I remember the summer of 1995 being a little stressful. We had three little boys including baby Garrett, living in a two-bedroom apartment with 600 square feet. Scott was trying to finish up his research for his Ph.D.  He was driving out to the "Synchotron" to do research every day. He would leave at 5am and get home around 6pm. We didn't know exactly when he would be finished with his degree but he had two job offers:  one with Sylvania in Boston and one with NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland. We decided to go with NIST since that seemed like a better situation overall. At the end of the summer, Scott went to a conference in Paris on "International Conference on Atomic Spectra and Oscillator Strengths." Meanwhile, we had to put in our 60 days notice for our apartment, not really knowing when Scott would be done, and we had to find a new place to live in Maryland. Additionally, Scott's future boss, Tom Lucatorto, was trying to work out the details of how to pa...

 In October of 1994, our family took a trip to Washington, DC. Scott was attending a conference there and we decided to all ago since I had an aunt there whom we could stay with. It was fortunate we went because a year later we moved there and it helped to know exactly where we were going. We drove there in our Toyota van. The weather was beautiful. We went to the Mall and the Smithsonian Natural History museum. David was a big dinosaur fan and I had made this dinosaur sweatshirt for him. The boys didn't find the Smithsonian incredibly interesting since they were a little young for it. We took the Metro home: Here are the boys chasing some geese on a big field at NIST where Scott was attending the conference and where he later worked: In Wisconsin, our next-door neighbors for a little while were Tom and Carolyn O'Brien. Coincidentally, Tom had the same adviser as Scott and they worked together for about a year before Tom took a job at NIST and they moved away. We visited them w...

 Recently Scott and I went for a short visit to Houston to visit Lincoln's family! We left after Scott taught his class on Thursday morning and arrived in Houston that evening. We were excited to see Lincoln and Addie as they came to pick us up! MiCayla made us a good dinner and then went off to play basketball at the church which is one of her favorite things to do. On Friday, we visited the Houston Rodeo grounds. It was kind of like going to the state fair where you see lots of animals on display. I think people go here to buy cattle. Others go just to see lots of different animals--like us. There was a big art show from students in the area. There were lots of places to get food and the obligatory carnival rides. We watched an "extreme" dog show which was pretty fun.  Addie got a new cowboy hat! When you live in Texas you need cowboy boots and a hat--we saw lots of those. Right before we went to the petting zoo, Addie said she wanted to pet a kangaroo. Lincoln said, I ...