Enjoy!

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!

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!

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!

A month or so ago, when we were in NY for Suzanne’s birthday, David asked if Frank could bring his camera to the party so we could take some photos of Debi and David in their favorite park before they move to Scotland.  Again, not an unusual request.

So, the morning of the party, we headed up to the park and started taking pictures, all the while unsuspecting that there was something else planned.  We happily decorated the party tree (the location of a FABULOUS party 5 years ago), drank delicious tea and hung around with friends.  When Debi passed out kazoos for us to “sing” happy birthday to David, it seemed normal.  When their friend asked us to take a pinch of charcoal and sage, put all of our good thoughts for Debi and David in it, and burn it, no one blinked.  But when Debi started getting adorned with presents, we started to get confused.  This was David’s birthday, right?  When she got a bouquet we started to figure it out.  And when their friend unrolled a scroll and said “Dearly beloved,” we all screamed and started to cry (tears of joy, of course!).

The ceremony was lovely and they somehow pulled it off — not letting us in on their secret all these months.  In retrospect, there were many clues.  But it was even more fun because none of us had figured it out.

Check out pictures of the party and the ceremony here.  Note that there are 159 photos, and it’s all one slide show.  These individual links will just help you get to different sections more quickly.
If you want to skip to the after-party pictures in the New Leaf Cafe or to pictures of Debi and David walking around in the park, click one of these links.

Congratulations, Debi and David!

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!

Rasmlar (photos)

Here are some recipe sources I found on the web:
http://www.gumbopages.com/food/russian/plov.html
http://www.google.com/Top/Home/Cooking/World_Cuisines/Asian/Uzbek/