Tobin Family Website

This past week, Delaney missed school on Monday and Tuesday with a nasty stomach virus.  I was supposed to go with her and Karen on Tuesday to her class field trip to the Reston Zoo (I didn’t even know that Reston had a zoo).  Instead, we ended up taking her to the doctor as she had been sick to her stomach for almost 2 straight days.  We were concerned that she was getting dehydrated, but thankfully she was able to avoid IV rehydration.  By Tuesday evening, she finally started feeling a bit better.  None of the rest of us has come down with what she had, although Karen didn’t feel all too well on Wednesday. 

Of course, Delaney had been counting the days until her feild trip and was terribly upset that she had to stay home and miss it.  To make up for the missed field trip, we spent much of yesterday at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.  It is a much larger zoo than anything Reston has to offer, and it is free (as opposed to the $10 per person fee in Reston).  It was an absolutely gorgeous day here, and we had a very nice time at the zoo.  Since zoo parking is limited, we drove to one of the local metro stations and rode the train to the zoo (or at least to within a mile of the zoo), and then walked the rest of the way in.  I think Delaney enjoyed our family trip as a suitable substitute for her field trip.  We rounded out the tri pwith a late lunch at the Silver Diner, a local diner chain that is really good (was featured on one of the American Express ads a few years ago).

When we got home in the evening, the kids decided that they wanted to go spend a little of their allowance money to buy some new games.  Ben was particularly interested in going to Target to buy “Call of Duty: Big Red One” for X-Box.  He had been saving his allowance money to buy it and had seen it there for $30.  Of course, when we arrived, it was no longer in stock!  So, we walked into the EBX Games store in the mall and found it used for $15.  He was also able to pick up a used “Medal of Honor: European Assault” for another $15, which entitled him to pick another used title of equal or lesser value for free.  He was kind and let his sister help pick out “The Simpson’s: Road Rage” for free.  Delaney also spent a few dollars of her own to get a Bratz game for GameBoy.  The kids were ecstatic to get so much more for their money than they originally had planned.  As you can tell, Ben enjoys military-themed 1st person shooter games. 

Today I had to go into work for about 5-hours to catch up and get ahead on some briefings and personnel paperwork that I have coming due this week.  Much of my week will be spent attending offsite meetings, so I will have little time to get any real work done in the office.  Karen is off from work next week and is looking forware to being around the house during the day for a change.  She has been running in a hundred directions with substitute teaching and working with the head start programs, so she is long overdue for a bit of a break (although, I expect she will be just as busy at home). 

We thought we may go see a movie today, but we are kind of enjoying just lounging around the house…..so, perhaps we won’t.  The two top candidates are Superman 3 and Shrek 3. 

Here is a cool video from YouTube of a beatboxing flute player.  Pretty neat!