National Blueberry Pancake Day

 

Digging out

The ice was snow dense, you could stand on top of the whole pile. They needed an axe to dig out:

The Snowstorm

We had 6 inches of snow this past weekend, followed by several inches of sleet and freezing rain, which all but paralyzed the city. We took advantage of the family time to have lots of fires, game playing and a binge of the first season of West Wing:

Swim Team Official Pictures 2025-26

 

Individual

Men's and Women's team captains

With the coaches

Just the team

21.5

We sent half birthday cupcakes to her dorm:

Senior Swim Night

The last home meet of every sport is always senior night. Since the rest of swim season is invitationals and regional/state meets, CHS swim had their last home meet in mid-January and seniors were recognized:

Theme for the last meet was "formal"

Swim team Instagram post

The rest of the team made a kickboard arch for the seniors to walk through

The senior captains

And with families

Leaving the meet with all his loot

Opening his gifts from the team at home

Ben Hair Invitational

Benji swam this meet at the UVA pool before rushing off to his last UVA basketball game across grounds. I could not be there, but Kevin took some pictures:

Family Gaming Weekend

Abby headed back up To Hanover on January 3rd and we had a quiet weekend at home ahead of returning to work and school. We took the time to play a few family games, including having Benji learn our newest game, Barcelona:

One More Game at JPJ

Since Alex and Steph were here for New Year's Eve, they stayed to hear Benji play at the UVA Women's basketball game on the 1st. This was the last game we all went to this season, although Benji played one more men's game later in the week and Kevin was able to go:

Benji up on the jumbotron during the National Anthem

Everyone with hands up for UVA to make a free throw

New Year's Eve 2025

Alex and Steph graciously allowed us to host this year because we did not want to travel up and back to DC again (we were already having to go up again the following weekend to take Abby to Dulles). We had our normal games and silliness:

Getting ready to play Blank Slate (a new edition)

Alex showcasing the trophy for later

Abby and Jules had to sit together to share scorekeeping/reading responsibilities

Bow scooping game

Trying to suck up pompoms with a straw

Spoons

Some kind of pong drinking game that Abby and Julia were excited to teach everyone

Win, Lose or Draw champs

Traditional midnight photo

Family selfie

Adult girls with champagne

Everyone was feeling silly

DC Stopover: Sunday activities

We wanted to pack in a little more sightseeing before heading to cousin Shara's house for dinner and then on to Charlottesville. We started out at the US Botanical Gardens, which was having a train show entitled Dino-mite with giant dinosaurs made out of plant matter:

The inside exhibit was no less ambition, with Washington, D.C., landmarks also crafted out of plants:

Jefferson Memorial

There's even a Jefferson statue inside!

Lincoln Monument (with Lincoln inside)

Botanical gardens (older version)

African American History museum

More botanic gardens

US Capital

US Supreme Court

It was a short walk over to the Capital building, where we checked out the Capital tree. This year it was donated by Nevada (it rotates to different national forests) and they get the honor of decorating it:

Close-ups of some of the cool Nevada ornaments

Lastly, we made our way to the Hirshhorn Museum, which had a cool exhibit contrasting Basquiat and Banksy, as well as a lot of other great contemporary art (I had no idea it had such an extensive collection of famous works):

Original Basquiat piece

Banksy homage to it

They had a room with some of Basquiat's early sketches

Onto the main exhibit:

Mondrian

Caulder

Picasso

O'Keefe

Grandma Moses

Pollock

This was my favorite -- it was an installation done "in place" by Laurie Anderson over a week