Saturdays=Volleyball

A couple months ago, we started playing volleyball on Saturdays. Now it's really caught on and we have quite the crowd most weekends! We've all improved quite a bit since week 1 (we're looking into the qualifications for the olympic team!) Here's some pics from a recent game.

Yes, we do make 8-month pregnant Joanne play.....no excuses!! Just kidding! She wanted to try her hand at serving, so she will be fully ready once baby girl is here!

Shocking News From the Lius!!

As most of you know, Chris and I live cheaply here since we have our house all furnished back home. When we first moved we bought an air mattress to sleep on, and have been doing so the entire time we lived in Texas, and now West Virginia. However, after the amazingly comfortable beds in DC I finally gave in and went bed shopping. We managed to get an amazing deal and made the heart-wrenching decision to deflate the air mattress!

That's right, we finally broke down and bought a real bed. As you can see, Marathon approves and my back sure is happier!!

DC Day 3!

Sorry about the delay, but here's pictures from our third day in Dc. We got a late start to the day, but still managed to fit quite a bit in! First, we headed over to the Washington Monument. We got to take the tour up inside of it. The tour goes to the very top (500th floor!)! The Washington Monument from the outside!


Waiting for our tour!

Shane, Me, Ben, and Sarah inside the monument. We had an amazing view of the city from the top!

After the Washington Monument, we headed over to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. This museum was HUGE! We could have spent many more hours exploring it! Mollie and I especially loved the room filled with millions of dollars worth of jewlry!!

This was a gigantic squid that had been caught and is now preserved.

Yep, that would be the souvenier Chris bought for me!! Okay, okay, so maybe it's actually the Hope Diamond!

Next, we headed over to the Dc Zoo......just in time for the rain. We were all starving, and since it was raining, the main resturant was the only one open. And, of course, it's all the way at the end of the zoo. So we finally made it down there super wet.

After lunch, we quickly bought ponchos.....aanndd the rain stopped!!


There are only 2 zoos in the country that have panda bears, and lucky for us the DC is one of them!! This is the baby panda, which is only one of a few born in captivity!

Yep, I'm pretty excited to see pandas!

Dc was a great city to visit, and really cheap!! Most all of the museums are free, so if you get the chance, you should definately go to DC! There's so much to do! We had to skip quite a bit, but hopefully we'll go back soon! We had an amazing trip, and we're already planning many more vacations for the 6 of us!

Panda Bears at the DC Zoo

Only 2 Zoos in the Country have Panda Bears.

DC Day 2!

Technically, day 2 was spent in Ocean City, Maryland. It's just a 2 hour drive to the ocean so we packed up the truck and headed to the beach for the day!
Shane decided we needed to get up at 5am in order to get the most out of our day at the beach. Obviously, it was a little rough on Ben and his Chai Latte!


Ocean City Beach!!

Chris and Shane with their rockin' boogie boards!

We were all pretty excited to boogie board so we headed straight out into the ocean where there weren't any people right beside us. However, that wasn't fully thought out. Apparently there weren't people there because there was an extremely strong rip current. Sarah may or may not have had to been pulled out by a life guard and I may or may not have been saved partially by Shane and partially by a tattooed, muscleman!! God is good and at least we have a story to tell now!!

Relaxing after my near death experiance!

Finally back at the hotel and trying to make dinner plans! It was a fun and exhausting day!

Washington DC Day 1!!

We spent the holiday weekend in Washington DC. We road-tripped up there with our friends Ben, Sarah, Shane, and Mollie. Shane was the only one of us who had been there before, so it was great to experience it all for the first time!

Coming up the escalator after our first metro ride! This was followed by a 40 minute walk to our hotel with all our luggage.....and it should have only been a 10 minute walk!Our first full day in DC!!

We toured the Holocaust Museum. They didn't allow pictures inside. It was a really amazing/shocking/sad museum.

In the entrance of the Air and Space museum! This is the actual plane that the Wright brothers flew the first time.

The capital building. We got to tour it, and it was amazing!! It was so neat to be standing in the same building and on the same floor that so many important people have!

Waiting outside for our capital building tour!

This is the statue the State of Missouri sent to the capital museum....it's a statue of Benton!

The Kentuckians with their statues!

We finished the evening with dinner in China town.

Obviously, we did a lot of stuff and took a TON of pictures!! I'll post more pictures from the other days soon!!

Game Night!

Everyone in our group of friends loves playing games, so we do it fairly often! This week Erin and Thomas hosted game night and we played Bolderdash. Chris and I had never played, but it was fun, and we've added that game to our list to get!
Thomas, Erin, and Logan

Shane and Ben

Somehow us girls (aside from Erin) managed to escape the camera....I'll fix that next time!