Snow

Well for any of you that were getting sick of me talking about the lovely weather, it snowed this weekend. All day yesterday. And it accumulated, in the end about 4 " in our neighbourhood, more further out. Yesterday, we decided as good Canadians we wouldn't let a little snowfall hold us back from our day of activity, after driving for five minutes we decided we had a made a mistake. In the defense of the DC drivers slipping around ahead of us, snowfall is unusual here, especially accumulation, but my goodness. It was scary so we picked up some bagels (a blog for another day) and went straight home to hide. This afternoon was much warmer above 0, and the snow was melting so we decided we should get out and enjoy it. The snow was not really sticky so the snowman building devolved into a snowball fight.

War and Rumors of war

Walking for the White House to the Lincoln Memorial you see memorials for each of the wars the US has been involved in. The World War II memorial, makes you stop and think for a bit (which I suppose is the point). First of all the size, this thing is massive, a huge fountain (not on because it is winter after all) surround by columns labeled with state names, on the far west side and huge Arch with Pacific written on it, the far east an Arch with Atlantic, and between them all these columns. Standing inside it you feel small, and quiet.
Reading the wall, the countries, the state names, famous words about honor, war and freedom. It was moving, and confusing and humbling. To fight righteously, courageously under the direction of men, maybe we have been in politics for too long, I struggle to know what that would look like. Yet, you have Hitler, and Saddam and you have to start somewhere, and for those that did, that left families, and homes, and children, and pregnant wives and sweethearts, standing in the middle of that memorial you just want to say thank-you and I am thinking about what you gave, and lost and believed in.

Honestly, looking through my pictures from the last two weeks, I am not sure where to begin. As I have said before this city is ridiculous with culture, you really should come! ( all of you, we have three spare rooms with double occupancy)

I am just going to getting going with it I suppose and from now on I will post things as they happen to avoid the overwhelming back log.

The customs agent in Edmonton recommended we take our time and see everything here, but make sure to see things at night as well as during the day as the monuments are beautifully back lit. He was right, following a much needed "stay at home day" for the girls we packed everyone into the van and drove around in the dark - getting lost only briefly, yea Liam. So that is the Lincoln Memorial. Taking pictures out of the van windows proved tricky, this is the only one worth posting.

So I am going to talk about Lincoln for a minute. This fall Liam and I attended a book reading by Sarah Vowell and, much to Liam's delight, I finally became a fan. Came home and read everything carried by the Edmonton Public Library by this entertaining and educational author. (they only had three- which was okay, she is a bit cynical, probably best not to read to much at once). Back to Lincoln, actually I am on the way there- Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation, a book about three Presidential Assassinations including Lincoln. There is something really neat about reading about something and then walking around in the pages of the book.

We arrived in Washington after a dizzying haze of packing, flying, packing, cleaning, celebrating holidays, packing, cleaning, standing in lines, more standing in lines, loosing luggage, finding luggage, loosing luggage, standing in line....Now we are here, in a house we have a signed rental agreement to stay in, with Visas, and all of our belonging and a wonderful tenant of our own taking care of our place in Edmonton.

As we were preparing to leave we were talking with some good friends about this theory that when God closes and door he opens a window, and we generally agreed it was a pretty simplistic sentiment. That in fact sometimes that window is on the ceiling and to get you to it he might then go about filling up your now doorless room with water. Or snow or sleet or whatever, or perhaps it won't be a window at all but just a calm comfortable relationship with the room you are in.

All of that is to say that we are learning that God does call us to go places that are not easy, and even though we have no idea why we are being called we go. You may be thinking, what is so bad about being asked to go to Washington for 6 months, and you would be absolutely right. The struggle with this experience has been the process not the end result. I could now engage in a long list of complaints and groans about the last 6 months of life in the Stone house, which in the midst of the pain and suffering in our world, well we have nothing to complain about. What has really given me pause is realizing that God called us here, called us to leave Edmonton, we said we would go and things continued to be bumpy and crazy and well down right ridiculous. For those of you who didn't live with us through the last few months here is my favorite one: we are in a Montreal airport when we realize the forms we have to take to Calgary the next morning are in the luggage the airline lost 5 days before....prompting us to call on family to take "passport photos" of our children (in Wetaskiwin), email them to us on Liam's blackberry, print them at WalMart (yes I know leave us alone even the Stone's have to enter Walmart when forced to print photos in passport size before 8 a.m) and then take them to the US consulate in Calgary. Thing is I always felt okay about the decision to go, and knew things would eventually fall into place, it felt like watching a domino display on pause, if one of those guys would just fall everything else would follow but they just leaning!

Liam and I have been trying to keep our agenda in check for the next 6 months, we don't know what God's plan is for us here, what we do know is that he wants us to be faithful to Him. I have been carried through this whole process by these verses: James 4:13-15

"Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

I am planning to blog a bit about our time here, to keep me focussed and to record the experience for our girls. There is a ridiculous amount of things to do and see here so there should be some good pictures and occasionally witty dialogue (especially when Liam has time to write it!)

10 days ago we were hanging out in our little house in Edmonton, enjoying the Christmas break and general ease of our simple life. Now we are living in Washington, DC, in a rented house (not little, alarmingly large-just ask my calf muscles) and trying to figure out life as diplomats.

Having recently watched Julia & Julie, Liam believes I should take up and master french cooking, the girls think they should play all day and I have decided to record the whole adventure on this blog.

We arrived a few days ago, Liam, the girls, my mom and I. My mom is here for two weeks, to help us get settled and see some sights. Hopefully we will get to the sights soon, the past few days have been filled with grocery shopping, traffic, grocery shopping, traffic.......we have a rental car for the week so we have been trying to take advantage, we aren't really sure what we will do for wheels after Sunday.