Grand Rapids Children's Museum

Located in downtown Grand Rapids, the Children's Museum is a perfect destination for those cold winter days. My mom and I took my niece and nephew there the morning after Christmas Day; going relatively early was a wise decision, as the museum quickly became quite crowded with many children and even more adults.

The museum has a variety of different play areas, some meant for very young children, others suitable for slightly older kids.

The yellow VW bug is popular with all ages!

The area that attracts the most children is "Little GR" -- a small city, just like Grand Rapids, with all of the requisite services one needs in town.

The post office

The library

Properly checking out library books is serious work!

The pizzeria

The chef at the pizzeria

The bank

This supermarket shopper apparently loves fish!

Small selection of supermarket items

The friendly supermarket cashier

The museum has numerous other areas, but this is where our kids wanted to spend the most time. It's also where we ran into other Latvian-Americans -- because it's a small world when you're Latvian!

Christmas in Michigan

Maybe I should write about Christmas before another big holiday is upon us! This year my trip to the Midwest was quite short - only three days. I was blessed with good flying weather (left Grand Rapids a few hours before they were hit with some sleet and ice!), and with on-time flights. Flying is a true blessing when it functions smoothly.

As opposed to last year's huge family gathering, this Christmas was smaller and quieter, but also very enjoyable. 

One of the cats keeping watch over the tree.

When my sister and I were young, our most important job to help prepare for Christmas dinner was to make name cards for all of the guests. This year my six-year old nephew, with help from Oma, continued this tradition - with a tasty twist, as each name card was in a plastic baggie with piparkukas!

In addition to celebrating Christmas, we did have time for a few outings, a couple of which I will write about separately. A couple of us even found time to see a movie; if you've not caught "Brooklyn" yet, all three of us highly recommend it! The film has been Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, as well as Best Actress -- Saoirse Ronan did an incredible job acting the part of an Irish immigrant in New York City in 1952.

We also had plenty of time for reading and for playing. My niece loved the floor puzzle I gave her as a gift, but I found it surprisingly difficult to assemble--too many pastelly colors and too many curvy lines.

Although my nephew was excited about his Kristaps Porzinigis jersey he received from Santa (judging from post-Christmas photos chatter, the Porzingis jersey and shirt were the most popular Christmas gifts among Latvian-Americans), when I asked what his favorite gift was, he answered, "The fact that you are here!"

National Postal Museum

Washington has such an abundance of museums to visit and sights to see that in my sixteen years here I am still visiting and discovering new places. The National Postal Museum had been on my list for a while, but its location off the National Mall makes the slightly offbeat museum also more off-the-beaten track. Still, it is conveniently located next door to Union Station, and as a Smithsonian, entrance to the museum is free of charge. Even given its somewhat esoteric topic, it has plenty of very positive reviews online, and the museum is currently hosting a special exhibit in which I had particular interest.

Fittingly, the museum occupies the building which was Washington's main post office from 1914 through 1986. The building itself is quite impressive and attractive.

A step up from the modern America post office, wouldn't you agree?

This clock is in what used to be the postmaster's office.

Home to one of the world's largest collections of stamps and philatelic materials, the museum has done an excellent job of creating colorful, educational, and interactive exhibits. For example, the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery displays many stamps, including a variety of rare ones.

Washington cherry blossom stamp in top left is one of my all-time favorites!

Whoa, the stamp on left looks familiar!

This gallery also has a computer on which a visitor can create - and email to themselves - a stamp or two, including with one's own photo. These are two I created.

Mailboxes from various countries are scattered around the museum. Some looked familiar, but others were quite different than the North American or European mailboxes I have seen.

The museum's collection also includes numerous vehicles - from wagons to cars to airplanes - that have been used to transport and deliver mail by the U.S. Postal Service.

Old mail wagon.

Railway post office.

Interior of the railway post office.

The special exhibit which I had wanted to see is called "PostSecret: The Power of a Postcard." Begun as a one-time community art project in 2005 by Frank Warren, PostSecret has evolved into a cultural touchstone and spawned an empire which includes numerous books, exhibits and speaking engagements. The project has Washington roots, as it was initiated during a local Artomatic exhibit, and Frank himself lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

The website Frank runs is updated weekly with postcards containing secrets -- sent to him from around the country and around the world. Some of the secrets have mature themes, thus I will warn that the following link for the website itself might be NSFW - "not safe for work." Frank updates the website every Sunday morning with new postcards, and with classic (older) secrets. The PostSecret exhibit at the Postal Museum displayed a small selection of the millions of cards received over the last decade. Some are heart-warming, others are heart-breaking, while others are funny or slightly strange. The next three photos are just a small selection.

This exhibit runs through September of this year, but on its own the Postal Museum is well worth a visit if you're in the area and have an hour or two!

State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms

Living in Washington means sometimes being friends with movers and shakers - or people whose jobs seem immeasurably cooler than your own. It also means having unique opportunities that folks who live elsewhere don't have. 

The U.S. Department of State offers public tours of its beautiful diplomatic reception rooms, yet because the tours take place only on weekdays, then it had been an item on my Washington bucket list for a long time before I finally could make arrangements for such a tour. A friend who is in the Foreign Service and currently working in Washington before heading for her next assignment in South America was able to join me for the tour. Although she registered us for it, anyone can do so via this website. 

After arriving at State Department headquarters in Foggy Bottom, going through visitors' security and checking in, I met my friend and we waited for the tour to begin. On the dot at 10.30am our group of twelve people was gathered and we were provided with some instructions before we were escorted through several long hallways and into a large elevator which led us to the Diplomatic Reception Rooms and the beginning of the tour. Throughout the duration of the tour we were accompanied by not just one, but two Diplomatic Security officers. 

While the State Department headquarter building is a typical office building -- and not a particularly attractive one at that --, these special rooms, opened in 1961, are anything but typical. Designed by Edward Vason Jones, and filled with art, antiques and important memoribilia from American history, these spaces are impressive. They are used for official entertaining purposes, though can also be rented for huge sums of money -- two days before I visited, the rooms had been used for the annual Kennedy Center Honors award dinner, which takes place the evening before the televised show from the Kennedy Center.

The tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable about the many artifacts in the rooms, and she told us many stories and factoids, though the 45-minute length of the tour prevented her from going into minute detail or from showing us every singe item -- and that's okay! It was a bit difficult to take good photos, as I wanted to hear what the guide was explaining, plus lighting was far from ideal. But below I share a few photos from the tour.

This portrait of Washington is used on the dollar bill - except it's flipped.

Desk on which Treaty of Paris was signed - ending the American Revolutionary War.

Desk at which Jefferson probably wrote the Declaration of Independence.

The largest room; through the door you can see the kitchen in which caterers were prepping lunch for an event.

Everything's so ornate!

Room in which lunch event was about to take place. Our tour was cut slightly shorter due to this event.

Beautiful!

Almost a bit gaudy...

Uncanny how much Pres Jackson looks like current Sec. of State Kerry!

Once the tour had concluded, and our group had returned to our starting point, my friend and I exited through that less-than-impressive exit, scurried around the corner to the main exit where she checked me in as her visitor, and she proceeded to show me around. The main entrance is impressive, as it contains flags from all the world's countries with which the U.S. has official relations. Typically tours are also taken here, but due to the VIPs being expected for the aforementioned luncheon, we were not shown this area.

The Latvian flag - among others.

In the basement of the building she showed me the two competing privately-owned gift shops. I couldn't resist, and a pink "Future Secretary of State" t-shirt found its way into a special three-year old's Christmas stocking a few weeks later. After my little shopping excursion we moved onto lunch in the cafeteria, and that concluded my interesting State Department visit. Special thanks to my friend A for hosting me!

Looking Back to 2015, Looking Forward to 2016

2015 will soon be seen only in the rear view mirror, and recalled in memories and via photographs.

Washington Monument at sunset

Highlights from my year include:

- A fantastic long weekend (way back in January!) in Charleston, South Carolina, which you can read about in this post, as well as in this one.
- I love having visitors! In the spring, my blogging (and real-life!) friend Liene and her family were in the Washington area, so we checked out the enormous Udvar-Hazy Center.
- For Easter, family members visited and much fun was had.
- Spring included an amazing several days in New York City, enjoying a variety of culture - such as the State Choir of Latvia and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as exploring Brooklyn in detail.
- Summer's biggest event was Garezers' 50th anniversary, which was so rich and full of experiences, that several posts were necessary to describe it all: intro and art exhibit, an evening movie and nighttime fireworks display, a daylong music festival called Garezers-Palooza (with a second post about that in Latvian), and the closing event, as well as a bit about the church service and market.
- Other summer activities included a wonderful weekend in Boston, visiting Havre de Grace for the first time, checking out the new Japanese Garden at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, and celebrating mom's birthday with an outing to Grand Haven.
- A fall visitor for several days meant that there was more time for adventures: a cider brewery, a visit to Mount Vernon, wine, history and autumnal delights in Winchester, as well as a foliage drive and hike in Shenandoah National Park.
- At the beginning of the year I had made the decision to read more, and to make more arts and culture related outings. I did quite well on this resolutions. According to Goodreads, this year I read 39 books, far surpassing my original goal of 21. Honestly, a few them were barely books - more like essays - but given how little the average American (though I certainly never claimed to be an average American, ha!) reads nowadays, 35 or so is still a sizable number. Only one did I write a review about here, and in another post I mentioned a few others I had read. Among books that I enjoyed this fall were Elizabeth Gilbert's "Big Magic" and Moises Velasquez-Manoff's "An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Undestanding Allergies and Autoimmune Disorders," as well as Iris Carmon's "Notorious RBG: The Life and Time of Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

Washington Monument after sunset.

While there are many more memories I could mention and blog posts I could link to, I will stop now so that I can devote time to writing new posts, and planning for 2016!

May your New Year be full of love, friendship, successes and many adventures!

Christmas at Longwood Gardens, Part I

Longwood Gardens is considered to be one of the most beautiful gardens in the country, and after years of hearing about it, I finally managed to visit - specifically to see the magnificent Christmas displays. Although its location in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia and Wilmington) made for a relatively long solo day trip from the Washington area, the time and effort were well worth it. My visit was lengthy and colorful enough that I will have share photos and observations from my adventure over at least two blog posts! With over 1,000 acres, Longwood Gardens offers visitors a great deal to explore no matter what the season, though I'm having a difficult time imaging anything being more spectacular than what I saw!

Thanks to its magnificent seasonal flower, Christmas tree and light displays, Longwood is exceedingly popular in December, thus if you plan on visiting then, I recommend reading the tips on their website. For example, weekdays are much less crowded than weekends, and tickets are also less expensive then ($20 vs. $27). I was glad to visit on a Thursday when at times I had certain areas almost to myself, though as dusk fell the gardens did become increasingly more crowded.

Greenest greens & reddest reds!

I began my visit during daylight and in the gigantic conservatory. With many different areas and gardens, these greenhouses were impressive in their variety and beauty. In this post I will focus on the Christmas-y aspects. Due to the bright sunny day (and my lack of skill with my relatively new camera!), many of the photos are not as spectacular as the actual sights were. And due my lack of recent free time, I won't write much more, but will share many photos.

Pussy willow lights - love!

Gorgeous ballroom.

After spending a fair amount of time in the conservatory, I stopped in the cafeteria for lunch (relatively expensive, but also quite tasty) then continued my explorations outdoors.

One Christmas tree was decorated with edible ornaments for the woodland animals, and the decorations replenished by the Longwood gardeners as needed. I particularly loved the beautiful bird bath!

 

Longwood has three "treehouses," which I absolutely adored. 

Enormous wreath made entirely of pine cones!

Christmas tree of pine cones

I loved these diamond-shaped wreaths!

May you and yours have a very merry Christmas! (And stay tuned for part II!)