The Smithsonian

Benson loved the Air and Space Museum. He was constantly pointing out each new plane to us. He loved to "hold the plane." Which meant touch it.


The big city life does have a few disadvantages with high cost and traffic, but we love all the great things to do for free around here.

After the airplanes and space shuttles we headed over to the Natural History Museum and looked at all the animals.

Benson lovingly called all the animals by their character names from Madagascar.

After this we headed into the IMAX theater and watched "Night at the Museum 2." This was Benson first time in a theater and he was thrilled!

All moved in!

It's been a week since we moved from our apartment in Williamsburg to a townhouse in Alexandria, so we figured we should let everyone know that everything went great. We love our new place, and it is so nice to be closer in to the city than we were when we lived in Dumfries before law school. Our townhouse is actually larger than we thought it would be (it's always hard to tell when you look at a place with someone else's stuff in it), so we are really happy about that. Tristan is excited for Georgetown so far, although it may be hard for school to compete with having had the entire month of August to spend together as a family after Brussels... Brittany plans to steal every extra minute she can away before he gets sucked into the world of law again! Benson is doing well and seems to love his new bedroom and the opportunity to move out of his crib into a real bed. As for Baby Leavitt #2... We still don't know whether it's a boy or a girl, but we will this Friday.

Anyway, whether you live in the D.C. area or would like to come visit, we hope we will be able to see a lot of you soon!

Benson Photos

So pictures of children are totally the province of parents: Mom and Dad love them, while the rest of the world is blissfully unconcerned.

That said, I can't help but post these. They were taken this summer in California while I was in Europe. Benson is with his little cousin Calli, who was born six days after he was. Calli's parents, Dan and Ashley (who is Brittany's older sister), live near Sacramento in Roseville, California. The occasion for Britt's visit, along with her parents and two sisters, was that Dan and Ashley had a little BOY! So, congrats to Dan and Ashley on Luke Swenson, and here are the cousin photos for your viewing pleasure.

The Next Old Blue Eyes

My sister Micah is practicing with my dad every night to make her own demo. Well Benson loves to dance to Grandpa playing the guitar and he has started to sing along also. Here is a video of his great performance when he was avoiding getting ready for bed.

Fishers of Men

This Monday night we had friends over for our Family Home Evening and Grandpa told the story of Jesus teaching the apostles to be fishers of men. Benson and his friends acted out the story with costumes. However, as you can tell from both pictures, he did not like his costume at all. The other children looked really cute and they enjoyed it.

Benson sat still while they were throwing out the net to catch fish, but he ran away every time Grandpa started quoting scripture.