Busy times ahead

Things have been getting a little busy around here recently!

Tomorrow, Carlos and I are meeting up with friends on Plummer's Island to attend a shad bake (shad is a herring-like fish). It promises to be interesting.

On Sunday, my friend Deedra is coming to DC for a visit/work trip. We are working on a huge OTS assessment project together and plan to get a lot of things done by Tuesday. On Wednesday the two of us will drive south to Durham, North Carolina (OTS headquarters are at Duke University) to work there on more assessment stuff. We plan to return to DC the following Sunday.

About a week later, I am taking a Wilderness First Responder (WFR, pronounced "woofer") course at Georgetown University. This course will be from 8am - 5pm every day for a week -- sheesh! I've signed up for two WFR courses prior to this, but they have always been cancelled due to lack of enrollment -- I really hope that this one happens.

 A week after the end of the WFR course, Carlos and I fly out to Seattle for a few days to attend Shannon and BJ's wedding at Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie (Twin Peaks -- I want a darn fine piece of cherry pie!). It will be really nice to see everyone again (and in such a pretty location).

Whew, the month of May is going to be pretty busy. I will be sure to take pictures to document all of the adventures and post them on the bloggie!

Miscellaneous DC things

I was going through some of my old photos to clear out and organize my files and I came across a bunch of pictures of things around DC that I took after my arrival from Costa Rica (about a month ago). When I returned to DC, the cherry blossoms (Prunus yedoensis) were in full bloom -- super-early this year. This year was also the 100th anniversary celebration of the cherry blossom festival (the emperor of Japan gave these trees to the US back in 1912!) and there were lots of fun events to celebrate this event. Carlos and I took advantage of the early blooms and took a picnic lunch to the Senate reflecting pool (near the Capitol) to admire the trees in the sun.

I really like sushi and while in Costa Rica it is nonexistent so I was excited to have some of my favorite sushi rolls at my favorite sushi place (in Union Station) -- here are three rolls: Philadelphia roll, spicy tuna with avocado, and (my favorite) shrimp tempura.

On my first afternoon back in DC, Carlos and I also visited the Art of Video Games exhibit (which we have since visited another three or four times!) this is a super-cool exhibit!

Cupcakes from Sweet Lobby

A few days ago, Carlos and I stopped by a little pastry shop near Eastern Market called the Sweet Lobby. DC is pretty crazy about cupcakes and I had heard that this one was pretty good (the owners won Cupcake Wars -- a cupcake-making competition on the Food Network) so I thought I would give them a try. Who doesn't love cupcakes!

They had some pretty great flavors and I ended picking out four cupcakes to try: S'mores, Lemon Cream, Strawberry-Champagne, and Red Velvet. They were some of the cutest cupcakes that I had ever seen and I was glad that they were not too big (or expensive). Carlos and I tried the S'mores cupcake first and it was great -- it had a toasted marshmallow top, chocolate cake, and a little graham cracker crust layer on the bottom!

Next was the Lemon Cream (filled with lemon curd) and it was one of my favorites.

I didn't really care for the Strawberry-Champagne cupcake, the cake was too dense for my taste.

The Red Velvet was awesome -- I really liked the not too sweet cream cheese frosting.

I will definitely need to return to check out some of the other cupcake flavors!

DC family vacation 2012 - Day 5

Today was the last day of our Washington DC family vacation. Shannon and BJ had already flown back to Lancaster the night before and it was just Mom, Dad, Carlos, and me left. We started the morning off with a stop by Potbelly (as usual!) before taking the metro to Arlington National Cemetery. We looked around the Visitor’s Center before heading out to the Kennedy graves and the eternal flame. There were quite a few people at Arlington, but because it is such a large space, we weren’t really bothered by the crowds. We also walked around a bit and visited the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers for the changing of the guards ceremony. While we were there, we heard numerous 21-gun salutes for funerals in the area.

We took a tour shuttle from Arlington Cemetery with the plan of having a leisurely tour of the city’s sites before getting off at the Lincoln Memorial to look around. However, we (or maybe I should say our bus) only made it as far as Union Station. While stopped there, the bus died and instead of waiting forever for a new one to come, we went in to Union Station to enjoy a nice burger lunch at Johnny Rockets. We will have to save the Lincoln Memorial for the next family vacation!

After lunch, we toured around the American Indian Museum for a little while before heading back home for a break before dinner.

We walked from our apartment to Ethiopic (a nearby Ethiopian restaurant) for dinner and it was pretty great. We shared a vegetarian sampler platter and it was a good amount of food for four people to share (although they claim that it is only enough for two!). We walked with Mom and Dad back to their hotel and said our goodbyes -- they had an early morning flight back to Seattle the next day.

I had a really great time having everyone out here visiting and I would love to have another family vacation soon. I know Shannon and I have been talking about another trip out to Disneyworld in November 2013...and Carlos and I will visit Mom, Dad, Shannon, and BJ in a little over a month in Snoqualmie for Shannon and BJ’s wedding. Woo-hoo!

DC family vacation 2012 - Day 4

This was Shannon and BJ’s last day in DC (their flight left later that night), but Mom and Dad had another day to play with us. We visited the National Archives first thing in the morning (after our usual breakfast sandwiches at Potbelly!). It was quite busy at the Archives, but we managed to get in to see the documents pretty quickly -- you are not allowed to take ANY pictures at all now in the Archives (non-flash photos used to be allowed) so I don’t have any photos from there. The gift shop was pretty fun!

From the National Archives, we wandered over to the American History Museum. This is a pretty easy-to-digest museum, but most of the exhibits and artifacts we wanted to see were off-exhibit or under refurbishment (i.e. Julia Child’s kitchen, Kermit, ruby slippers). We did see the first lady gowns, Old Glory, transportation, and energy exhibits and we were finished by lunch. After our American History Museum visit, we walked over to Penn Quarter for a nice relaxing lunch at Teaism where we ate our bento boxes on the bottom floor near the Koi pond.

We made our way back to the apartment to relax and eat icebox cake before Shannon and BJ met their cab to the airport around 4pm. We had such a nice time having them stay with us (we will see them again soon -- in about a month -- in Washington).

For dinner that night, Carlos, Mom, Dad, and I walked a little way to Bistro Italiano -- a tiny neighborhood Italian restaurant that Carlos and I had heard good things about, but had never tried. We had a tasty, quiet dinner and it was really good -- we will definitely have to come back again. From dinner, Carlos and I walked Mom and Dad back to their hotel and planned what we would do tomorrow for their last full day in DC!

DC family vacation 2012 - Day 3

On the third morning of our family vacation, Shannon, BJ, Mom, Dad, and I all drove out to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space center in Chantilly, VA to see huge airplanes, jets, and shuttles. It was my Dad’s birthday today and he really wanted to see the Udvar-Hazy Center and all of the amazing flight vehicles there. We left DC around 9 am and it only took about 40 minutes to get there (the museum is right next to Dulles Airport). We had a quick breakfast while waiting for the museum to open.

We first visited the observation tower (before a lot of people arrived) from which we saw lots of planes landing in Dulles. The tower was really fun (it was a mock-up air traffic control tower and we could hear the real communications between controllers and pilots at Dulles!).

We wandered the museum all morning. Some of my highlights were seeing the SR-71 Blackbird and the Enterprise shuttle (which is being replaced today by Discovery). There was a lot to see and do at the Udvar-Hazy Center and it is a really well put-together museum with tons of historically important artifacts. I highly recommend a visit!

We drove back to our apartment, met up with Carlos, and walked to Union Station for some lunch at Potbelly (we really like that place!). After re-energizing, we went next-door to visit the Postal Museum for a little while (I especially like the postal dog Owney).

Next, we took the metro to Chinatown to visit the American Art Museum for a bit. While there, we visited the Art of Video Games exhibit (which I of course like very much, even though I can never play Super Mario Bros. because the line is too long!).

By this time, we were ready to head to Foggy Bottom for our dinner reservation at Founding Farmers. This was the first time that I had visited this restaurant, but I will definitely be coming back. It was a great choice for my Dad’s birthday dinner and we all enjoyed our meals very much (I tried fried green tomatoes for the first time and had a great grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup). We were all stuffed after our delicious dinner and waddled back to the metro to return to Union Station. Carlos, Shannon, BJ, and I dropped Mom and Dad off at their hotel and we wandered back home (I played some Zelda for Shannon before we all went to bed). What a great day!