Kansas City Live!

My travels last week took me to Dallas for a week of tax technical training. Nothing much to report about Dallas. It was hot outside and cold in the conference center. Lots of food and little exercise.

However, I had a very exciting weekend before I arrived in Dallas via a detour through Kansas City. In addition to a great time catching up with friends and a lovely lunch with my parents, I finally got to see the Kansas City Live/Power&Light District/Sprint Center up-close. Very impressive! I was especially impressed when rain rolled in while we were dining outside at the Maker's Mark restaurant and we didn't get wet! The storm was really loud, but the "ceiling" kept us dry.

Impact Day

Deloitte's annual Impact Day was held last Friday. It's an opportunity for employees nationwide to participate in local community service projects. This year I volunteered to teach Junior Achievement to 6th graders at an elementary school in Alexandria, VA. Here's our group of worn out volunteers at the end of the day. It was tiring, but incredibly rewarding! The 2nd graders made placemats for us to use at lunch, and we all got to take one home. You can see several of those in this picture.

When Storms are Pretty

We've had severe storms over the past few weeks and record-setting amounts of rain throughout May. But, sometimes the sinister-looking clouds make for a dramatic picture. This was one I took from the FDR Memorial last weekend. We cut our trip that day a little short, since we still had over an hour of biking to get home. The rain did not pour on us this day (unlike the previous day at the park). We had a few sprinkles in the last 10 minutes of our ride, but that was it.

Corcoran Gallery and Decatur House

A heat wave swept into Washington this weekend, so I took full-advantage of it. I met up with my friend Darcy on Saturday afternoon and we toured through two air-conditioned museums!

Our first stop was the Corcoran Gallery of Art which is Washington's largest nonfederal art museum. There is also a four-year art college housed in the museum. They have a large variety of types of artwork in their permanent collection which seems to be rotated in and out based on the special exhibits being shown.

Decatur House Exterior

Our second stop was the beautiful Decatur House - the first (1819) and last (1956) private residence on Lafayette Square. The White House is now the only residence on the square. The home changed owners several times and is currently undergoing a restoration which combines the original features built for naval hero Stephen Decatur with parquet flooring that the Beales family had done in the late 1800's.

Dining room floor with the state seal of California inlayed. Darcy, a California native, quickly recognized the seal!

919 Miles

That's how many miles my car has been driven in the past 53 weeks. To put it in perspective, that's an average of 17 miles per week. At this rate it will take me 4,447 weeks (85 years?!) to reach 100,000 miles on this car. The math that I'm not going to do is how much each one of those miles cost me with insurance, taxes and tags!

I realized today that I do miss driving a car regularly -- well, I miss listening to the radio, mostly. And singing to the songs!

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!