

PCS travel Day 2- Lots of Tennessee

We spent most of Monday in Tennessee- a beautiful state and filled with folks that appreciate Daisy dog! (Bluetick is the mascot for Univ of Tennessee).

We actually cut across a tiny corner of Georgia before getting to Tennessee, but sadly there were no good places to take pictures. Here we are at the visitor's center for the great state of Tennessee! We stopped for lunch and a break.


As we were getting ready for our picnic, Gracie and I were moving stuff in the van. An extended cab pickup truck pulled up next to us. (Like Dan Cone's pickup- there was a full backseat in the cab, but they had those half doors that opened with the main front seat doors.) As G and I were watching, the driver went around to the passenger side of his truck, opened the door and out popped a llama head. He put a leash on the animal and proceeded to coax the thing out of the backseat of the truck cab. Grace and I were completely amazed! He pulled her out with her leash and walked over to the pet area. Of course, we had to send Mike over to meet this guy!

Mike asked if the kids could pet his llama. The man replied that he didn't have a llama. They looked at the animal at the end of his leash for a second and the man informed them that it was an alpaca. He then proceeded to let the kids pet her. He had sold her to someone and was meeting him to deliver- since he just had the one animal, he just got her to ride in the truck with him. We were slightly disappointed to learn that we would not have the chance to watch him load her back into the truck!

We spent the night in Bristol, Tennessee. This town is right on the Virginia border. In fact, on main street in Bristol, one side of the street is Tennessee and the other is Virginia! It was a beautiful little town and it would have been nice to spend a little more time there- but on to Virginia!

Love,

4Vs

Heading North and East

I know it has been a long time.... It is time to get caught up with the 4Vs!

We left OKC and Tinker AFB in mid-June. It was hard to leave our friends at Tinker, but our whole group was scattering to the four corners of the US- we were just the first to leave. We had Mike's change of command and headed out to Plano.

We were fortunate to be able to spend three weeks playing around in Plano with friends and family. Thanks to everyone who hung out with us, let us crash at your house,let us swim in your pool,and eat all your food! We had a great time going to 6 Flags, Ranger games, musicals at Fair Park, malls, movies, dog trials and out to eat!

We wrapped up our time at home with a great trip to Grandpa Cone's lake! We had the perfect lake weekend- watching movies, eating way too much, out in the boat, swimming in the lake and Aunt Ethel's gumbo! Thanks to Dad, Uncle Gary and all the Cones for a great trip!

On Sunday, July 12th, we started our trek to Virginia!

That Sunday we spent a lot of time on I20. If you have seen any of I20 east of Dallas, you may be relieved to know that it looks exactly the same as that for the rest of the way across Louisiana, Mississippi and into Alabama :)

After 450+ miles, we spent the night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Go Crimson Tide! (Who knew their mascot was an elephant?!)

Love,

4Vs

Bubba's Big Penny

We found the 10th and most valuable penny in the world. Bubba has the 9th one.

Stephen Colbert

We laughed to see this picture of Stephen Colbert at the entrance of the Entertainment History exhibit at the National American History Museum. It doesn't seem like he has been around long enough to merit such an honor!

Love,

4Vs

OK Capitol

Brock and Grace wanted to make one last trip to the OKC Capitol before we left! Here they are with a replica of the Indian that stands on top of the building!

Here is Daisy striking her regal pose in the Tinker backyard. We used this picture to enter her in the "Best Looking Dog" contest on base. Sadly she did not win. Oh well, she is the best looking dog in the Vaughn house!

Love,

4Vs