(1). Anniversary cake @ the cottage

Slightly sunburned, an overcast day is welcome after boat excursions yesterday. Today we eat the 3rd quarter of the top tier of our wedding cake, preserved remarkably well in the freezer. My how time flies. To a great many more!

Weekly Updates

With the cool new phone, I’m trying out the twitter thing for short updates during the week, but I’ll still try to update the actual blog fairly often too!

Last week was really busy for me – I had a subcontractor meeting late on Monday, followed by a big customer meeting on Thursday afternoon.  Between prepping for both meetings, I was at work late lots last week – but the thought that got me through was that I had enough extra hours to take Friday off!

We kicked off our spring bocce season last Wednesday night with a 16-3 victory, and ‘brick red’ tshirts (as opposed to the lovely pale pink we got last summer).  Pinot loved having CJ to hang out with during the game and during post-bocce dinner at Bullfeathers on the Hill.  I think we’re all looking forward to this season!

Thursday was wonderful, well, post customer presentation (that went well too, which added to the bliss) – just knowing that I had Friday off, and that the weather was going to be great all weekend.

Friday, we got up and had a leisurely breakfast at home with Nick, then Nick went in to school and Pinot and I set off to run the Capitol Cresent Trail.  We got done a bit early and hit up lululemon for some new running gear – I’m all about their manifesto.  As a side note, I LOVE the Bethesda shops that allow you to bring your dog in shopping with you and I heart my new running outfit.  Then we set off to meet Melanie for lunch at Brown Bag (well, technically in the park, but the food was from Brown Bag).

Headed home, and then Nick and I set off to celebrate our 1000 days of marriage (woohoo!) at the Italian Pines in Gaithersburg, which had really great Italian food with a home-cooked sort of feel.

Saturday mornining, we were up and at em early, heading out to do the 8 mile MS walk.  The bus ride to the walk was rather humorous because the driver had no idea where he was going, and Pinot was in the bus seat with us, but the walk was a really good time.  It ended at Glen Echo with free subs from Subway.

Saturday night we headed out to celebrate Melanie’s 27th birthday at CoCoSala - all the food was all wonderful, and I loved the ambiance!  (Nick and I almost thought that the food was better than the dessert….)  After dinner, the 4 of us headed over to the Kennedy Center to see Shear Madness, a whodunnit comedy that was rather entertaining.  Ended the night needing a jump, all in all, a great evening!

Today, Nick and I gave Pinot the day off (poor dog, 18 miles the past three days), but we headed out for an early-ish morning run in Bethesda followed by brunch and a leisurely day at home.  Nick is kicking off Dynist week this week at school this evening with his group and all the Wisconsin folks that came into town.

On a seperate random note, we’re thinking about getting bikes!  Yay! 

I didn’t really take many pictures this weekend (shocking, I know) – but Melanie took quite a few with her new birthday camera on Saturday night – I’ll link/upload a few of those when I get them!

2008 – A Photo Review

Some favorites from 2008 – a bit late, but fun nonetheless.  Here’s to a wonderful 2009!

(Updated – I don’t recommend rock you slideshows – this one wasn’t working properly, so it has been deleted and replaced with a picasa slideshow in another post!)

Back!

We are back from a whirlwind weekend – who would have thought that 5 days could go by so quickly?  We got a lot in, between the 40th celebration party & dinner, family portraits, seeing two neices for the 2nd time , chevy chase vacation cat escapades, visits with coop & kids, watermelon days, sioux city trips and family tree data entry.   It’s been a crazy first day home, considering it started at 2:30AM – but more on that later.  Christmas vacation, please come soon!

Link to slideshow, since it won’t embed…

40 Years

Happy Happy Anniversary to Louie & Merry Lou!   In honor of 40 years together, here are two of my favorite shots from their wedding album

Time Flies

6 years together!  Our first official ‘date’ that we established was a date in the middle of dinner at NECI on Church Street before heading out to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding in the theater was on 9/11/02 -  though we had a few weeks of build up leading up to that time.

Thinking of all of the things that have happened since that ‘first’ night and now, I wouldn’t trade a minute of it – I just feel so lucky and excited for many more years to come with my one and only NJR

In honor of our pseudo anniversary – funny how marriage anniversary trumps dating anniversary – here is our first picture together, taken back @ Nick’s house in Vermont, sometime in September 2003.

What we are looking forward to this week….

2 years already?

Wow, does time fly when you are loving every minute of the person you are with Our 2-year anniversary was wonderfully low key and brilliant! After the craziness of this summer, we vetoed traveling right away. The morning started with breakfast in bed (NJ makes great breakfasts, in or out of bed), continued with minimal work, heading out to lunch, eating some cake, and a wonderful dinner out.

Yes, our plan to eat 1/4 of our top layer of wedding cake is still in tact, we devoured part of it after lunch yesterday and it still tastes as it good back in the day thanks to the many many layers of wrap it has on it in the freezer.

Our evening rounded out with dinner at Restaurant Nora. We went in hearing mixed reviews, but the mood was set immediately when we sat down and found that they had printed custom menus for us that said “Happy 2nd Anniversary” on the top. The food, all organic, was good and we left the restaurant full and happy with the choice.

And so, year 3 of our married life begins, full, rested and happy.

Great night

Tuesday 9/11/07 was a good day for us, the latter part of it anyway. Not only were we celebrating 5 years of being together – yep, we started dating on 9/11/02 – but we discovered what we think is the best Thai restaurant in the area && we went to a beer tasting class!

Bangkok 54 treated us well in the 45 minutes that we had with good wonton soup, an excellently spicy salmon in mango sauce and a delicious garlic lovers chicken dish. Wish this place was closer to us – but considering how good the food was, I think we’ll be making special trips to go back!

We headed next door to the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse -which we’ve been meaning to go to for a movie for a long time but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet – for the Washington Wine Academy’s first class about beer – the ABC’s of Beer. And it was good. Not just because of the 8 tastings. The dude was much younger than I thought but knew a ton and was pretty funny – he actually works at Whole Foods in Fairfax – it was like if I’d worked in the cheese shop all this time and was then asked to give a presentation about cheese. Except I’m not that humorous.

So – great night! Found an awesome new restaurant and tried the drafthouse & WWA which had been on the list for far too long! And now we are inspired to go back for more of this awesome Thai food….to finally get around to trekking to Arlington for a movie (& drinks)….and to explore more of these WWA classes! Beyond the ABC’s of Beer, here we come!

One Year Later…

Yep, we cheated and had our anniversary cake and extra bottle of champagne (that really has been in the fridge for a year) today before we left….didn’t want to go through the hassle of bringing these to Croatia. So we had an early 7/29, which was cool cuz we kind-of get to celebrate it twice.

Yum! Cake kept pretty well, but it was sweet and we could only eat 1/4 of it, so we’ll see how well the cake keeps until 2008! (Crazy me, I’ve now got this plan that we can eat 1/4 of this cake every year for the first 4 years, and then we can move onto the bottles of wine we bought from Barboursville vineyards for year 5 and the Octogon for year 8 – of course….and then, and then….haha)