Memorial Day Weekend in Pittsburgh/DC

Friday morning of Memorial Day weekend our dear Nashville friends Mike and Leslie Voorheis were in the area visiting Mike's dad and stopped by Pittsburgh to hang with us for a while.

We started the day with a long overdue golf lesson, which was promised to Mike and Leslie while we lived in Nashville. Neither of them had any golf experience but managed to hit the ball and get some good airtime. Then we decided to have a little more fun and gave Leslie my driver, aka 'The Big Dog'. In the video below, Leslie had been strenuously trying for over five minutes to crush 'The Big Dog'.



Leslie working the impact bag. She was a very focused student.



Later we walked the north shore river trail to eat lunch and to monkey around.



Finally Mike surprised us with a new game day/pool time outfit.


Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend Tuff and I drove to Washington DC to visit our college friends Chris and Tsveta Polhemus. Just last summer we were celebrating their wedding.

Wow, DC is full of things to do and with only three days we only scratched the surface. Our first stop was the White House. Tuff and I were surprised at how small it was.



This guy protests full time outside the White House.


If you've been to DC many of these monuments will look familiar.

Jefferson Memorial


Lincoln Memorial

Washington Memorial picture taken from Lincoln Memorial


WWII Memorial with Washington Memorial in background



We stopped to see four of nineteen Smithsonian Museums; American History Museum, Natural History Museum, American Indian Museum, and Air and Space Museum. We did these in one day but both felt each museum needed a day.

Natural History Museum

Air and Space Museum


That's me in the sunglasses!


Inside the American Indian Museum. This display names all 562 recognized tribal entities, including Crow, which Tuff is pointing at. We could not find Northern Cheyenne.

We had to have Indian Tacos while at the American Indian Museum. The cafeteria has options of Indian foods from all regions, including Minnesota's wild rice.


For our second day in DC we took a day trip with Chris and Tsveta to Annapolis, Maryland. I really enjoyed this trip. Annapolis is home of the Naval Academy, which is the third oldest college in the United States. We had the opportunity to go through part of campus and see what life is like going to school there.



Tuff impressively impersonated the mascot.



The next day we went to Georgetown, an old neighborhood of DC. We stopped by the Old Stone House, built in 1765, which is the oldest standing building in DC. Inside the kitchen was just a giant fire place and of course there were no bathrooms. Each room had a fireplace.


The same day we visited the Smithsonian National Zoo. The coolest thing about DC is that all the sight seeing we did was free, including the zoo.

Tuff and I had to take a picture of this. If you look closely at the monkey on the left, you'll see why.


Sloth Bear. He was so funny and very entertaining for the zoo-goers.


Red Panda. Tuff and I wanted to take this little guy home.


Since last weekend Tuff had another week of OTA's and has two weeks left.

OTA Countdown

I found a great informative article describing OTA's a little more called NFL is OTA Happy.
http://lloydvance.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/the-nfl-is-ota-happy/

Tuff has already had a few weeks of OTA's and will have three weeks left. The article explains OTA's wonderfully, but basically OTA's (Organized Team Activities) are football practice. Everything else they have been doing in the off-season has just been lifting and agility.

Great picture of Tuff at an OTA


Last Saturday Tuff and I volunteered the day at an event called International Children's Festival in Pittsburgh. We worked at our church's booth making Popsicle stick puzzles using ink stamps with all the kids that visited.


The kids love to stamp



We golfed in a charity event last Friday. Below is a picture of Tuff and his teammates, as well as Jay Simon, the event founder.


The four guys on the right in the pic below are some of Tuff's teammates that were on a team at the golf outing. They are golfing from the same hole we were on but not supposed to be on that hole. We stopped to watch their shots back over the trees to their hole.


Our group posed for a picture.


Ok here is a serious one


Tuff loves to find golf balls. We golfed at a course on Friday and Tuff was in golf ball heaven .



The picture below is a shot from the roof of our new apartment. Pretty cool view of downtown.


Today we walked around downtown since it so close to our new place. There is a nice trail along the north shore that is right along the baseball and football stadiums.

We Moved to Short Term Living

Last week we visited Pittsburgh's Edward Marc Chocolatier since our friends from our small group are the Chocolatiers! Its actually a milkshake factory as well so Tuff and I split an awesome chocolate chip cookie dough milkshake. What is really cool is that they have one of their stores in the Pentagon. Naturally we posed for a picture in front of the chocolates.

Below is the Chocolatier himself, Marc Edwards and his wife Meaghan.

The best part of our trip to the chocolate store was that Tuff tried a chocolate covered sweet pickle. He rated it a 4.5 out of 10.


The Edwards started hosting get togethers at their house every Friday the weather is good. They turn around their TV in their house window so we can watch it from the outside.



I volunteered to hand out water at the Pittsburgh Marathon May 2nd. It was a really fantastic experience to watch all the runners, especially the elite runners. Since the volcanic ash kept a lot of elite runners from participating in the Boston Marathon, many of them came to Pittsburgh's marathon to compete. Best of all we were located at the halfway point. Worst of all it rained the entire time.


Check out all those plastic cups! We had to rake them off the road as the thousands of participants ran by. There were 16,000 participants so we handed out a lot of water.



Today we made the move from our wonderful place on the waterfront to a fully furnished efficiency downtown. We are at the efficiency until the end of June, which is when we have a month off and we will travel to Minnesota and Montana. Then we will return to Pittsburgh by August 1st for Steelers training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. So in the meantime all our stuff in is a storage unit.


Oh yeah, I also got my wisdom teeth removed last Monday. I'm extremely fortunate because the experience so far has been super easy. From the moment the dentist put the pliers on the first tooth, the procedure was over in less than two minutes! Unlike Tuff, I chose not to keep my teeth.