Day at the capital

Today the boys and I played hooky and went to get all the dossier documents from the state capital and send them off.  They did really well with the 6+ hrs in the car and waiting, hungry, for me to sort, record, and ship the 64 documents.

As we were getting ready the school called panicked... apparently they scheduled the "psychological" evaluation for Dennis' IEP for today and had arranged for a Russian translator and everything.  Sometimes it would help if they'd tell us their plans... or maybe I'm the only dad that a couple times a year just decides to pull the kids out of school for part of a day to have fun.  At least I framed it as educational... "I know school budgets are tight, so this last minute trip is probably one of the few opportunities they will have to see this VA history" :)  We ended up rushing over to school for the 45min eval.

While I was at the front office a woman, older than me, and her daughter came in.  The woman had a Russian accent which I was sure of when I heard her ask her daughter if everything was good.  I decided to say hi and thank her daughter for helping Dennis out in computer class -- how many Russian speaking 4th graders could be in our tiny southern German town.  The mother was obviously uncomfortable with my saying hi... some of my employees say they are nervous to approach me so I guess it is a general thing, I'm scarey :)  I solve it with my employees by finding the ones I give heart attacks to and communicate to them until they are numb...  but for this occasion I just said thanks and went away.

This was our first picture.  They liked the whole stepping out thing though neither understand the meaning of the monument.  On the back side was another depiction with a little boy, amongst others, that we decided looked like little D... I think D kissed it.

They really thought this statue of George Washington and others was really cool.  It is my favorite too.

On our way to FedEx.  We actually got the documents first thing.  The center is the "original" building mostly designed by Thomas Jefferson.  The wings were added later and hold the Senate and House of Delegates.  There is a lot of stuff underground these days.

Sam wanted to make sure D got a picture in front of the American flag that matches his shirt.  Dennis now refers to it as his American flag.

They liked the armor in this old VA seal.  This one is better than the others as I think the official one these days includes a woman in a toga with not everything covered.

Another picture with a statue of George Washington.  This room has many busts of famous people.  Sam was intent on finding where Abe Lincoln was despite my telling him that Abe wasn't from Virginia.

And of course the reminder we really do live in the south... a full sized statue of Robert E Lee.  The closest "significant" town to us is actually Lee'sburg.

It took me a bit to convince them to pose for this one.  They were quite concerned on whether or not they were allowed to sit in the chairs.  I guess that is a good thing.  This is the "old" part of the building... the Senate chamber I think... that they essentially have open to anyone... well, anyone who has gone through the metal detectors.

I have a bunch more pictures but this is enough for the blog.  We are going to send some to Snezhana... I suspect we'll leave out the whole dossier part... well, and probably the skipping out on school part though maybe that would make me a cool dad.