I could tell you but...

Except for my poor wife being sick, I declare today a resounding success.

A) We spent over 5 HOURS OUTSIDE the house NOT playing video games or legos.

B) Although they protested before we left the house, the boys actually thought it was really cool. I was absolutely floored when YB said at lunch time, "I want to come back here TOMORROW!"

Where did we go?

Well... a really cool place with a three-letter acronym.

Sorry I don't have any personal photos to show you, but cameras weren't allowed.

At the visitor's center, they issued the boys these cool visitor badges.


We got to see one of these...


We got to see this...


We got to see a section of this.

According to this open source website, we might also have gotten to see a robotic dragonfly (insecto thopter), a robotic fish ("Charlie"), and a spy pigeon with a camera strapped to its chest among MANY other really cool gadgets. SO many, in fact, that we looked at about half the museum before we stopped and took a break to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The food in the cafeteria was delicious! When asked if his chicken sandwich with honey mustard sauce was good, ES replied, "No... it's AWESOME!!!" After we ate lunch we went back and checked out the other half of the exhibits and the gift shop.

After we left there, I also took the boys by my office today so they could see where I work. Nothing terribly exciting there, but at least they can picture in their minds where Daddy is going when he goes to work.

As for the rest of our New Year's Eve festivities (if you can call them that), the boys and I played some Mario Kart on the Wii (the intro video at that website is cute). I like that we can play four people at once on Mario Kart - it devides the screen up into quarters just like XBox games do. After that, I went and picked up a pizza and some chinese food, and we had a family movie night and watched Horton Hears a Who on Blu-Ray. It was pretty darn amazing in 1080p (high definition video in case you don't speak "1080p").

Now the boys are in bed and my wife and I are watching TV in front of the fireplace. The winds are howling and rattling the house outside. We're the types who won't usually last until midnight on New Year's Eve. We would normally at least have some champagne, but my poor wife is sick today, so I don't even think we'll partake of the bottle of champagne I picked up at the Henderson Hall package store.

Looking back on 2008, I think it was a pretty darn good year for us. I had trouble picking out what picture to put on our Christmas card this year because we had so many great family pictures from all sorts of different places - snorkeling at Oahu, snorkeling at Maui, snorkeling at the Big Island, Volcano National Park and the black sand beach on the Big Island, hiking Makapu'u Ridge, hiking Diamond Head, hiking to Manoa Falls, swimming under Waimea Falls, kayaking around Chinaman's Hat, the Submarine Birthday Ball at the Turtle Bay Resort, Dave & Jess' wedding in Oregon, Crater Lake National Park, the Humbolt Redwoods State Park, Sequoia National Park, Legoland, hiking in Utah, Grand Canyon National Park, the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, seeing the B-2 bomber at Wightman AFB, and our new home in Ashburn. (You can see pictures of all of the above if you just scroll back through my blog posts over the past year). We successfully finished the decommissioning of the Mighty MSP on schedule and without any major problems.

Yes, 2008 was a very good year for us. We certainly needed it to make up for the tough year we had in 2007 though.

I offer you all my warmest wishes for much joy and happiness in the coming new year.

Happy New Year!