Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!!!

This year my Christmas spirit cup has been running over.  For those of you who don't remember last year we skipped Christmas altogether, and spent a week in Mexico.  This meant no Christmas tree, no Chirstmas presents, and an unsual but wonderful Christmas dinner in Playa del Carmen.  It was one of my favorite Christmas', it was exactly what I needed last year.  But I think the break was exactly what I needed to renew my Christmas spirit!  Because this year it is running our my ears!

The day after Thanksgiving we put up our Christmas tree, our first real Christmas tree, and started our month long Christmas moovie marathon.  Since then I've finished all my Christmas shopping, listened to lots of Christmas music, and planned and executed a delicious Christmas cookie party, which brings me to the point of my post...

Saturday, December 11th- Girl's Day and Night In

I had some of my girlfriends over for lots and lots of cookies!  I made two different batches of gingerbread, a batch of sugar cookies, two different types of icing, plus dinner.  Needless to say we had more than enough cookies for everyone to take home with them.  I really enjoyed my company, especially getting to introduce lauren to cookie cutting.

Ugly Christmas Sweaters!

Saturday, December 4th

We were invited to an Ugly Christmas sweater pub crawl, and really who can pass up a chance to dawn a heinous Christmas sweater in public?  Not me!  So Richard and I went to Goodwill to look for something to wear, naturally we didn't bring any Christmas sweaters to DC with us...  Much to our shock when we arrived they did not have a single Christmas sweater.  So, per my friend Lauren's suggestion I decided to make my own, and we headed to Ross to find the canvas.  Richard found a Christmas tree tie and I bought a cheap red sweater, and headed to the craft store to find the decorations, next thing you know this is what we came up with...

We spent an excited evening hoping around Dupont Circle with some good friends!

One year from Today

One year from today I will be finished with my clinicals and will be about 1.5-2 months away from being a real CRNA and about two weeks shy of graduation.  I know that's not long at all but I'm afraid it's going to be one long year with a lot of 10 and 12 hour shifts between now and then.  I think I'm going to be exhausted by then.

Today also has another landmark it is the first day I've officially been off 1:1 at work.  Which means now I'm practicing with more responsibility because I'm only working with anesthesiologist's and they are assigned to more than one OR simultaneously. This is basically the same set up as I anticipate once I'm done with school.

1 down 364 more to go...

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving Richard and I enjoyed a very special treat, we got the company of both of my parents.  They arrived on Tuesday after my written final exam and stayed through Sunday.  The day they arrived we took a very expensive trip to the Natural History Museum...  Why, you ask? Isn't it a Smithsonian, which means free entry?  Yes it is, but we decided to drive, and parked on Constitution where we recieved a $100 parking ticket.  On the upside, my father did at least see one of the Smithsonian museums on his visit to DC.

In our cool 3D glasses for the Grand Canyon IMAX

In front of the Easter Island Head

On Wednesday, I had to work while Mom and Richard started on the feast preparations...

Thursday, Feast Day, Thanksgiving... We got up and per tradition watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, while preparing lunch.  For four little people we had a 8lb ham and a 14lb turkey (which we actually put on the scale to confirm), plus all the fixins (dressing, cranberry sauce, green beans, gravy, rolls, sweet potatoe balls, pea salad, devilled eggs, chocolate pie, carrot cake, and a chocolate pecan pie).

On Friday...Christmas BEGINS!!!!  We headed out and purchased our first real Christmas tree, and got my Dad out of the house long enough to take a trip to whole foods and to the Marine Corps Memorial.

We even have a real star for the top!!! (Also, a first)

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly eating Thanksgiving leftovers, watching Christmas movies (and Pawn stars), and my dad not leaving the house.  Me, Richard and Mom headed out on a few hikes/nature walks to Great Falls and to the Teddy Roosevelt Island.

At Great Falls

The Island.

Christmas followed just two days after Thanksgiving...the big news...we got an iPad!!!  Thanks mom!!! 

Also, I want to give Lauren a special shoutout for the wine and Cheesecake she delivered!

Great Falls, the name says it all!

Saturday, November 13th

Richard and I met some friends for a hike at Great Falls National Park.  This is a park about 15 miles out of the city, on the Potomac River, overlooking yup, you guessed it, the falls.  It was a beautiful place, and the weather was amazing, it was sunny and 60 on Saturday, and all the leaves are bright orange, yellow and read, with some green and purple interspersed.  The fall is really beautiful here.  I never knew what a great season I was missing in Texas, this is one of the few aspects in which DC has something on Texas. 

It's also pretty amazing that something this beautiful and this rustic is 15 miles from the heart of our nation.  It is amazing here how so areas feel so serene despite the location.  I feel like one of the major reasons is that the governments around here are very big on preservation, it takes an act of congress to cut down a tree, so everything is wooded and beautiful.

Meeting Luca!!!

Sunday, October 31st
As of Thursday, October 28, 2010, we are again an aunt and an uncle!  Sara and Tom's newest edition Luca Taddeo Dell'Omo, graced the world with his appearance.  Right on time as Tom pointed out, on his exact due date, he's starting out this life on a good note.  Do you think he will always value puncuality?  We shall see.  We are thrilled to get to spend so much time with Tom, Sara, Leo, and Josey, and now we can add Luca to the list. 

It was also Halloween, so we got to see Leo and Josey all dressed up for some trick or treating.  Leo was feeling a little under the weather, and was so worried he was going to miss trick or treating, it was so cute!  He was afraid he wouldn't get to show his friends his costume, which was pretty much the coolest costume EVER!  Sara made him a firetruck...see for yourself, she's got talent!  And Josey made an adorable lady bug!

NO, I'm not the Statue of Liberty!!!!

Saturday, October 30

Halloween 2010 we competed in the DC Challenge Haunted History Scavenger Hunt, well sort of...  This was the same day as the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Rally, which caused a mass influx of people resulting in jammed cell phone signals.  Translation we had no Internet access on our iPhones.  So we had difficulty figuring out the clues, plus we had no real game plan, and the clues were spread all over the city (see map for clue locations). 

I mean really, would you know who the 24th president is or where he died?  It was tough, so we basically figured out all the clues, and then decided it was way to spread out and we didn't have a map, so we went to two of the spots, then we got cold and decided to go back to the bar and hang out.  So we gave up!...

It was an immensely fun outing, on our way there the streets were packed with people and we were the only ones dressed up at 4:00 in the afternoon.  But at least 10 people stopped us to take our picture because they enjoyed our costumes, so that was nice, except when we were in a hurry.



So I spent weeks fervently trying to come up with a good, ORIGINAL, group costume Idea.  I thought I/We came up with some pretty good ideas...

California Raisins

TMNT (way overdone, but still would have been fun)

Pacman + ghosts (there were 3 of these at the party)

Mythical creatures (cyclops, sphinx, Cerberus, etc)

It's hard to come up with a good costume to fit your exact group, we had 3 girls and 1 guy (who was very picky)

Then I started actually coming up with some good ideas, and the finalists were:

National Cathedral Gargoyles

(still would have been super fun, but definitely would have had to explain that one)

Medusa and Statues

Well, it's clear which idea won...

The most unfortunate part of our costume choice was that we didn't take into account the stupidity of the general population.  This is how the conversation went...

Person: "Oh, cool, you're Medusa, and you're a statue"

Us: "yes..."

Person: I don't get it

Us:  You know who Medusa is?

Person: Yes, she's the lady with snakes for hair, don't look in her eyes...

Us: What happens if you look in her eyes?

Person: You turn to stone...

5

4

3

2

1

Person: Oh!  I get it!

Wow!  Took you long enough!!!

 Our second mistake was giving our team a witty name, Snakes and Stones was our team name... So when it came time to vote for the costume contest, no one knew who we were...

We ended up winning 5th place in the costume contest behind the following:

1st: Super huge homemade Mr. and Mrs. Pacman

2nd: Wine entourage (they had two people who were barrels, two bunches of grapes, a corkscrew, cheese, etc, very good execution)

3rd: Double Dare Contestants (Red and Blue teams)

4th: The Fallopian Swim Team (ya know sperm)

 

We won $50 but we thought we deserved at least 4th place...

So, as soon as they gave us our cash we hopped in a cab to go to Lauren's Party where we finished the evening.  Great party Lauren!

The WORST part about this entire process, wasn't even the mess in the bathroom.  It took us a full 2-2.5 hours to get ready, which is not too bad, but we were in a super hurry.  But Sunday morning it took me 4 hours to get all the liquid latex off.  It was super painful.  Have you ever been waxed anywhere?  Well it was like getting a full body wax, PAINFUL!  My husband was very kind to help me get if off (he took his off the night before after several drinks...smart), however I do think he enjoyed it a little too much.  Needless to say, if you ever get the urge to use liquid latex, it definitely has a place, but call me so I can give you some advice first.

I hope you all had as much fun on your Halloween adventures as we did!

P.S. Happy Birthday to my dear friend Melissa!  I miss you like crazy!



Happy Birthday LEO!!!

 Sunday, October 24th

Leo's fourth birthday was quite an adventure.  Seeing as Sara was 37 1/2 weeks pregnant, we weren't sure she would make it to the party, much less through the party.  But she did!  It was a great party, Leo was very proud because he "didn't even cry this time".  I've posted pictures from birthday 3 and 4, so you can see why he said this. 

This is also the day I became Uncle Crystal... Leo was excited that Richard and I were coming and he told his grandpa that his Uncle Richard and Uncle Crystal were coming...

He had a fire truck birthday if your curious about Richard's super cool tattoo.

Leo's 3rd Birthday, 10/24/09

Leo's 4th Birthday, 10/24/10

Happy Birthday Heyni!!

October 16th

Heyni's Birthday was October 9th (we were in Philadelphia), so we had a belated celebration.  We had dinner at Jaleo in Bethesda, and for the record I think La Tasca is way better, as far as tapas goes.  We luckily arrived before she did so I was able to give the waiter her cupcake, to surprise her at the end of the meal.  BTW the beautiful pan of carrot pineapple cupcakes I made, were all wrapped up, she had to open them at the end of the meal.  So she didn't get her flan, but she did get her cream cheese icing.  Once she opened them, she decided to dole out the cupcakes based on which ones fit our personalities....the results...

 Lauren got the long sprinkles...her fav...

 I got one I like to call the birth of a vampire...I was feeling very artistic!

 

Richard got the Pumpkin, which he was not about to let me photograph.

Nicole got the yellow orange swirls of fire...

I don't have a picture of Jay, but he got the bats, because he rescued Heyni from a bat in her apartment once...

After the cupcake sorting was finished we headed out to Markoff's Haunted Forrest, a bit outdoor haunted house somewhere in the woods in Maryland.  It was an experience for sure.  The line was crazy long, but once we got through to the waiting area, they had fire dancers, a zombie DJ, and giant campfires to keep us warm.  Once in the haunted house the scariest part was just not knowing when they were going to pop out, the funniest part was watching Kate, Nicole, and Lauren react.  Heyni could have been a ghost hunter in another life.  The only bad part was when I almost had an astha attack from all the chain saw fumes, and having a chainsaw up against your leg (not my idea of a good time).  But what's a haunted house without a chainsaw.  Overall it was a very nice time, with great people.

Philadelphia, PA

The Reason:

I had an oral exam the Tuesday after our anniversary so I had to study over the weekend, so we didn't get to do anything special.  So we decided to take advantage of the proximity of cities in the northeast, and take a weekend to visit Philadelphia.  Neither of us had been here before so it was just a good way to celebrate 3 years of marriage!

Richard and I had an amazing time, on our anniversary weekend.  Saturday we went to Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Christ Church and the Christ Church Graveyard, Carpenter's Hall, the First National Bank, etc...  It was interesting to think about being in the birthplace of our nation, and pretty amazing to stand in the very same room that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. 

After a morning full of history, we headed to the Franklin Institute.  This is an interactive science museum in honour of Benjamin Franklin, it was so much fun.  They had a giant heart, and you could walk through the chambers along the path of blood flow.  They also had an OR suite set up, so I was able to show Richard what I do everyday.  If you have kids or are just a big kid yourself, and are planning a visit to Philly, you must go here.  It was very entertaining, but the reason we went was to attend a temporary exhibit called "Cleopatra: The search for the last Queen of Egypt".  This is a National Geographic exhibit, very similar to the King Tut exhibit, so if you enjoyed that, you will definately enjoy Cleopatra.

Sunday, before heading home we visited the Rodin Museum (definately worth a look).  Before taking a trip up the famed "Rocky Steps", to see the best view of the city.  Then we headed to Pat's steaks for treat for the road. 

Hotel:

Sheraton City Center

Hotel Review:

A+.  It was very nice hotel, in a PERFECT location.  Situated right on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a short stroll from all the museums and the Love park, and about a 15-20 minute walk to all the historic stuff.  The view was great too!

Restaurant Reviews:

Bistro 7****: We ate here friday night.  Fabulous, intimate BYO restaurant, near the historic center.  Very romantic atmosphere with an organic decor.  The food was mostly local, seasonal.  The highlight was the fresh butternut squash ravioli in a sage bacon cream.

Reading Terminal Market*****: Saturday Breakfast.  HIGHLIGHT of my trip.  This place was like heaven for me.  It's a huge indoor market with all kinds of local fresh food, produce, candy, seafood, meat, everything you can imagine.   It was wonderful, they have just about any kind of food you could hope for from classic homestyle cooking, to crepes, to Indian, to Cajun and everything in between.  We had Amazing crepes at Profi's Creperie (I highly reccommend), just as good as a streetcart in Paris.  We also had the famous fresh blueberry pancakes at the Dutch Eating Place, a must!  These were the lightest fluffiest pancakes, and you've only tasted blueberries this fresh if you've picked them yourself.

Gigi**: This was a wild card, we hadn't planned on eating here, but they had patio dining on a beautiful day and we were nearby so we stopped to eat.  The hummus was great, it was combined with a traditional pesto, great combo.  The sandwiches were good, but average, with a fresh delicious seasonal side salad.  It's ok, but don't go out of your way to go here.

Kanella*****: This is a Greek BYO.  The food is fantastic, seasonal/local (see the theme) menu changes monthly.  The atmosphere is lively and homey, feels very much like you are having an animated family dinner.  We had Rabbit White Bean casserole as an appetizer, it was tender, hearty, and had a very luxurious feel.  Try it out if it's on the menu.

Sabrina's Cafe*****: This is one of the best breakfast's I've had at a restaurant and the chef seem's to have an obsession with Chuck Norris (which is always a plus).  It's very popular, get there early on the weekend.  We had the french toast, it was made out of inch thick brioche slices, soo soo great!  Also, all their savory breakfast options come served with delicious crispy homestyle potatoes.  

Pat's King of Steaks****: The birthplace of the Philly Cheesesteak.  The line was about 20 minutes long at noon on a Sunday.  It was delicious, and we didn't even eat it for about 2 hours.  I reccommend trying the Cheese Whiz, untraditional for most of us, but worth a try.  Caveat: I've never been to Geno's so I can offer no comparison as of now.