Birthday Weekend!

Since Sir William has been born, we've tried to join him and his parents, Weina and Matt, for a "Birthday Weekend" to celebrate the boys' joint birhdays.  This year was no exception.  While are staying in Tucson, Arizona until mid-January, we caught a flight from Phoenix to Washington, D.C. to spend a long weekend with those three world travelers.

We flew out a day early in order to handle some personal business up in Philadelphia, but drove down to Arlington, Virginia in a rental car to join the family on Friday, October 21.

We sent Young William a bunch of birthday balloons on his actual birthday, and Weina had sent us a photo of the young man stylin' and profilin' with his floaty friends:

This just got our juices going even more to see the Young Tyke.  We love his parents dearly, and they got us excited about seeing them, too, by posting a selfy they took at Matt's cousin's wedding earlier in October:

We got to Arlington in time to meet William and Weina at his school and walk home with them.  At dinner (which Matt and Weina kindly prepared for us), we let William open two gifts from Uncle Tom and Aunt Eileen, who had us bring them down from Philly.  They were two large metal model sports cars, which William shows off in the photo below.  Uncle Tom knows his nephew all too well:

The weather was a bit cool but nevertheless very sunny all weekend.  So, on Saturday, we all decided to stroll around Old Town Alexandria.   Matt had never seen it, and we knew there would be lots for William to see and do.  Little did we know how much, because we stumbled on the weekly farmer's market downtown.  Not only did Weina and Matt pick up some produce and other provisions to fulfill part of their grocery shopping - but William also discovered a tent and table where he could decorate his own Halloween pumpkin!  He showed it off proudly to Kathy:

A long walk makes one thirsty and hungry, so we stopped for lunch at Murphy's Grand Irish Pub to wet our whistles and fill our tummies.  While they were waiting to be served, the boys got a bit rambunctious.  When we looked back at this photo, we first thought it was Matt with William, but somehow David got "someone's" sunglasses and, with those, looked all the world like Matt.  This is only a hint of the silliness that ensued:

On Sunday, we all drove over to Great Falls National Park for a glorious Fall outing.  More on that in the next blog.  But, after lunch, Kathy, David and William just hung around the house while Matt and Weina did their grocery shopping.  We had lots to entertain ourselves, including a MARATHON project of constructing a Lego train and station from a kit we bought William for his birthday --

-- and wrapped up after dinner with another MARATHON book reading session.  The feature event was a voiced reading of a Berenstain Bears book, in which Kathy voiced Mama Bear, David voiced Papa Bear, and William handled the voices of Brother and Sister Bear.

This was exhausting, and William went willingly and quickly to his bath and bed.

Monday was a school day for William and a work day for Matt and Weina, so we walked William and Weina to school before heading out on our own adventure, which you'll read about in the next blog entry.  We rejoined the Happy Family for dinner that night after meeting William and Weina at school again.  After a scrumptious pork belly dish and accompanying dinner prepared by Weina, we said our goodbyes to our favorite grandson and our favorite son and daughter-in-law.

We can't wait to see all of them again over the Christmas holidays!