First Harvest

Our garden has been thriving in its one week on our balcony. I'm sure it's been due to the beautiful weather and the protective German Shepherd guarding her flock of herbs.

We picked leaves of basil to add to a homemade spaghetti sauce, and it was delicious! I'm thinking Mexican food for this weekend to use the cilantro. We also have one pepper that's doing really well. But, I'm not sure how big it's supposed to get.

Our Anniversary!

It's already been 7 years since my dad walked me down the long aisle at beautiful St. Michael's to meet Jason! One of my favorite memories was the giant double rainbow that came out on Friday evening on our way to the rehearsal dinner. It had rained all day Friday, but the rain stopped about 7 p.m. and it didn't start again until early Sunday morning. So all day Saturday the weather was perfect! Here are the only two digital pictures that I had on my computer from of our wedding.

Courtney, Lisa, Beth and Jana show off the muscles in a pre-wedding pic.

Ryan, Lisa and Jason listening to Keith's toast before the cake-cutting. Three of the four cakes were a layer of chocolate-hazelnut cake and a layer of vanilla cake divided by frosting. One of the cakes was banana. All were delicious!

FDR Memorial

On Sunday with the threat of rain storms passed, we took our second metro ride with bikes to Arlington Cemetery. We toured Arlington House and saw the awesome view across to Washington. I've posted some new pictures in the original Arlington Cemetery and Mount Vernon Trail post.

FDR and Fala

Then we headed across the Memorial Bridge to the Tidal Basin where we toured the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. It's massive! There is a section for each of his four terms. Several of his most famous quotes are carved into the stone walls. The most surprising part was the presence of various waterfalls tumbling over the granite.

This was my favorite art installation:

Playing in the Rain

We took Rachel to the park on Saturday afternoon. Here is a short video of her displaying her agility skills.

We were considering a bike ride for ourselves, but the radar didn't look promising. Sure enough, the skies darkened, the wind picked up and the rain started pouring. Of course, this was when we were a 30 minute walk from the entrance to the park! We ran back to the car, but were still drenched. Here's Rachel getting the back seat of the car wet and furry. You can sort of see the storm out the back window.

Here's a video of the storm taken once we were home and in dry clothes. Be sure to note the thunder and lightning!

Herb Garden

We spent part of Monday shopping for and planting our garden -- cilantro, basil, rosemary, and two kinds of chili peppers for containers on our balcony! In six years of home ownership, I planted mums two different times in a front flower bed. That's it. In six years. But, I'm cautiously optimistic that our lovingly planted herbs will flourish! Wish us luck!

Arlington Cemetery and Mount Vernon Trail

We dusted off our bicycles on Saturday for a beautiful Memorial Day weekend ride. In honor of the holiday, we wanted to go to Arlington Cemetery, as well. We combined the two by taking the Metro to the cemetery and bicycling home on the Mount Vernon Trail.

Arlington staff place small American flags in front of each gravestone for this weekend (and only this weekend according to the guide). It was amazing to see all the flags fluttering along the rows and rows of historic markers. We visted the grave of JFK and saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. We'll have to make a trip back someday, because we arrived too late to tour Arlington House, which has been restored as a monument to its former resident, Robert E. Lee. (Update: We went back on 6/1/08 and toured the house which was under restoration. I took this view of Washington from the front yard.)
Geographically, Arlington is across the Potomac from the Mall, so the views are amazing. The cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial are connected by a bridge, which is what we stood on to watch fireworks last July 4th. We picked up the Mount Vernon Trail at the bridge and rode south the approximately 11 miles home. The entire trail is around 20 miles long and winds all along the Potomac - past the Mall and Monuments, past various marinas, next to the airport, through Old Town, and ends in Alexandria at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. (Update: Here's a picture of the bridge with the Lincoln Memorial at the end that I took on 6/1/08 on our second trip.)

http://www.nps.gov/archive/gwmp/mvtmap.html

Let Them Eat Cake. . . and Chocolate!

Jason treated me to any early wedding anniversary celebration on Friday night with an incredibly well-planned evening out. He executed his surprises in superb fashion.

All I knew was that he was meeting me at my office after work for dinner downtown. We dined on the enclosed patio at Chef Geoff's Downtown and watched as people arrived across the street for Lewis Black's "Let Them Eat Cake" stand-up show at the Warner Theatre.

After dinner, we left the restaurant in search of dessert (or so I thought), when he pulled out our tickets to the show! The seats were fabulous and Lewis Black was hilarious. I was thrilled to learn that Jason planned this whole surprise over two months ago by ordering the tickets the minute they went on sale!

After dinner, we once again went in search of dessert. My suggestion was for the newly opened Co Co Sala, and well, he'd already planned that out, too! (Strangely, as far as I know I had never mentioned this place to him.) We chose one of their 5-course chocolate dessert tastings, which I coupled with a chocolate martini for good measure!

The whole evening was quite a treat!

Houston, Texas

After many weeks of traveling for work and hosting tourists to our city, we had our own weekend holiday. We traded in the cold and rain of Washington for a quick trip to tropical Houston, Texas! I don't recall having been to Houston before but we kept remarking how it reminded us of Florida - palm trees, heat and humidity, and sulfer-smelling shower water. But, it was a great trip, because we just relaxed!

Highlights:

• Sleeping/resting/lounging and then doing that some more.


• Drinking margaritas and eating guacamole every day.


• Eating at Goode's Texas BBQ which I saw featured a few months ago on the Food Network. Not as good as Oklahoma Joe's, but better than Arthur Bryant's. Next door at their sister restaurant is where I found this armadillo with longhorns!


• Visiting Space Center Houston (aka Johnson Space Center/NASA Mission Control).

Spring Visitors: Vol. 4

I believe this is my last installment of the Spring Visitors series. This weekend would have also been appropriately titled: Planes, Trains and Automobiles. . .and a Water Taxi. Friends Kelli from KC and Danielle from NYC traveled in for a girls weekend.

Here are some highlights from Friday (note: all pictures are credited to Wikipedia, as my camera was on a business trip this weekend):

On Friday, Kelli and I took in two art museums that were new to both of us. We started at the Hirshorn modern art museum. Kelli had an 'alarmingly' upclose look at a giant display of dry cleaner hangers seemingly floating in the middle of the room. We were glad to get a chance to see all of the interesting artistic visions, but enjoyed our next stop more.

Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Phillips Collection is appropriately referred to in my guidebook as a "comfortable museum." It is housed in a former home in Dupont Circle and is very pleasing the the eye and the feet. Duncan Phillips collected what he liked, and the collection includes works from Renoir, Degas, and van Gogh, as well as American Modernists such as Georgia O'Keeffe.

Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party from the Phillips Collection

On Saturday, Danielle joined us as we switched our focus to people watching and shopping downtown in the Cleveland Park, Woodley Park, Adams-Morgan and Dupont Circle neighborhoods.

But, the big highlight was our evening trip. We boarded a water taxi in Old Town Alexandria for a 45-minute trip to Georgetown via the Potomac. Along the way we saw the Alexandria waterfront, planes taking off and landing at National Airport, monuments on the Mall, the Kennedy Center and Watergate. I would say we went at sunset, but it was cloudy and looked like it might rain as we embarked. However, it was completely dark by the time the bright lights of Georgetown's harbor welcomed us. It was an awesome view!

We had dinner at Mie N Yu, which according to their website "combines Contemporary American cuisine with flavor from Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean." The decor and music (and the belly dancer that we noticed earlier in the evening) added to the exotic theme as well.