It simultaneously feels like I haven’t been to work in a LONG time, and also that the weekend went by very fast! We crammed a lot in – our itinerary wasn’t followed exactly, but we had a great time. The Nats winning on Thursday night – and Derrek getting one of the game balls, all the monuments and the big museums, the aquarium & the zoo, rock band, wii, swimming and tennis…. Trip highlights in the slideshow below.
Wow – Day 4 already? Again, the forecast is for scattered showers, and after the jam-packed 3 days before now, today will be a bit more low key.
-Waffles/pancakes for breakfast
-Lounging on the home front for the morning
-Taco Soup for lunch
-Trip down to the Dullus Air & Space Museum. Nick and I have been meaning to get down there since it opened, but somehow this will be our first time too! There are 3 potential shows going on this afternoon we may stop into – Fighter Pilot, Blue Planet, and the Magic of Flight
-Star Trek in iMax!
-Heading home for a steak and potatoes dinner
Today – at least while we were planning, the forecast was for scattered showers. We are hedging our bets that it will rain for at least part of the day. Our potential itinerary for today is:
-Breakfast at home, consisting of cereal and various breakfast pastries
-Heading to Baltimore
-Baltimore Aquarium, hopefully with the dolphin show. Yay Baltimore Acquarium!
-Lunch at the Inner Harbor (either Cheesecake Factory or Hard Rock Cafe – Derrek’s choice)
(-I’m hoping that people may want to do paddle boats with me if it’s sunny out at this point)
-Maryland Science Center – I’m pretty excited about this too, after hearing a report about a year ago on how they had an interactive snot exhibit or something like that where kids get to walk down through a big nose…. or maybe I’m just making that up, anyway, it got some great reviews so it should be fun
-Heading back to Gburg for a bit of an afternoon break
-Pool and/or basketball time – not sure if our pool opens this weekend, or is waiting until Monday to open – obviously this is a bit dependant on the weather too
-Old Country Buffet for dinner
-Video games – excited about Rock Band, personally 
Today, again, the forecast is for clear skies and a high near 80. We’re heading back into the city after breakfast at home (hash brown casserole and scrambled eggs)!
Our potential itinerary for today is:
-National Zoo – gotta see the pandas!
-Madame Toussauds Wax Museum – I’m pretty excited about this. Maura and I went to the London branch with Kristin back in 2000 (?!), and I think that the boys are going to get a kick out of it.
-Lunch at Gordon Biersch
-Heading back up to pick Pinot up from doggie daycare before 7PM
-Our awesome, new-to-us Greek restaurant for dinner
-Night at the Museum II! How cool is it that this movie is set in DC, and it opens today – and we’ve potentially gone to most all of these places by now!
Hooray! Today, Derrek and Louie arrive from Nebraska and Nick and I get to play tour guide for the long weekend! With the forecast of sun and a high of 80 degrees, it is going to be a great day to be outside in the city. Our potential itinerary for today is:
-Dropping Pinot off at Doggie Daycare for an overnight
-Picking Derrek & Louie up from DCA around 9:30
-Heading into the city, and walking around the mall and monuments (Lincoln, WWII, Washington, Vietnam, Korea, Jefferson?), and also walking by the White House
-Lunch at Fogo de Chao – all the brazilian bbq’d meat you can handle!
-Heading back to the mall to check out some museums – the Air & Space museum (possibly with the Black Holes show at the planetarium), the Natural History museum (dinosaurs & hope diamond), and the American History museum (old glory, kermit, and so much more).
-Heading down to Nationals Park to catch the 7:05PM baseball game, pitting the Washington Nationals against the Pittsburg Penguins – hoping that Derrek will catch either a home run or a foul ball! (I’d settle for a t-shirt even ) Oh, and ballpark hot dogs for dinner, of course.
After the first full day in the DC, we’ll have to head back to DCA to pick up the car and make the trip back to Gburg. I’m a bit worried it’s a lot on our plate for the first day out, especially with the early flight those two are taking our way, but Nick tells me that his dad is up that early anyway, and that Derrek will have more energy than we know what to do with, so all in all, bring it on!
I have a feeling that I’m not going to get a chance to go back and edit these to what we actually did/pictures/reviews/ect until after the entire weekend over – but I’ll try to tweet what we’re up to over the course of the weekend, and the photos will come later!
…. I will start being better about updating the blog with things that are happening once again. In a timely fashion, rather than months after the fact.
With that said, I may as well do a quick catch-up post to bring us up to date. So let’s see – since the last time that this was posted – wow. I just realized I didn’t even do an inauguration post.
January was cool for us, living in DC, and being pumped about Obama. C&J were very nice to host us at their pad on Pennsylvania Avenue, prime viewing location for just about everything, but especially the parade. Obama and Biden got out right in front of us and waved right at us, which was the cool – and after that, we (along with Mehul, Liz & Julie) threw our very own Presidential Inaugural Ball. It was the awesome. (And three of us were in the exact same dress – thank you to Melanie for letting me borrow her bridesmaid dress from our wedding!) A slideshow of that is below.
February, already posted about Miami. Otherwise we were playing volleyball and getting through the cold. March came, and my mom came down to visit – we took her out for her first sushi experience and I now have a favorite roll, though I don’t remember what it’s called (blasted chef’s special). We went to Colorado for the annual Pender gathering at the end of Feb/early March, but it was cool because in addition to Nick’s usual group of high school folks, we also got to hang out with Seth and Dave & Rach. Oddly enough, our flight back was delayed by 1.5 days due to a snowstorm on the east coast (Denver was like 70 degrees that day). We got a free flight out of the deal though so we were pretty excited (and honestly, I would have worked from home that day anyway, hate driving in DC when it’s snowing.) Highlights from the Colorado trip are below.
End of March/early April, thus far, has been very eventful, and I think Nick and I are both looking forward to some ‘down’ time, if that ever really exists – especially with the summer coming. Cooking wise, made a really good chocolate cheesecake on a pistachio crust covered in chocolate ganache, went all Polish with pierogui && glumpkies, and a bit Irish with corned beef & cabbage and Irish bread & cheese. YUM. Nick’s grandpa Rutar recently became very sick, and Nick, Pinot & I made the drive from DC to Nebraska for a last visit with him. I’d been bugging Nick to drive to Nebraska for a long time, and though I wish it had been under better circumstances, I admit that I did enjoy driving out. Pinot sort of stressed us out though – we think she was abused by younger children before we got her (rescue dog thing, so we don’t really know), but Derrek, Dalton & Dannika were her first real exposure to kids and that went….well, not as well as we’d hoped. We’ll have more time to practice when Derrek comes out to visit in May though! Anyhow, we drove back from NE (with a big old print from Hobby Lobby – aka best store ever – and a mini Heineken kegerator in tow) just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival. We checked that out – and the naval observatory open house, booked tickets for Derrek and Louie to come visit for Memorial Day, and then found out out that Nick’s grandpa had passed – he made it to 92 and said that was enough, so earlier this week Nick flew back for the funeral. We’re in Rochester this weekend to discuss some family matters with my mom and siblings. Busy week, to say the least. We’ve also been to a Caps hockey game and the Cavs/Wizards game recently which were both fun. OH – and my big computer thing – we upgraded to iLife 09, and I recently went though and tagged faces and places of all 21,234 pictures in our album. Been keeping up with the family tree site too. Anyhow – a few pictures of recent stuff is below.
So yeah! If I keep this up, then lots of fun stuff coming up ahead – Easter brunch tomorrow, possible iPhones in our near future, Pinot’s 2nd birthday coming up, heading to Vermont to see K’s derby dames finale this season and possibly a last minute trip for my birthday – and fun fun, Louie & Derrek’s trip out for Memorial day – and that only takes us through May.
It’s been awhile. So the quick rundown on what we’ve been up to since the last time we updated this is going to be a bit long…
Nick headed down to Austin for the Supercomputing conference towards the end of last month. I’m told that Austin is as weird as it’s been kept, and that it would be a cool place to live.
While Nick was down in TX, I was finishing up the last parts of the home improvment fall project – mainly repainting our bedroom and getting the backsplash up in the kitchen.
We headed back to Rochester for Thanksgiving (that was an earlier post), and then came back to MD with a full week including my company holiday party and our annual holiday party back to back. All of the holiday baking was put to work in the form of take out boxes for everyone to take home.
We splurged a bit on a pre-Christmas present to ourselves – a nice Nikon digital camera and an extra zoom lens. We headed down into the DC on a lovely brisk Winter day to play tourist with the new camera.
December was flying by, and (amazingly) I was able to hold out until we had ‘our’ Maryland Christmas to give out presents to Nick, Cashew or Pinot. Good times were had by all, Christmas at home. 
Right after that, December 19th rolled around and – just in time for the biggest snow storm of the year to hit the east coast – it was time for us to drive to Rochester. (Nick was amazing through non-stellar driving conditions the entire route.) We picked up a real tree and decorated it with my mom, and had a lot of fun watching Pinot romp around in (her first?) big snow experience. Cashew wasn’t so happy to be away from home, but we had a wonderful few relaxing days with my mom in the ROC. 
The turntable that we got for my mom was the awesome (loved listening to some old 45s), a few classic holiday flicks, and my mom did a great job of shopping this year (too much!)
After a few relaxing days in ROC, we drove to Buffalo to fly out to Nebraska. A bit of snow on the way there, we thought we were going to have to shovel ourselves out on the way back. The Christmas trip to NE was great as always, with the fun amplified by 2 youngun’s under 2 years old, and everyone’s willingness to let me play with all of the new camera settings. 
And alas – after heading back to Buffalo (60 degree weather no less), driving back to Rochester, sleeping a bit, having lunch with my mom and then driving back to MD, we’re back home, momentarily at least. Excited to see my neice Vanessa tonight (who is down visiting Melanie for the new year). And soon…. very very soon… our new year trip awaits
We headed down to DC last night to spend election night in the nations capitol. Melanie & Javed generously hosted 9 of us for an appetizers and outcomes fiesta. We were all very excited about the outcome – and very full thanks to our wonderful hosts! Food selections included the really yummy cupcakes you see to your left, courtesy of Georgetown Cupcakes. (Side note – some of you may know how I’m really not all that impressed with CakeLove – this was my first exposure to the new cupcake ‘movement’ and boy oh boy was it delicious!)
We left to head back to MD right before Obama’s speech (which was OK, heard it on the radio) – but it was very cool to be driving through DC on the way home, with everyone honking and so excited! We were passed going out of Georgetown by about 10 cop cars with lights flashing heading back towards the white house, so in retrospect, we were glad that I had to work early today and thus came home instead of walking around. as it was, a wild goosechase for gas – silly jetta- had us getting home closer to 2AM than the midnight that we left, and i’m having trouble keeping my eyes open today. well worth it! and looking forward to taking the day off to head downtown for inauguration day!
oh and the one other thing we were really psyched about when we got home? nebraska – one of the reddist states ever – guess which county went to Obama yesterday? Yep – Thurston County – the home of the Rutars. We totally guessed that though, considering the Obama signs we saw out when we were back in September. (Or at least, we’ll tell you that we totally called that 
haha!)
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!
