A Very Wearing and Wonderful Summer

I apologize I have been terrible about updating my family blog so you will get some snapshots and tid bits of what our lives have been over the last several months. We had a crazy busy summer this year. We did get to do some fun things this summer. This quote was discovered by me at the Newseum. (An amazing museum for you to see when you come visit.) Enjoy.

Also at the Newseum is the largest portion of the Berlin wall outside of Germany and they have a guards tower there too. We were very impressed by the video and News articles regarding the history of the Berlin Wall. In the Newseum they also have the newspaper articles for what seemed to be every major event in modern day history. In there you can do your own live news broadcast and Patty and Michelle, a Hobbs family friend who stayed with us for the summer, did one together. They have a Newseum employee assist you with the recording and as you could imagine they see hundreds of people do the same things over and over every day. I have found that Patty has a gift of being able to make these type of employees laugh and come up with something totally original. She was able to do it at the NBC studios as well as a concert we recently went to this summer.

This summer we had to give away the family dog, Milo. We found out Malan is allergic to dogs so we gave him away to a Corgi rescue group. It's about as thorough as a baby adoption where they do a screening process and go to the home to make sure it is a good fit for both the dog and the new owners. He had a great personality and he loved playing with Malan and was admired by many neighbors, especially the 95 year old next door neighbor Miss Jackson. Miss Jackson would feed Milo dog buiscuts in the mornings and thought she had Milo trained very well to come eat the buiscuts, but we're pretty sure Milo trained her when to feed him. When we let him outside to go potty in the morning he would go to the corner of the yard closest to the neighbor and would bark until Miss Jackson would come out and throw him a couple buiscuts.

















We got in a couple Oriole games and this is one of the DC United games we went to for Patty's birthday celebration back in May. (late celebration)
This is an unstaged picture I caught before going into work one morning. I hope you like it.

I also moved my business during the busy summer since the old unit could only fit three trucks. The only reason we were able to pull it off was because it was only 3 doors down from our old place. In this picture our unit consists of the bottom level of the building. It is a small step up from our 1500 square foot unit to this 3000 square foot unit. They took out the tree and put in a more accessible drive way and added another garage door to the right of the existing one and gutted out the unit on the left for more parking for our trucks. We went from 3 trucks to 8 in a matter of a month and a half. In this unit we can fit 9 trucks comfortably as well as a trailer we use for our termite work.

For my birthday we went to see the Killers and it was an awesome concert. After seven years of marriage we made it to a sweet concert. We got some great seats too off craigslist. The crappy part was that a 7 foot tall man was in the seat infront of us, it was pretty annoying but we had a blast.









Another great museum that we went to was the the National Museum of American History which has many great exhibits one of which was the this one. We saw some Star Wars costumes that Patty wished Jess was around to see and an enormous American Flag. Patty said it wasn't as big and spectaculer as she remembered it from years ago but I thought it was quite impressive. That's right, Owen is rockin' the 'hawk! He gets all the attention. People can't walk by without smiling at him or giving him a compliment. He has been walking for a couple months now and has recently learned how to give people 5. He also started dancing about a week or two ago when Patty was watching, "So You Think You Can Dance." He puts one arm up in the air infront of himself and twirls in a circle until he falls down and does it all over again. All in all we feel he has been very blessed with his health. We are thankful for everyone's prayers for him. His laser treatments have noticeably lightened his birthmark and he has made it through his first year with no seizures, which is the highest probability time frame for his syndrome. His right eye's pressure has been building up so the eye drops haven't been working as well as hoped but the doctors are going to give it a little more time before making any decisions. Owen hates the sight of anyone in a white trench coat. He knows they are trouble. Patty has tried twice to take him in for an exam that they have to put leads (sp.?), I think they are called, all over his head but has been unsuccessful both times since he wakes up and tears them all off. He is a very happy and good looking boy that we love so much. He is very easy to please. By the way the 'hawk serves two purposes; one, for his laser treatments they need to treat up on his scalp so they can see and not worry about burning too much hair, and two, it looks great.