Eating Toast Upside Down: 2009

It has been a while since I have given an update on Jason. I have had several people ask me how his English is doing. Well, I’m not sure how much Mandarin he actually spoke in Taiwan and I don’t expect him to start speaking full sentences of English anytime soon, but he probably has a vocabulary of about 25 words. He is particularly good at mimicking sounds of things such as the tea- kettle. He has started saying, “Mom! Deedle doodle daddle….” Because he hears Kate and Steve say this and he is trying for the same thing.

His first combination of words came when we were on our vacation in Virginia. He already likes to take up more than his share of space in the back seat and sticks one leg out of the car seat in one direction and on in the other. Stephen jokingly told him to “Stop It!” and the next then I heard was, “Bop-it!” They did this back and forth several times, which was hilarious. He also has a particular fondness for shoes and brushes. He wants to have his shoes on (doesn’t matter which pair) at all times. He will reluctantly let me take them off at night when I say “Night- Night!” to the shoes. He thinks it is important for everyone else in the house to have their shoes on, too, so if someone is lacking a pair he will grab some from the shoe rack and try to put it on their feet.

He also loves to carry a brush around wherever we go. Kate got tired of him stealing hers so she bought him one of his own. Now he just carries them both around, one in each hand. It’s funny that if he can’t find his shoes or his brush, he will call them; “Shoes……!” or “Brush……!” While he won’t sit in front of a movie and watch it, he loves to sit in front of Kate’s CD player and listen to children’s music. In fact, he especially loves the tape she listened to when she was little. He will sit there for a long period of time just staring at the player and listening to the music.

Otherwise, Jason is basically one of the gang. He keeps us in smiles.

Our first family vacation with Jason was planned as seven nights in Montana divided between Kalispell and Glacier National Park. We arrived in Kalispell and checked in to our hotel, which we found we would be sharing with those celebrating “Gay Pride” over the weekend. My kids were able to see men in sequin dresses for the very first time!

The mountains and lakes around Kalispell and Missoula were beautiful. We especially enjoyed a town called “White Fish” just north of Kalispell where we discovered a coffee shop that introduced us to something new called, “A shot in the dark.” This is a regular cup of coffee with a shot of espresso added (because there just isn’t enough caffeine in a normal cup of coffee!?!) One of Stephen’s favorite parts of the trip was the ‘Fur Trading Company’. He was able to buy himself an arrow and a raccoon cap while we looked around at all of the animals on the walls.

A few days into the trip we headed up to Glacier National Park where we planned to see beautiful ice-capped mountains while taking a boat tour and driving on the “Into the Sun” road. Unfortunately, there was no sun to drive in to. In fact, by the time we checked into the lodge it was cold and pouring down rain. At some point in the evening we decided that spending the next four days in our small hotel room was not going to work. It was time for plan B.

So, the next day we headed back to the airport and flew to…..Washington D.C. How did we end up there? Well, our actual destination – Virginia – is one of our favorite states and home to a college called “Christendom” where Kate is hoping to go to in a few years. We arrived in D.C. very late and drove into Virginia where we were very happy to find a great Holliday Inn that had a suite that was just a fraction of the cost our lodge would have been in Montana (we were so fortunate that we were able to get almost all of our money back on our previous reservations!) After a great night’s rest we started getting ready for the day, when something happened in which I will be reminded of till the end of my days.

I have done quite a bit of traveling and when one travels, one’s clothing tends to wrinkle while packed. My usual habit is to hang my clothing in the bathroom while taking a shower so that all of those nasty wrinkles are gone by the time I’m ready to get dressed (in other words, I’m too lazy to iron!) So this time I took my lovely black capris into the bathroom and found the perfect spot to hang them right in the middle of the room where the steam could circulate all around them. It wasn’t a regular hook, however, but one of those sprinkler heads that come out of the ceiling in case of a fire.

Fortunately, I hadn’t yet gotten undressed and into the shower, but went back out of the bathroom to talk to Brian for a few minutes, because suddenly there was a noise coming from the bathroom, which turned out to be water spraying down from the sprinkler head. At first I screamed and laughed almost hysterically as the fire alarm started to go off and water sprayed into the bathroom. But then it got worse! The sprinkler head somehow broke and (as we found out later) all of the water that was allocated to our entire floor of hotel rooms suddenly poured forth into our bathroom! Black water like ink from the pipes came pouring down the walls and into our hotel room. We called the front desk and told them what was happening and then quickly cleared all of our stuff out of the room and into the hallway. By the time they were able to stop the flow of water, the entire suite was covered with water, which had gone through our third floor all the way in through a light fixture in the lobby.

After the firemen were dismissed and the wet-vacs were brought in we were given a different room to finish getting ready for the day while Brian called our insurance company and found out that thankfully the would cover my little boo-boo.

The fun and excitement behind us, we headed to breakfast at the “Cracker Barrel. We enjoyed it so much that we would eat there a few more times at other towns on our trip. Next we took a tour of “Christendom College,” which sits next to the Shenandoah River. Afterward we drove through the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. During the next few days we would visit Thomas Jefferson’s estate at Monticello, and tour Williamsburg and Jamestown.

We headed back up to Washington D.C. where poor little Jason spent one morning throwing up (probably from something he ate.) While there we saw the “Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception” and the “Commissariat of the Holy Land.” This is a Franciscan Monastery where replicas of places in the Holy Land have been recreated. We also took the subway to see the monuments and the White House at sunset, which was beautiful!