A nice picture-Juner.

Mama got some grief because she didn't get any individual pictures of me when we got our family pictures taken last month. So she got her camera out today and tried to get a good picture of me to get printed.

Take a look at some of the good ones and leave a comment with your vote for the best. (Some need to be cropped of course.)

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7
I was okay with having my picture taken until Henry turned on the ceiling fan.
Then mama took away my toy lamb and I got mad.Henry decided he wanted in on the picture.

By that time I was hungry and done with pictures.

This is supposed to be my vacation. Can't you just leave me alone?

We've really been enjoying ourselves at the Cooper Retreat Home. Yesterday, mama didn't get out of her jammies until almost 4pm. Henry never got dressed and just went back to bed wearing what he wore the night before. Today we were a bit more productive. Mama took her pictures and she, Henry and Grandma made the first 3 small batches of cookies. They made oatmeal raisin cookies, no bakes and mama's favorite coconut chocolate treasure bars (we think that the Cooper's call them rainbow bars). Henry was a big help with the cooking. He layered all the ingredients for the bars and measured out the sugar and oats. He was very good at keeping the sugar tidy, but got a bit messy with the oats. Luckily Jazzy was here to eat most of his mess off the floor. The cookies must have been a great success because they were all gone by this evening thanks to papa and Mister Anthony.

I cheered up when I got back to my natural state of eating. Mama didn't want me to get my new dress dirty, so I had to get stripped down to just my tights and shoes. It's a good look.

This afternoon, mama and Grams Crackers left us alone while they went down to C0lumbus to go shopping. They must have had fun because they didn't come back until way after my bedtime and brought our cousin Sadie back with them. Mama was also very encouraged about the trip to New Orleans because I went down for a nap and to bed after just a bottle and without her. Looks like I'm getting left behind.

National Air and Space Museum-June.

Yesterday, we had plans to visit the zoo, but we woke up and it was rainy and below 40 degrees. Instead we visited the National Air and Space Museum located outside Chantilly, Virginia. (For all of mama's old colleagues, not only were we in Chantilly, but we we even drove by the Vienna lab.)

We didn't know this museum existed, but Miss ndrea said it was well worth seeing.when we walked into thehanger, we saw the world's fastest jet propelled aircraft. This plane set the world record for the fastest flight from LA to New York (1 hour and 4 minutes). After it set the record, it was immediately flown to Dulles Airport and given to the Smithsonian.

This is the Mars Pathfinder prototype. Henry said that there's a little car on top of it that can drive into caves, but that it's not moving now because it doesn't have any batteries.

This German missile has wood fins

We got to see the Space Shuttle Enterpise! It was huge! Henry said it looked like Big Jet from Little Einsteins.

Mama was really impressed, especially when she considered how small this space shuttle looks when it is strapped to the rockets that launch it into space.

This is the capsule that brought the Apollo 11 astronauts back from space. Mama told PawPaw about a computer she saw that had 123 kilobytes of memory. Her camera has 4 gigabytes. PawPaw said that the calculator on his watch is more sophisticated than the computers that helped send those astronauts to the moon. It must have been very cool to be alive when that happened.

We don't know how relevant this is to space history- but there was also a replica of the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This means something. This is important.

This is a good shot of the views inside the museum. This museum was built outside of town to house all of the planes that were too big for the museum downtown. The Air France plane behind mama is the supersonic Concorde. It flew at twice the speed of sound. The Smithsonian wanted this plane so badly, in 1989 they got Air France to promise to give it to them when it was retired in 2003.

Roscoe Turner was a very famous air racer in the 1920s. He flew stunt planes in movies for Howard Hughes and was known for taking his pet lion Gilmore everywhere with him. (Coincidentally, the Smithsonian also has Gilmore preserved in their archives.) We hope Roscoe is related to us.

There was a section on experimental aircraft. Besides the backpack helicopters, we liked these teeny tiny airplanes that were designed to be driven on roads as well as flown. This one was even designed to look like a car and was painted "Buick Blue."

I had a great time on the elevated walkway, even though it was high enough to scare mama.

We were very glad that we stopped to check this museum out. Thanks for the tip Miss Andrea!

We spent the rest of yesterday driving back to Marion. We hit a pretty big snow storm on our way, but luckily it stopped snowing about halfway across Pennsylvania and didn't get icy until we got north of Columbus. Henry and I tried to be good in the car, although I kept dropping my blankie and crying for mama to pick it up until she actually buckled one of the loops into my car seat strap. Henry was a very good boy and watched movies all the way home until mama and papa told him at 11pm that it was time to go to sleep. We got to the Cooper's at 12:30 am and were both up until almost 2am. We spent today recovering in our pajamers and trying to catch up on sleep.

We were very excited to find Christmas presents under the tree, but Nama said we couldn't open any until Christmas. Mama says she's been like this for years. Henry's eyes welled up with tears and his lip quivered as his voice shook and he said, "But it IS Christmas." Nothing. Not even my funny Christmas hat softened her. Maybe if we publicly call for presents on our blog, she'll change her mind. Not likely.

Mr. Turner goes to Washington- Henry.

We started out our Christmas yesterday by driving up to Washington, D.C. We stayed with mama's high school (and college) friend Miss Andrea and Mister Christopher. Thank you for the hospitality, wonderful supper, and great Christmas decorations (Juner really liked those).

This morning we got up and rode the train downtown. we started in Union Station, where we saw the train exhibit put on by Norway. It's supposed to depict a Norwegian winter scene and did a great job, except for the unproportionally large trolls that dotted the landscape. Maybe we don't want to visit Norway anymore...

Mama and Papa had to drag me away from the trains, but we eventually headed towards the Capitol Building. It was very big and impressive, but we were a little worried that we weren't supposed to get too close when we saw the guards with the big rifles. But I guess that is just normal these days.

Around front was a huge Christmas tree! It was full of cute homemade decorations from kids. You can see that the Capitol is undergoing some renovations. Pretty much everything was under construction in preparation for next month's inauguration.

Mama says that this is called the National Mall. She also said we were going to walk all the way to that giant pencil. That looks like a long way.

We posed for too many pictures today. I tried to mix it up at the reflecting pool by turning myself into an overpass.

But I did calm down for a few minutes when we saw a lady feeding bread to the birds and ducks. They were actually climbing all over her. We were amazed and a little grossed out.

Future Attorney General Henry Turner. After lunch, mama and Juner decided to go check out the National Gallery of Art while Papa and I went to the dinosaur museum. I don't know why anyone would chose painting over dinosaurs, but mama said something about the texture in the paint of a Van Gogh she saw in the impressionist room and I knew I wasn't going to convince her otherwise.

We finally made it to the "Big Pencil" (the Washington Monument. By this time Juner and I were getting pretty tired, so mama and papa decided to keeping walking to the Lincoln Memorial.

We saw the (relatively) new WWII monument.

And stopped by the Vietnam Memorial. Mama liked the reflection of the Washing Monument in the stone. Did we mention it was sunny and 60 degrees? Not very Christmas-like, but wonderful for sight-seeing.

I missed out on a few monuments because I was too tired. Juner made it through on only a half hour of sleep today, but she spent most of her time in the stroller, so she didn't use much energy.

I woke up when we got to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see mama and I walking up the stairs. I was a little scared of this one because Mister Lincoln was so big. Mama says he was kind of a big deal, so she didn't let me stay at the bottom.

We took this picture for Grandma Cooper. 3 of her favorite guys and a little lady.

I wasn't really into this picture, but mama said I could have a fruit snack if I cooperated.

We made it a long way and it was starting to get dark...

...so we headed over to the main event-the National Christmas Tree!

There were no less than 10 model trains running around the tree. Even Gugger liked it.

I tried to show her all the different trains. She was a very eager learner. In addition to the big tree, each state had their own little tree that they decorated. We found the Ohio and North Carolina trees.

Unfortunately, we weren't there long before they shut down the whole place. We don't know why they closed it, but we had to leave before we even got to see the National Yule Log.

But then we looked across the street and saw the White House!

Mama was really surprised at how white it was(well, obviously mama, but she said she was expecting it to be more like the Lincoln Memorial). She also thought it would be bigger. But she thinks the Obama girls will like it anyway.

We were glad to see our friend Miss Sara, who works a few blocks from the White House. She came down to visit us when she head we were in town.

After our long day, we took the train back out of town and were glad to find a warm bed at Miss Leah and Mister Josh's house. They put us up for a night even though they just got back from Germany and were still pretty jet-lagged. This time we did remember to get a picture of our hosts.