Here’s your glimpse of Nico almost in real-time — the most recent photos were just taken on Monday of this week!

In terms of new developments, he started doing sign language last month, which has really opened a lot of doors in terms of communication.  His first 4 signs were nurse (as in milk), water, siren, and helicopter .  Guess that’s what happens when a boy grows up in the city!  Other signs he does include:  banana, yogurt, cat, daddy, more, bye bye, eat, shoe, bird, and, perhaps my favorite is the sign he made up for music.  We hadn’t taught him one for music, but it’s so important to him that he made his own up!  (He bends his elbows so his fists go up and down as if he’s dancing or drumming.) 

His first word is officially “hot.”  He says it consistently for the fireplace and our space heaters.  We don’t know why that particular word was so salient for him — we don’t warn him about hot things (he’s cautious enough on his own) and his babysitter’s go-to word is “careful.”  But he says “hot” any time he is near the fireplace or the space heater. Even more puzzling is that he has decided he is the household “hot” police, so if we stand too close to the fireplace or the space heater (particularly the fireplace), he pulls our pant leg and drags us until we walk far enough away for his comfort.  While this is adorable, it means I can no longer hang out in front of the fireplace to warm up. 

He can also say “daddy” and “bye bye,” but he’s somewhat less consistent with these than he is with “hot.”  And he says “moo,” “hee haw,” and “oof” (for “woof”) when he sees, or we talk about, cows, donkeys, or dogs.  

He likes looking at the family pictures hanging in our stairwell and having us identify family members as he points to them.

He still loves the vacuum cleaner.  He requests that we vacuum periodically and while we vacuum he pushes around his vuvuzela, “vacuuming” with us.  It’s very cute. 

He’s got good stamina.  His babysitter regularly takes him out for walks and he’ll walk 8 blocks or more at a time.  I had him at the zoo yesterday and despite the fact that it was well past naptime, he walked from the farm at the bottom all the way up to the reptile house — straight uphill for probably at least 1/4 of a mile (1/3 of a mile if you trust google pedometer).  People at the zoo are constantly commenting on him and we have determined that it’s because you actually see very few little kids walking around there.  Most kids under 3 or 4 are in strollers — some little ones might be in slings instead.  But most aren’t walking freely.  Nico just toddles along, keeping pace with the grown-ups and thinking nothing of it.  He must really stand out because so many people have a comment to make about him.

He’s finally eating now.  Still not a ton compared to other kids his age, but he can put away more than 1/2 cup of yogurt or oatmeal in a sitting (when he feels like it), so that’s a good start.  He seems to prefer beige foods — oatmeal, yogurt, banana, pear, bread, sometimes cheese.  He won’t touch peas or most green or orange foods.  But he likes pizza and soup (no matter the color) and, of course, chocolate.

And, finally, he’s loving the music class we enrolled him in.  After the first class he started drumming along with beats.  After the second one he started clapping along.  Now he not only requests that we play music, but he actually requests a particular song sometimes by doing the motions associated with it (rocking forward and backward like a horse or wiggling his pointer finger, for example).  Jenny may be right — his future may have music in it!  He certainly loves it right now.

In other news, our bulbs are emerging from the soil so I expect we’ll have spring photos up before we know it.  We are all eager for spring around here!

We started out with a small dinner party on his actual birthday.  Jenny was visiting from CA and she brought a tradition from her family — we put a bunch of items on a tray and the first one Nico picked up was supposed to tell us something about his future.  Items included a book, castanets (to represent music), money (coin and bill), a pen (red — could symbolize teacher or writer), a spoon (for cooking), a carrot (farming?  vegetarian?  it doesn’t matter – he didn’t pick it), a pig toy (again, not sure what it represented, but it didn’t matter because he didn’t pick it).  We thought this was a Chinese custom, but our friend Sam had also told us about his nephew doing this, and they’re Korean.  And we have a neighbor who’s Chinese and her family has never heard of it.  So we’re thinking maybe this is an LA pan-Asian thing and not so much just a Chinese thing.  (Sam and Jenny are both from LA.)  Nico didn’t even hesitate on his choice and he wasn’t interested in all that much other than the thing he picked.  Can you guess what he picked?  Look at the photos to see if you’re right.

Since his birthday was on a Thursday, we had his parties on the following weekends.  The Saturday right afer his birthday we had a morning party and an evening party.  We had initially planned on the morning one being for kids and the evening one for adults, but we had a mix at both parties and having two different ones made it so we were actually able to visit with everyone at both. 

We wrapped up Nico’s celebrations with a trip to NY the following weekend where Aunt Denise and Uncle Robert hosted his family party.  Almost all the family came from near and far to celebrate with him and he had a great time with his cousins.  Grandma and Grandpa got him a cassata cake which he enjoyed throwing on the floor.  Frank’s slices ensured that the cake designed to feed 40 people disappeared in half that many tummies.  Mmmm!

Please excuse all the close-up shots and the multiple cake shots…4 parties means 4 different opportunities to show him getting cake all over his face (or not…).  Enjoy!

Christmas has been fun so far this year, and it’s not quite over for us yet.  We’ll be celebrating a belated Christmas with my parents and Danny, Morgan, and Brady this weekend.  We began with an early Christmas (combined with first birthday party for Nico) on Long Island.  We spent Christmas itself here in DC, enjoying Christmas Eve dinner with Aunt Lee, Uncle Tommy, Matthew and Carrie.  Then we had Christmas morning to ourselves and enjoyed watching Nico open his presents and play with his new toys.  And we went to Sara, Aron, Salome and Cyrus’s house for Christmas dinner on Christmas Day. 

Photos from all of our Christmas festivities are here.  The next post will be all of Nico’s various birthday parties, so stay tuned.

Nico had his 9 month visit this month, complete with vaccines for 5 diseases (diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, HiB and polio).  I had thought he wouldn’t be able to get them because he still has the sniffles (going on 3 weeks now…), but she thought he’d do fine.  And he did — he had less of a reaction this time than he did last time (no fatigue, redness, or heat at the injection site).  His stats are :  19 1/2 pounds, 29″ long, and 18 1/2″ head circumference.  Back at 7 months he was 18 pounds, 12 ounces, 28 1/2″ long, and had an 18″ head.  So he has definitely plateaued, although really he has outgrown all of the 9 month clothes and is wearing 12 month now, so that 1/2 inch and 12 ounces made a big difference.

We’ve taken advantage of this early fall weather with lots of walking trips to various libraries and parks.  And we had a great visit from Aunt Denise, Uncle Robert, and Daniel and James earlier in the month.  Nico loves watching his cousins!  We also had to say good bye to our good friends Lara and Beth and their daughters Caroline and Cassie.  Beth got a great job out in WA state and they packed up and moved out there last week.  Nico will miss having a secret admirer (Cassie) and we’ll miss the whole family.

Nico has been doing well with eating, but we’re not out of the woods yet.  His latest trick is to eat two or three slices of banana (in small pieces) and then toward the very end, choke and throw up everything he’s eaten.  We’re taking a little break from food until his sinuses clear out, thinking that maybe his throat is just too swollen for all the stress of food.

Here are photos from the first 2 weeks of September.  In the last few photos you can see him enjoying his right to vote.  He was shocked to learn, however, that the members of Congress on our ballot don’t actually have a vote.  Next up, photos of Nico demanding representation!

In terms of Nico’s developments in August…he turned 8 months old, ate some cantaloupe, and started grinding his teeth, which is a sound worse than fingernails on a chalkboard!  He also ate some peaches and rice cereal, but got pretty sick when we gave him egg yolk.  At the very end of the month he actually asked for some food by making up a sign; then he successfully swallowed some banana pieces!  That was a huge step.  (He’s regressed some again, but we’re optimistic that he’ll eat someday.) 

Enjoy the photos!

Photos from our trip are here.

Nico made tremendous leaps and bounds all month long!  Here are some highlights:

• He started the month with 2 teeth and finished it with seven!  4 on the bottom and 3 (plus one about to come in) on the top.  Poor little guy had 4 top teeth pushing and shoving to come in all at the same time, just after 2 had come through on the bottom.  The good news is that there are only 20 total, so he’s getting a lot of the hard work out of the way early on.
• June 8th – Nico had his first babysitter this month.  I had been staying up until 2 or 3 AM writing and then getting up with him around 9 every day and trying to write if he took naps.  But I could see that there was no way I could keep up that pace and also that even with that pace I wouldn’t meet my deadlines.  So I found a babysitter to come for 4 hours a day, two days a week.  I still spent most of the month working until the wee hours, but having her here for 8 hours a week made a huge difference!  And she’s great — she is going to grad school in the fall for speech/language pathology and she knows sign language, so she’s signing with him and spends a lot of time reading to him and teaching him new things.  I haven’t worked up to leaving him alone with her yet, but it’s great to have here there while I work.  An added benefit is that I can just go downstairs if he cries or needs to eat, so I don’t need to pump or anything.  So far it’s really easy and quite a lifesaver for me.
• June 9th – Nico turned 6 months old!
• He makes a ton of sounds now, although it’s way too early for any of them to mean anything.  For a long time “guh” was his main sound.  That was replaced by “buh.”  Those are still his two favorites.  But “dadada” is now a very popular one.  And he says “kuh” “wuh” “yuh” “ha” “fuh” “tuh” “puh” “suh” and “juh.”  Now that he’s got those top teeth, he loves feeling them against his lips so he says a lot of “vuh” and “fuh.” 
• He still won’t eat any food.  At all.  If anything goes in his mouth, he gags and gags and gags until he throws up.  This proved to be a good thing a couple of times when he ended up with paper in his mouth (part of the binding of a board book, part of a paper napkin at a restaurant…).  He gagged and we swept the paper out.  But he really should be eating by now.  We’ll be talking to his pediatrician about this on Friday at his 7 month visit. 
• He crawled backward for the first 2 weeks of June, but couldn’t figure out how to go forward.  On June 14th he crawled forward for the first time.  He still doesn’t go too far, though, even though he can.  He figured out how to sit back up from crawling on June 24th, so now he likes to go a few steps and sit down, go a few steps and sit down.  Mostly, though, he just wants to stand up.  He’ll pull himself to his feet from our legs if we’re sitting on the ground or from anything that’s about 6 inches off the ground.  He climbs up the coffee table and the couch.  And he balances on his own — often just holding on with 1 hand so he can do something with the other one.  He is getting more and more stable every day and we think he’s going to forget about crawling and go straight to walking.  He always has wanted to be vertical… 
• I keep telling him about all the advantages of staying a baby for a while and telling him that the faster he grows up, the sooner he’s going to have to get a job.  But he doesn’t care.  He just pushes those teeth through and tries to stand up and forgets all about being a baby.    It makes me sad — he’s growing up too fast!
• June 14th was a big day for 2 other things too.  He seemed to understand when we said “where’s the cat?”  He’d stop what he was doing and look around until he spotted the cat.  He could care less about “where’s Daddy?” or “where’s Mommy?”  But “where’s the cat?” elicited an immediate reaction without fail, every time.  That day he also showed a real interest in reading.  I was sitting on the floor with him next to a bookshelf and we were reading his all-time favorite book, Pajama Time.  When it was done, he pulled himself over my leg, hung out on his belly on my leg, grabbed a book off the shelf with one hand, and brought the book back with him as he came back to sit on my lap.  An adorable fluke, right?  That’s what I thought until he did it again.  And then a third time.  He was deliberately selecting books and bringing them back to me to read, waiting until the end of the story, and doing it again.  Eventually he was more interested in just pulling the books off the shelf, but he started by wanting me to read to him!
• He is getting much more demonstrative with his love.   He gives real hugs and “kisses” (which are just huge slobbery messes as he puts his wide open mouth against our cheek or chin and holds it there until we are sufficiently soggy).  He’ll often hug my neck, pull back to look at me and smile, and then hug me again.  It melts my heart every time!
• He started having mini temper tantrums this month.  He suddenly gets angry if we take something away from him and cries if we don’t substitute it with something else.  He has also cried if we redirect him from something he wanted to do.  I used to have a hard time picturing him as a toddler having a tantrum (even though I knew it was coming).  Now I can totally picture it — and it scares me!
• My parents came to visit at the end of June, helping with big house projects and watching Nico so I could work.  It was extremely helpful and he had a lot of fun with his Grandma and Grandpa.
• To those of you still reading (and I have been assured that it’s more than just the grandparents who read to the end), thank you for indulging me in sharing these minute details about my little boy and enjoy the photos! 

Stay tuned for photos from our visit to NJ and also for our Memorial Day BBQ photos.

We got to celebrate a bit with Matthew and Carrie too — they recently got engaged and are planning a November wedding at the foot of a waterfall  in Hawaii.

Photos from the dinner are here.

You can see photos from their visit here.  The magnolias were in full bloom at the garden behind the Smithsonian Castle.

• Nico’s first night alone with Daddy while Mommy went out with the ladies to celebrate Sara’s birthday
• A trip to FL to see the grandparents (those pictures are coming tomorrow)
• His first vaccine – DTaP #1
• His first board meeting — he came with me to PreventionWorks to discuss important things like fundraising and board development
• His first day at work — he came with me to NYAC and was a perfect angel, sleeping for 3 of the 4 hours I was there every time he came
• His first time sitting up for a few seconds unsupported
• A visit from Aunt Marie and cousins, Tara, Nick and Dana (those pictures are coming in a couple days)

We’ve gone shopping, taken the bus and the metro, and met Daddy for lunch.

On Tuesday this week, we went to Daddy’s hockey game.

We’ve also had some friends over.

And, of course, we’ve taken lots of close-ups at home.

We’ve put together a little slide show with a whole bunch more close-ups and other photos.  It’s overkill in terms of the number of each kind of picture, but it’s so hard to choose just one of each!  This photo set is really for the grandparents (and anyone else who can’t get enough of Nico).

I haven’t put any up from the hospital — his birth photos are here, you’ve seen a couple of videos, and really, the time we have spent with him at home is so much better.  Plus our camera malfunctioned on the last day there and we lost lots of the pictures we had taken.  In fact, when we got home, Frank jumped out of the car and ran inside to get our other camera while I hopped in the back seat to get Nico ready to come home for the first time.  Good thing we had a second camera!  So anyway, these photos start with Nico’s arrival home and move forward from there.

Nico’s Homecoming

It seemed like he was in the hospital for an eternity, but really it was just a week.  We were thrilled to bring him home on December 15th.  And if you look closely at his face, it looks like he was pretty happy about it too!

Nico’s First Week at Home

We spent most of the week staring at him, but we did manage to take a few photos.

Christmas in DC

I wasn’t feeling up to a car trip and we were worried about exposing Nico and his fragile immune system to a lot of people, so for the first time ever we spent Christmas alone in DC.  We weren’t lonely, though!  We spent the afternoon with Billy and Joe and their brand new (one year old) twins.  (For those of you following their story, the adoption is final and the boys are officially theirs!!!)  Then we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner with Gina, Chip and family.

Nico Meets the Family

Since we couldn’t travel for Christmas, Nico missed out on meeting his aunts, uncles, cousins, and other grandparents.  So everyone convened at my parents’ house in NJ because it’s closer for everyone than driving from NY to DC.  Danny, Morgan and Brady came down from Poughkeepsie.  Marie, Frank, Nick, Dana, Denise, Robert, Daniel and James came from Long Island.  And my mom outdid herself cooking for crowds of baby admirers.  It was a great way to spend New Year’s.  On New Year’s Day the 3 of us left NJ and met Frank’s parents in DC. They stayed with us until the 4th and got to spend a lot of quality time with their newest grandson (and their favorite son).  Earlier than this, Nico’s Great Uncle Tommy and Great Aunt Lee came to visit with Cousin Matthew.  Unfortunately we didn’t get any photos of him with them.

We celebrated all of these great things with friends and family this year.  First we had our 13th Annual Pre-Thanksgiving Feast.  Jeff was here again, keeping his title as the only person to have been at every single Feast.  They are about to move to NH, so next year will be the real test…will he make it back down?  We hope so!  Ed, Genta, their sons, and Sara were all new to Pre-Thanksgiving, and we were glad to have them join us.  Gina and Chip were supposed to be here, but she had her baby a mere 17 hours before the party started.  (Mom and baby Archer are doing well after an extremely short and exciting delivery!)  Charlie and Co. were out with the flu.  And we had a couple of other last minute switcharoos.  But we were very glad that Baby Schipegan held off and did not arrive to cancel the party or turn it into a potluck.  We were also thankful to have Suzanne’s help beforehand — she did a ton from helping move furniture to making the cornbread and several other things to helping with clean-up.  All so I didn’t have to.  Thank you Suzanne!!!  And thank you to the rest of the clean-up crew:  Amy, Katie, Sara, and anyone else I might be missing.  Photos from the Feast are here.

And then, a few days later, we celebrated Thanksgiving with both sets of parents.  I couldn’t travel so we were extra glad that they could all make the trip to come be with us here.  Frank’s parents arrived on Tuesday and spent all of Wednesday getting us organized and rearranging furniture in our bedroom to accommodate the new furniture they brought to us.  We should have had them arrange all the furniture in our house — our room looks fantastic now!  My parents arrived on Thursday afternoon and stayed at a relatively new B&B just up the road.  I’m glad we’ve got a nice option in our neighborhood — just a mile up the road and accessible by the bus.  We ate too much and played a rousing game of Settlers of Catan on Thursday.  Then on Friday we went to the American Indian Museum and had a nice dinner out in Chinatown.  And they all headed out on Saturday.  Photos from their visit are here.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

May / June

We traveled to Pittsburgh in mid-May to visit the Shar-Bars.  We didn’t take many photos, but we loved seeing their new house and doing all the fun things we always do when we visit PGH.

My parents came to DC for my birthday and helped us paint the trim in the guest room and bathroom.  It’s so nice to have knocked something else off our list of projects to complete!

We traveled to NJ to celebrate a belated Father’s Day with my parents and Danny, Morgan, and Brady.  We played some bocce, had a great dinner, and spent most of our time oohing and aahing over Brady.

Frank and Seda enjoyed making sushi in June and cherry pie in July.  These photos are guaranteed to make your mouth water.

July

We had a 4th of July BBQ on our deck, even though it was little more than a platform at the time.  As usual when we unveil something new, Gina, Chip and Eloisa were here to celebrate with us, along with Sara, Aron and Salome, Eva, Jaime, and Jen.

Eva turned 40 and had a fabulous dinner party for several friends.  (I’m still not sure what we did to deserve a delicious, gourmet meal prepared by the birthday girl herself!)

Tara graduated (and so did her Uncle Frankie) and we traveled to NY to celebrate with her.

We traveled to Sperryville for the weekend with teams Somobright and Hjeltak.  We don’t have pictures of the blackberry picking, but we spent part of one day picking blackberries with the kids and it was great!  The rest of the time we hung out at the cottage and just relaxed and chatted and watched the girls play.

Debbie, Tim, and Gwen came to visit us in DC.  We were very proud of Gwen’s mommy for overcoming her fear of travel without a car seat and letting Gwen ride both the metro *and* the city bus.  Gwen loved both!  We also went to the sad little aquarium in DC.  They have some pretty fish and Gwen seemed to enjoy it.  But it’s dark and small and plus it’s not free.  I’m glad I’ve been once, but I don’t think we’ll go back.

August

Oshapalooza (see below).

We hope to add our completed deck to the August photos.  Mike finished up yesterday but there is still a LOT left for Frank to take care of.  The whole deck needs to be stained/sealed.  Two of three fans need to be installed.  Some sort of screen needs to be devised.  And all of the lattice pieces for the 1st floor railings need to be nailed into place.  It’s looking good, but we’ve still got a way to go before we can take any “after” photos.

I’m going to start the updating process with last weekend’s Osh Fest.  This was the fifth one we’ve hosted and it was great.  We had visitors from LA, Seattle, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh as well as all over the DC region.

It was great to see everybody again and we’re already making plans for next year’s bairam.  The slide show is available here.  Enjoy!

It was great to see them.  We went to a neighborhood BBQ and then played a competitive game of Clue.  Turns out it was Mr. Green with the wrench in the Library.

For those of you that know Bonnie, she’s looking fabulous at about 20 weeks.  See for yourself:

Next weekend Seda will be arriving.  Many of you may remember her — she is the Chechen woman who lived with us a few years ago when we were still in the condo.  She has been studying for her MPA (master’s in public administration) in the US through a Muskie Fellowship since last August.  She has an internship in DC for the summer and will return to her university for her final semester in the fall.  We’re looking forward to seeing her again soon!

The flowers in this photo are the ones that we’ve dubbed Brady’s Garden.  We got the bulbs at my sister-in-law’s baby shower and we were putting them in the ground when we got the call that she was in labor.  They are gorgeous!

Here’s how my kitty cats spent the day:

The weather is supposed to get up into the 60s this weekend, so our snow should melt soon.  But we actually had a decent amount of snow this weekend — worthy of posting a few photos.  We probably got 4 inches, but DC didn’t shut down this time.  Nope, everyone here is too embarrassed that Obama made fun of us for shutting down for an inch of snow earlier this winter, so now we’re probably never going to get shut down unless we get a full-blown midwestern style snowstorm.  (No thanks!)

Here I am, shoveling with the neighbors:

We even had icicles:

Here’s our street — I think it looks lovely with the snow and the blue sky:

Hopefully this is the last of the snow and we’ll be showing garden photos instead really soon!

It all started on Valentine’s Day.  Frank’s sisters, Marie and Denise, came down to DC with their families.  Yep, that’s right — 7 people visiting our tiny little house.  Everyone was worried about there being enough room except for Frank and me.  We know how many people we can pack in to our house.  And there was still room for more, so hopefully next time Tara and Frank A. will join everyone too.    Photos from their visit are here.  We started on Saturday with a BBQ dinner in honor of Robert’s birthday.  It seems we only get to see their friends James and Raylene when Denise and Robert are in town, so we were glad for the excuse to have them over.  On Sunday we all went to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum out by Dulles Airport.  We had brought Nick there on a previous visit, but he was a good sport about seeing it all again.  And Daniel and James loved the big planes.

After that we headed to Ashburn for a delicious dinner made by cousin Matthew.  As a bonus, his brother Philip was visiting from FL so it was a big cousin reunion.

Monday started off with a game of Trouble and a game of Scrabble and then it was off to a Chinese restaurant for lunch and the American History Museum.  We had fun looking at the newly restored flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner, the Lincoln exhibit (it was President’s Day weekend), the transportation exhibit, and the kids’ hands-on room.  That night we ate dinner at home and played a couple rousing games of Pictionary.  I feel like I should scan in some of the winning (and losing) drawings, but they’d probably lose something in the translation…  I had forgotten how much fun Pictionary is.  On Tuesday Marie and her kids headed back to Long Island and I went to work.  I believe everyone else went to the zoo, but there are no pictures so I’m not sure.    We had a nice dinner at home on Tuesday night and played some Candyland.  On Wednesday Denise and her family left and Frank got us ready for our cruise while I was at work.

Then, on Thursday morning at 6 AM we left the cold, rainy, yucky weather to go on a cruise!  We almost didn’t make it, though.  Our flight was at 8:30, and we got to the airport by 7 AM so we had a nice relaxing wait for our plane.  We boarded the plane on time and the doors were shut by 8:25.  We taxied to the runway and then sat.  And sat.  And sat.  And sat.  And then the pilot came on to say that the wind had shifted and instead of taking off to the south, we’d be taking off to the north.  But we were too heavy to take off to the north — in DC the flight path rules are very strict and if a plane takes off to the north it has to take off at a steep angle and make an immediate sharp left so it doesn’t go over the White House or the Mall.  So, we were fine for taking off to the south, where it’s a straight shot, but too heavy to go north.  So, it was back to the terminal at around 10:00 AM to offload some weight.  We taxied to the terminal and refueled, but they didn’t unload anything.  And then all of a sudden we were heading back to the runway.  It seems that the wind had shifted again and we could now go south.  But, on our way there, the wind shifted again.  Oh, and it was also raining, so our stopping distance was increased and now we couldn’t take off to the south anymore either.  Agh.  But they “massaged the numbers” (those are the pilot’s words, not mine!) and all of a sudden we were going to be taking off to the north.  Let’s get this straight.  It’s now 11:30 AM.  We’ve been on the plane for 2.5 hours.  No weight has been lost.  We have added fuel.  And we’re taking off to the north, which we weren’t allowed to do 2 hours ago.  Um yeah.  I was not feeling so good about this flight.  But there was nothing I could do but sit and stare at the ceiling and hope we kept going upward.  So that’s what I did, and despite a ton of wind and bumps and lots of sideways motion (which I hate!), we did make it up into the air.  And we landed with plenty of time to get on the ship.

So, after that scary start, we were finally on the cruise ship.  But wait!  More drama!  It seems that in Italy a woman’s official documents all use her maiden name, even if she changed her name when she got married.  So, Frank’s mom’s cousin’s wife has a different official last name than the one we used when we bought her ticket for the cruise.  They weren’t going to let her on the boat!  Frank and I lost track of his family at customs, so we went ahead and boarded assuming all was well.  Then we saw his parents on the boat, but not the cousins!  And the boat was to leave in an hour (at 5 PM).  We did our mandatory lifeboat drill at 4:30 but they still weren’t on the boat.  In fact, Frank and I didn’t know if they had made it at all until we got to dinner at 6 PM.  We were extremely relieved to see them at the dinner table.  It turns out that they were able to call their son in Italy to have him fax over a copy of their marriage license.  Thank goodness he was near their house, had a key, and was able to find it exactly where they told him it would be.  Once the stress had worn off a bit, we were able to laugh at the idea that if our flight had been later and if they hadn’t gotten the marriage certificate, Frank’s parents would have been the only ones on the cruise and we would all have been hanging out in their condo for 4 days without them.

The cruise itself was great (photos are here).  I had never been on a cruise and wasn’t sure if I would love it or hate it.  I think 4 nights is the perfect length of time for a cruise — just enough time to really relax but not so long that you start to go stir crazy.  There were 14 decks on this cruise ship — that’s 14 stories that the passengers use and doesn’t include all of the working levels.  It was enormous!  It had miniature golf, several pools, an ice skating rink, a theatre that was bigger than my high school’s auditorium, a casino, multiple restaurants, and probably lots of things we didn’t ever even see.  The food was delicious (although we ate way too much) and the weather was perfect the whole time.  We had 1 day on land in Cozumel, Mexico.  There we rented jeeps and took a tour of the island.  We saw an old Mayan temple and went snorkeling.  We saw a sea turtle, were close enough to touch a very large barracuda, and saw lots of other fish and some very pretty coral.  All in all, the cruise was a lot of fun and it may become part of our regular mid-winter Florida excursion.

Unfortunately Frank got the flu at some point on the trip, and on Tuesday night he started to get sick.  He spent the remainder of February on the couch under a heap of blankets trying to get rid of his fever.  It finally went away on the first day of March.  But now we know how to spice up February and make it a month we can look forward to rather than a month we dread.  We’ll just make sure Frank loads up on vitamin C.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8OhpObpXF4

And our photos are here.

I hope to have all of our December pictures up on the site before 2009 arrives.  In the meantime, enjoy the photos of Pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, and Nick and Dana’s visit to DC.

And here are a couple of photos from our own Christmas at home.

The first class was the ABCs of Wine, which we took on 6/13/07.  I did not have an auspicious start…I had a bit of a cold and I was the ONLY person (in a room of over 50) who couldn’t smell or taste the difference between the first two glasses of white wine.  Me!  With my amazing sense of smell!  It was quite embarrassing.  This realization came after a long presentation about how people always think they won’t be able to smell/taste the difference between wines, but actually they can.  I seriously thought it was a trick question and that the first 2 wines were the same.  Alas, the first was a 2006 Pinot Grigio from Kris Delle Venezie (Italian) and the second was a 2006 Chateau Ste. Michelle from the Columbia Valley in Washington state (one of my favorite wine regions).

The next two wines were for a comparison between “old world” (Europe) and “new world” (anywhere else).  We tasted a 2005 Shaps & Roucher-Sarrazin Blanc (from Burgundy, France) and a 2005 Rodney Strong Chardonnay (from Sonoma, CA).

Then we moved to reds with a new world and old world Pinot Noir (2006 De Loach from CA and 2005 Mark West from Corsica, France).  And finally we tasted a 2004 Chateau de Valcombe (Rhone, France) and a Glaetzer Shiraz/Grenache (Barossa Valley, South Australia).  I absolutely loved the Australian Shiraz/Grenache.

So, what did we learn in that first class?

Temperature

We usually serve whites too cold and reds too warm in the US.  In order to enjoy the best flavor, we should put reds in the fridge for 20 minutes before serving and take whites out of the fridge 20 minutes before serving.  Frank and I have been doing this ever since and we do notice a difference.

Color

When judging a wine’s color, hold it against a white napkin or tablecloth instead of up to the light.  And what are you looking for?  If a white wine has a brownish tinge or a red wine has a rust color or orange around the edges, the wine has gone bad.

Finish

A “finishable wine” has a long aftertaste.  This is a sign of quality — a longer finish shows higher quality.

How to know what you’ll like when shopping

The main clues about a wine’s taste come from where it’s from, how it was made, and what it’s made from.

The soil and the climate matter for the taste of the wine — find a latitude and climate you like, and it’s likely that you’ll enjoy wines from elsewhere along that latitude line.  Of course the soil will be different, which is hard to judge in a wine store, but you’ll at least know if a place is likely to be dry or wet, have long hot summers or cool ones, etc.

Poor soil is a good thing when making wine because it leads to lots of root development.  So look for wines from rocky regions with poor soil.

A long ripening process is also good.  The best wines from the northern and southern hemispheres come from latitudes where there is enough time for grapes to fully ripen on the vine.

How it’s made (oak barrels, steel tanks, etc.) will tell you a lot — an oaked chardonnay is much different than a steel one.

Finally, what it’s made from will be the final clue.  If you learn the characteristics of the top 30 varieties of grapes, you’ll know enough to decide between 90% of the wines sold in the US.  (We have not made much progress on this…)

A varietal wine is almost 100% one kind of grape.  A blended wine will have different grapes in different percentages.

Notes from our second wine course (on 6/20/07) coming up next…

The first batch has lost some of its luster now.  In March we took pictures of our crocuses and tulips and looked forward to posting them on the web to let our northern friends know that spring was on its way.  (And yes, perhaps to show off how early spring comes to DC.)  The crocuses, tulips and daffodils are long gone now.  But they were beautiful while they lasted.  For some reason our tulips came up before our daffodils.  But our daffodils were so pretty that they were worth the wait.  A big thank you, again, to Frank’s mom for planting these bulbs last fall.  We looked forward to their emergence all winter!

The next batch of lost pictures is from Suzanne’s 30th birthday cocktail party.  We made a lightning-fast trip to NY for the event…arriving around 8 PM on Saturday and leaving around noon on Sunday.  But it was well worth the trip.  Check out the pictures of Suzanne’s boots.  They were her extravagant birthday present to herself…and one of them got stuck on her leg!  After about an hour, a skilled friend managed to loosen the zipper enough that Suzanne was able to unzip the boot the rest of the way.  We have no pictures of the process (it wasn’t so funny at the time), but everything turned out ok in the end.  And we didn’t have to cut the boot off. 

The final batch of lost pictures is from a big weekend of visitors.  Marisa came to town from Thailand, which drew a crowd.  Bonnie & Tom came up from South Carolina, Shannon came down from NYC, and Wendy came up from Virginia.  And Mary happened to be in town from Boston that weekend, so it was a great party.  We had a nice birthday brunch for Bonnie and Tom’s birthdays and then went out to the Brickskeller that night.

Enjoy!

This shows the progress of our garden, which we’ve been thinking about, planning for, and working on for the past 4 months. We started working the soil on a warmish day in February. We also started our seeds inside in February. Then it stayed cold, so the seedlings couldn’t be moved outside. By the time they could, many of them had died off and others were just emerging. We supplemented our own seeds with seedlings from the farmer’s market, re-tilled the soil and mixed in our own home-grown compost, built planter boxes, strung trellises made of netting, planted seedlings and more seeds, and installed a drip irrigation system. Now that the rains have stopped and the sun is out, we expect the garden to start taking off!

Enjoy the photos.

• A Capitals game — the Islanders won and Nick tested his vocal cords (and the patience of the Washington fans) following the lead of a fellow Islander fan and yelling “Let’s go Islanders” as we walked down the 4 flights of stairs to the street.
• Going to a college class and then work with Uncle Frankie — Nick got a taste of what a real college English class looks like at 8 AM.
• Visiting the Spy Museum — Nick and I did that while Frank worked that afternoon.
• Mongolian BBQ — we were told that this might even rival Chinese food, the former Nick favorite.
• A winner-takes-all game of Risk — although we quit before anyone won.
• Weekday bowling at Lucky Strike in Chinatown — probably the fanciest bowling alley we had ever seen and pleasantly empty at 2 PM on a Friday.

We’re looking forward to his next visit — perhaps this summer!  A few pictures from his visit are here.

So, finally Presidents’ Day weekend came and we were ready.  We spent the week assessing our equipment, ensuring that we had enough primer and paint, and making a plan.  Saturday morning, we got up and started the final prep work.  Frank patched long cracks that had emerged since we last worked on the walls.  And I spackled parts of the wall that had never been filled in and washed off the sawdust.  Then, all of a sudden, I looked up and saw Frank scraping away the wallpaper near the baseboard.  Evidently it had gotten loose farther up than where we had originally scraped.  But he kept scraping.  And kept scraping.  And suddenly, in one smooth motion, the putty knife and Frank’s arm had traveled up as high as he could reach — scraping off the wallpaper and paint in one clean 2″ wide stripe.  Uh oh.

So, he kept scraping, vowing that he’d stop as soon as the wallpaper seemed to be really solidly stuck.  But soon it was apparent that he needed to go all the way.  Now, we both saw a silver lining in this — there had been huge overlaps in the wallpaper, which left several seams that showed through the coats of paint.  We had tried sanding them out and patching them, to no avail — they were still going to be visible. So, at least this way those seams would disappear.  And it wouldn’t take too long.  Right?

Well, a short while later we noticed that there were actually 2 layers of wallpaper.  Now things started to make more sense.  This house was so solidly constructed that we thought it was very suspicious that some of the wallpaper pieces overlapped by nearly a foot.  It turns out that that was a shoddy job on top of a nearly perfect original wallpaper application.  Our faith in the original workers was restored.  We were shocked to see that we could make out a faint pattern in the original wallpaper.  Suddenly this daunting task became very exciting!

As Frank scraped, I started washing the wallpaper backing off the wall to expose the original wallpaper underneath.  I felt like I was uncovering ghosts as I worked, and revealing a piece of history.  It was actually quite fun.  (Yes, I did just write that.)  As I washed, whole sections of the pattern would emerge and the details were quite evident while the paper was wet.  We decided to preserve a small section, and the rest got scraped off.  So now the wall is down to bare plaster, which is pretty cool looking by itself.

But, as exciting as old wallpaper is, we did eventually tire of this project.  So, on Monday we went out and bought a new car.  Some people might just sit and watch TV or maybe go for a walk.  Us?  We bought a car.

As impulsive as this might sound, it was actually the result of a month-long shopping process.  We found out in early January that the Jetta was finally giving up the ghost.  The check engine light came on, indicating that the car needed all sorts of valves and filters and repairs — to the tune of $4,000 or so.  Plus the $1,400 for the air conditioner that we never fixed last year.  Plus the windows that didn’t go up and down any more.  Plus the numerous plastic parts that had broken off the interior and were lying around on the floor.  Since the car was only worth $3,500 (in perfect condition), and since its registration was due to expire in February and we didn’t think it would pass inspection, we had to say good bye — and fast!  We squeezed in several car shopping trips in January, and finally came home with a new Toyota Matrix on Monday.  We can haul a lot of wallpaper paste in the back of the new car. 

So, our front entry way is still a mix of green, white primer, and raw plaster.  And now the stairwell is raw plaster and old wallpaper.  And we have no idea when we’ll patch the walls (again) and prime (again) so we can paint (finally).  Maybe we’ll just try to find a reproduction of that original wallpaper and restore the hallway to its former glory.  (Probably not, though…) 

But at least we have a car I can drive!

You can see pictures of the wallpaper discovery process here, along with photos of the curtains we made at Christmas and our fireplace (just to break up the monotony, in case you don’t find old wallpaper as cool as we do).  Pictures of the car to come…

The next weekend, Frank’s birthday weekend, his sister, Marie and her partner, Frank came to visit. Marie brought a birthday cassata cake all the way from NY. We can’t get that here, so we’re always excited when we can eat it on Long Island. mmmm! Again, we spent a lot of the weekend just catching up and relaxing. But we did squeeze in some touristy things too. We went to the Botanic Gardens to escape the cold, wintry weather and get a breath of tropical air. We also returned to the American Indian museum, although this time we took a tour. We had a fantastic dinner at Agraria, one of our favorite restaurants in DC. And we went to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and were amazed by the elaborate murals and mosaics in each tiny chapel around the enormous central space. And how could I forget — we spent an evening trying to figure out whodunnit in a rousing game of Clue. Photos from their visit are here.

We ate well, played a rousing game of Mexican Train Dominoes, visited the Air and Space museum out by Dulles airport (but forgot the camera), and even finished up some house projects! Photos are online here.

In between pre-Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving we moved the final truckload of stuff out of the condo, patched and painted some final holes in the condo walls, salvaged a bookcase that NYAC was going to get rid of, and unpacked all of our books to make room for another houseful of guests.  We closed on the condo the day before Thanksgiving.  In hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t have been so hasty to move our closing date up.  My dad tore his plantar fascia in the bottom of his foot before coming down to DC and had to hobble up and down stairs on crutches in order to use the bathrooms.  Had we hung on to the condo, at least he could have relaxed there on one level…  Fortunately he survived the weekend with no accidents on the stairs, although he was very relieved to get back to his one-story house!

Somehow we managed to make the house presentable enough for our crowd of 18 and we even got our heat working in time for the party.  We were pleased to find that the set-up of the dining room and living room is as perfect as we had hoped it would be and that we can fit a whole lot more people into our new space.  We missed a lot of our regular pre-Thanksgiving folks (you know who you are!), but we are confident that we can have a nice big dinner next year — there’s plenty of room for eating AND for sleeping! 

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and enjoy your “other” Thanksgiving dinners!

September 29th — We decided to sell the condo.

September 30th — Kristen left for Little Rock, where she helped her colleagues put on their annual conference.

October 1-4 — While Kristen is in Little Rock, Frank gets started packing the condo so we’ll be ready to move.

October 5-6 — Kristen and Frank finish packing.

October 7 — Mike, Sam, Chip, Hussein and Nashua helped us move the majority of our stuff to the house, leaving only the big furniture in the condo to help it sell.  Unfortunately we have no pictures from the move, but we couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help.  It took us 5 hours from start to finish.  Afterward, we had our first dinner in the new house, with Chip, Gina and Eloisa here to enjoy it with us.

October 8-11 — We prepare the condo for sale, finishing all of the nagging little projects we had never had a chance to complete.

October 11 — The condo is officially on the market (link to the listing is below).

October 12 — We sleep in the house for the first time (but leave the cats in the condo)

October 13 — The cats join us at the house and Charlie holds our first open house.  Cousin Matthew is our first official post-move-in dinner guest.  (We bought food at Whole Foods and promised that the next meal would be homemade.)

October 14-17 — We unpack the kitchen and start living in utter chaos…digging through boxes constantly and showering in the basement.  On October 16, Amy, Sam, Jenny and Lauren come over for a housewarming / thank you dinner.

October 18 — We try to leave for Chicago, but are thwarted by bad weather and drive back from BWI to sleep at home.  The kitty cats are very happy to see us.

October 19 — We successfully fly to Chicago and have a great time at Diana and Bill’s wedding.

October 20-21 — We spend the weekend with family in Chicago and have nice visits with Auntie Ro, Aunt Nita and Earl, and Kathy and Kenny.  Frank leaves for DC on the 21st.

October 22 — Kristen flies to Minneapolis.

October 23-24 — Frank unpacks and settles in a bit more and Kristen goes to an anti-tobacco conference.

October 25 — Frank’s parents drive down to DC for a visit en route to FL.  Kristen returns home at 11 PM.

October 26-28 — Frank’s parents work hard from early in the morning until late at night.  With their endless help we manage to get the kitchen completely unpacked, the garden ripped out and ready for winter, the dining room, living room, and office painted, bulbs planted for next year, and a lot of the house cleaned up.  Thanks again!!!  We also got an official offer on the condo on October 27th, which we accepted, so we became “under contract” about 2 weeks after listing the condo.

October 29-31 — Mary and Ben finally come to DC at the same time and visit us.  We also ran out of candy on Halloween because we had so many trick-or-treaters, so we turned off the lights and went out to dinner.

And if the past week is any indication, November will probably be more of the same!  The good news is that every day we make a bit more progress toward making the house liveable.  There have been some set-backs (more to come on those), but each day we can see marked changes that help keep us motivated to do more.  We haven’t been taking house pictures lately, but we’ll try to do that soon.  At this point, once things change they’re going to be that way for a long time, so we’re not in such a rush. 

We officially closed on Thursday but then had to go back to work. So, Friday began our weekend of deconstruction work. (Deconstruction is the “green remodeling” term, but really what we did looks pretty much like demolition.) Frank and I closed on our home equity loan at 9 AM on Friday and shortly thereafter headed to the new place to get started. You can see all the pictures here. Links to some of the key sections are below. 

We’d like to thank our amazing crew from this weekend, without whom we never ever could have even dreamt of getting this much work done!  Thanks Mom and Dad Degan, Amy, Mary, Ben, Sam and Katie!!!!!

Day 1

• We began in the kitchen – Frank’s #1 priority.
• My parents arrived and helped us get the paneling, cabinets and counters out.

Day 2

• Frank, my dad, and Mary started with my #1 priority — getting the awnings down.
• Amy and I tore out the basement ceiling.
• Mary and Amy exposed gorgeous wood floors under the carpet on the stairs and in the master bedroom.
• Ben and my mom surrounded themselves in dust and knocked out all the plaster in the kitchen.

Day 3

• The dining room mirror came out. Then we discovered a gas leak, so we took a long lunch break while we waited for Washington Gas to come and shut off the gas to the house. My parents left to go home after a long weekend of helping us. We could never have made so much progess without their help!
• Then Sam and Katie came over to help knock out the closets in the basement.

We’ve met our neighbors and we think that as wonderful as this house is, the best part about moving is going to be the great street we live on. People hang out on their front porches and everyone knows everyone else by name. Everyone is extremely friendly and welcoming and we feel at home already!

We’ve also started to learn a little bit about the people who owned the house before us. They moved there in 1961. They put the rooms in the basement shortly thereafter, because we found a newspaper from 1962 in there. The husband was a landscaper (which might explain why the backyard is concrete), and he died around 17 or 18 years ago. We had suspected that perhaps the woman’s husband had died and title of the house transferred to her at his death, and it turns out we were right. The woman who sold the house to us was their goddaughter, and she lived with them for much of her childhood and adolescence. We also learned that the big cinderblock wall in the back yard was put up to protect the neighbor children from the big German shepherds running around in our backyard. (It’s on our property, and the neighbors wouldn’t be sad to see it go.)

The next door neighbors are great! On the left (the house with the flamingoes), the family has lived there since 1968. They had 6 children that grew up in that house, and their whole family comes and spends as much time there as possible. There are grandkids who play in the back yard and the front yard and who greeted Frank with a cheerful, “Hello, Mr. Frank!” this morning. They are great kids who clearly grow up in a house filled with love and plenty of adult supervision. Tonight we sat on the porch for a half hour or so, and were thrilled to see the kids running and riding their bikes up and down the sidewalk. No video games or TV watching for those kids! We look forward to getting to know that family and watching their (grand)kids grow up.

On the other side, the neighbor has lived there for 6 years and she showed us around inside her (recently fixed up) home. It gives us great inspiration to see what lies in our future…especially as our house sits under a thick layer of white dust right now.

Today Frank met with a contractor, a locksmith and ADT. Tomorrow we have a designer coming and a couple of radiant floor heating people. And there are more contractors coming the rest of this week. We’ve done most of the demolition work, so now we’re ready for someone to come help us design the new space and get started on the bathroom. We’ll post more pictures when we’ve got more to show. And we’ll be at the house all day on Saturday and probably from 10 or 11 until 2 or 3 on Sunday if you want to come give us a hand. It’s lots of fun!

We did it! We closed on the house!

The closing went well and we headed straight to the house to do a little happy dance inside before going to work. It’s going to be tough to focus on work today, but we’ll have plenty of time to be thinking about the house — we’re going to be there from dawn ’til dusk every day this weekend.

If you’re in town and want free beer and vegan pastries, come on over. We’re going to be ripping out the kitchen (great for pent up aggression), removing the awnings from the front of the house, cleaning decades of dirt off the moldings, and whatever else comes up. It promises to be a great time.

We’ll post pictures of the progress soon. The best thing is that the owner was able to get all of the furniture and stuff out of the house. We have no idea how she got it all done, but it’s all gone and we have a clean slate to work with.

Each week they’re going to bring us 8 or so different kinds of vegetables that they grow on their farm in VA without the use of chemicals. They pick them in the morning and deliver them in the evening so everything will be wonderfully fresh! They will also be getting fruit from farms in their area and delivering those as well. And as a member of the farm, we can go there and pick our own vegetables and get some free range eggs whenever we want. They are very much into education and involvement and I’m sure we’ll go out in May to get some early veggies to take home before the delivery starts.

Hooray for supporting a local small farm and getting fresh seasonal produce with little impact on the environment!

Primi Piatti is the Italian restaurant that’s right next to the Washington Arts Club (where we got married).  We found the service to be lacking and the regular menu to be quite overpriced for pasta.  (They wanted $19 or so for spaghetti marinera with some vegetables in it.)  I was not particularly thrilled with the service since there was nothing vegetarian on the restaurant week menu and they were unwilling to substitute a $12 (regular price) appetizer for a $28 (regular price) dinner on the fixed menu.  I know that’s not the point of restaurant week, but it was the way the situation was handled that made me mad.  However, we were with a great group of people and we were there to celebrate the recent wedding of two friends, so we had a wonderful time.  (We just won’t be going back there.)

Agraria, on the other hand, is one of our new favorite restaurants!  We went there with Tani and Rich and had a fabulous meal with great service.  We love the idea behind it, described as follows on their website:

Originally conceived by the North Dakota Farmers Union with the intent to promote and enable the American family farmer to capture a greater share of the food dollar, the Agraria Restaurant is a family-farmer owned and sourced fine dining restaurant with contemporary American cuisine that emphasizes meat, pasta and seasonal dishes from across the country. By dining with us you are helping to support family farmers that proudly supply the food, “From Our Fields to Your Table.”

Frank had mussels that he said were out of this world.  Tani, Rich and I had a beet salad with deliciously fresh lettuce and a nice dressing.  For the main course, Tani and Frank had trout (that was the color of salmon), Rich had beef (Frank tasted it and they agreed it was wonderful — they didn’t even need a knife for it), and I had a really good mushroom risotto.  For dessert Frank, Tani and I had a chocolate hazelnut dessert with pistachios and Rich had a citrus trifle.  We enjoyed a bottle of sustainably produced red wine from California — we saved the cork so we can try to visit the winery when we’re on the west coast in August.  They have a brunch on Sunday mornings that we’d love to try out.  And we’ll definitely keep this place in mind for special occasion dinners.

Last restaurant week (during the fall sometime) we went to Ceiba and the Morrison Clark with Chip and Gina.  Both were good — Ceiba is largely seafood and the Morrison Clark (a restaurant down the street from us located in a charming old hotel) has a lot of gamey selections.  Both had good options for vegetarians and delicious desserts, which is really all that matters.

On a non-Restaurant-Week-but-still-food-related note…

Last night we went to Charlie and Jennifer’s for a delicious pizza dinner.  (See photos here.)  Frank and Charlie made two different pizza crusts and had a competition to see whose was better in both the oven and on the big green egg (grill).  Frank thinks Charlie’s dough was better — I couldn’t tell much of a difference.  But the food was great and we had a lot of fun with Charlie and Jennifer and their “little” girls who are now 5 and 3 (it’s hard to believe!).

Eric Lewis was amazing on the piano.  His drummer and bassist were absolutely outstanding as well!  We ended up going back the next weekend with my parents.  They came down to meet the kitties and since they love live jazz we thought they’d really enjoy the show.  Frank took a couple of great pictures that night:

    

Yesterday Kristen, Seda, Sam and I went to the Caps game as part of Sam’s “never-ending birthday celebration,” which is still going on a month after his actual birthday.  We had seats in the 5th row, right behind the goal.  They were, as Ferris Bueller would say “choice.” 

The Caps played very well against a strong Dallas Stars team, scored two goals in each of the first two periods and led 4-1 until the last three minutes of the game.  Despite attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the Caps survived the Stars’ final attack and won 4-3.

After four years in the nose bleed seats (last row of section 418 – woo hoo!), it was very exciting to be so close to the action.  The players have faces and make noises and everything.  Two of the Caps goals were scored at our end, plus Ovie’s penalty shot, where he choked trying to pull back on the backhand.

It was Sam’s first NHL game (he said it was a little better than the Mt. Vernon old-men’s rec league games he had been to) and Seda’s fist hockey game in person.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113001448.html

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The Corteo show by Cirque du Soleil was fantastic!  Kristen spent a lot of time watching old Cirque du Soleil shows on Bravo during her summer in Anguilla, but it’s so much more impressive in real life.  Our favorite act during the first half involved trampolines disguised as beds with men and women (dressed as children) bouncing from bed to bed and from trampoline to headboard.  We still can’t figure out how someone could land on his back, fly into the air, and come to rest on the bar of a headboard.  We also loved the jugglers in the second half.  Other cool tricks involved throwing women through the air, stunts on dangling and twirling chandeliers, helium balloons holding up a tiny woman – who was cast out over (and kept aloft by) the audience, and a man who was able to climb up a 25 foot ladder without having it fall over first.  Definitely a great show and worth seeing if it comes to your town.

Kristen brought Gina to see An Enemy of the People because Frank had other plans that night.  The show was wonderful and was remarkably relevant — 150 years after it was written!  The public health professional in me enjoyed the plot about a man who discovers a major health threat in his town and finds himself completely ostracized because his findings threaten the economy of the city.  It was well-acted and quite thought-provoking. 

On Saturday, Frank and I saw State of the Union.  It was a political comedy and not nearly as good as An Enemy of the People.  But it was interesting to be in Ford’s Theatre, which was closed for nearly a century after Lincoln was shot there.  At the beginning of State of the Union, we found out that DC was one of 15 cities offering free tickets to shows that week, and that this was the first year of the program.  The goal is to make theatre more accessible and to encourage people to go out to see shows again.  I think it was quite successful on both fronts.  Many of the people who saw shows said they would do so again soon.

Gina and I have a subscription to this season at the Studio Theatre.  But I think I’ll make an effort to check out some other playhouses in the area.  A large number are within walking distance of our apartment, so we really have no excuse not to try them out.