Walking the Mall

I'm sitting here enjoying the most fantastic aromas wafting up from the kitchen! Moira and Jim are cooking a curry and it smells absolutely wonderful! I am salivating already and they're only just beginning the cooking process!

We have a bit of a houseful at the moment! We've got Jim and Moira plus Stephen's mum, his brother John and niece Leanne. I'm so thankful to have our own bathroom on the top floor as I'm sure the queues for the guest bathrooms are like Disney!! What I don't see I don't worry about though...no-one has complained too much yet! Although John, June and Leanne only arrived yesterday so I guess we haven't fully pushed the capacity yet!

We've spent a couple of days at the Mall (the National one, not the shopping one!) since we got back from our holiday. There were a few museums we hadn't been to yet, so we've ticked those off now. The American History museum just re-opened last November after being closed for a couple of years so we have spent a fair bit of time in that. They have a really well done exhibit of the original "Star Spangled Banner" - the American flag hoisted after the Battle of Baltimore where it was spotted through the "dawn's early light". It was very moving. (What I mean is that I was welling up again! Especially as they had a montage of versions of the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background. Maybe its my age...)

We were back again today as we met up with John, June and Leanne. Stephen and I went to the Lincoln exhibit which we'd missed the other day. As we were leaving one of the employees had asked if we had heard of the discovery that the Smithsonian had made a couple of days before. As we had barely switched on a TV for 10 days we hadn't. Apparently Lincoln's watch was being repaired and the watchmaker had engraved something inside the watch. President Lincoln never knew it was there, but it was a legend within the watchmakers family. One of them contacted the Smithsonian very recently and told them, and when they opened the back lo and behold it was there as described. The watch was on display along with other artifacts so we stopped by the exhibit to see it.