Steph's Birthday - Annapolis

Three weekends ago we celebrated Steph's birthday by going to Annapolis for a day, but before we left I got Steph some Calla Lilies that she wanted me to share with everyone!

In Annapolis, we walked around a lot and ate our way through the city. We had a delicious Italian meal for lunch, seafood for me for dinner, and gelato (Steph's "birthday cake") for dessert on the harbor. There were multiple breaks in to shops and coffee houses to escape the heat but it was a great day.

We also toured the Naval Academy as you can see from our pictures. They were out of session so we were able to wonder right into the main hall of their sleeping quarters which is apparently the largest single dormitory in the world. When we needed to relax, we hung our feet off the docks in Ego Alley-- where all the yachts drive by to show off.

Click here for more pictures from Annapolis.

We are looking forward to going back. It was a lot closer than we realized and was a great place to get away to. The following weekend we went camping with some friends so check back for that update in the next few days.

Message from Steph: If anyone wants to see some awesome fireworks, we know where to find them so come join! ;P

Here and There

Brace yourselves, this is a marathon update. Sorry for the long delay--everyone can thank Mr. Jack Debussey for harassing us until we decided to update to get him off our backs! :)

I finished finals 3 weeks ago and Ryan and I went to see the Braves play the Nationals to celebrate. We had a great time but were 2 out of about only 100 people in the stadium. For the first 7 innings it looked like the Nats were going to throw a no hitter against us--the 2nd pic is Ryan trying to decide whether to cheer for the no hitter or the Braves... it didn't look like our night anyways. My favorite part about the Nats is the presidents' race and we got to walk right past Abe when we got to the stadium so I had to take a pic.



The next morning flew to Atlanta to visit friends and family and Ryan was holding down the fort in DC. While I was gone Ryan spent one Sat going to the embassy open house day for the European Union. The one for all of the other countries was the previous weekend but finals prevented us from going. He said it was a great experience and since I will only have one class next spring I am planning on blocking off those two weekends. He said that they served food and drinks and had other cultural presentations to show off each of their countries. He specifically went to the Italy and UK embassies because the lines are really long so next year we will start early and see more!

While in Atl I got to see all of my girl friends and family including Mrs. B. The day I flew in my dad and I drove straight to South GA to see my grandparents and my uncle had purchased a new tricycle for my grandfather. I took this video with my cellphone so it's bad quality but I thought it kind of looked like an old-school home video and he was really cute riding down the street on it. If you see a 92 yr old man on a red tricycle watch out he's riding to a town near you!



Below are pics with each of my little cousins who are the cutest little people ever! I got to meet Lily the newest addition to our crazy large, girl dominating family! :) Fortunately one of our honorary family members is adding a boy to group in the fall! But I guess Ryan's family is balancing that out by adding another girl. :) The pic of Caitlin and I (middle) is from the Fickle Pickle so I got my fix for the fried green tomato sandwich which will hopefully last me until the fall or winter.

As for what's currently going, I started back to school last week but the classes are only 6 weeks long. I also am doing an internship 2 days a week and working the other 3 in the lab. Ryan has been busy with work but is still enjoying it. He is currently enjoying baseball season and looking forward to the World Cup this summer. Two weekends ago we did some volunteering at a DC public school where we cleaned up the grounds and did some landscaping. The school looked so much better when it was over. We did it with our GTDC alumni club but brought along a few non-gt friends to help us and had a great time.

The weather has been gorgeous and just perfect for several weekends. This past weekend we took a nice walk around Roosevelt Island (pics below) and my friend David came to visit. We enjoyed a nice afternoon and dinner with him in the city yesterday and it was great to see an old, familiar face that we haven't seen in a while! And now, drum roll please......





Ryan is now running again!!!! The pic below is of his broken fibula which has finally healed enough to do fun things again. We want to take advantage of the weather and go for some bike rides but we need to tune up a few things on our bikes, hopefully soon!



Finally a cheese update. Two weekends ago we made gouda which has to age for 3 months but will then be ready (doesn't take as long as cheddar). This past weekend we bought goat's milk from a local farmer at our farmer's market so we are going to make another batch of feta this coming weekend. We currently have a ban on using the first feta until we get another batch aging because we're afraid of running out.

Random Update

Hi everyone,

As Ryan will definitely confirm, I am procrastinating writing a paper so I figured I would post an update. This past weekend my friend(& old neighbor) Chris came to visit. We hung out and the guys got to watch and talk sports which I think Ryan really enjoyed. I like and understand sports but when you start talking ERAs and RBIs for some random team's random player I am not the best conversationalist--nor do I really try to be. Saturday Ryan needed to study and his leg was still bothering him so Chris and I left him behind and went to see all of the monuments down on the Mall. I need to get my tourist legs back--I was tired! It was probably a good thing Ryan didn't join us since now we know his leg has been broken this whole time since the ski accident! It was fun to do some touristy things that we haven't done for several months and to have a visitor--we LOVE visitors (**hint hint**)! :)

I'm glad y'all enjoyed our tulip pictures. Ryan brought them back from Amsterdam for me last summer so we were excited all year to have them bloom. The weather was nice enough that we got to eat dinner out on the balcony to enjoy them several nights before it got cold again. This weekend we planted some of our herbs and added another planter so we can have even more! We have a few spots left to fill.

So I was thinking about the day that Gracie (Ryan's niece) made Uncle Ryan draw airplanes over and over again (I personally think they looked more like whales than airplanes :) ) and that reminded me that we never posted a video we took while at Gravelly Park. It's the park we always go to by the airport, but the other weekend we got stir crazy while studying and took a quick break to go watch some planes land. So here is the video so you guys can see how close the planes come.

Tulip Pictures

Hey Everyone,

Pictures of Steph's Tulips are up. You can check out the pictures here!

Cherry Blossoms

Happy Easter, everyone!

We have been really busy the last two weeks, but on Friday we managed to make a little time to go down to the Mall to see the cherry blossoms after work. We found out Thursday that they had just peaked the day before that even though the peak normally lasts a few days but we couldn't really tell the difference. I think all the snow this year probably made bloom predictions impossible. The cherry trees were really pretty and we got a few good pictures (link below). We stayed for sunset and had a great time. There were tons of a people which kind of detracted from the beauty, but the sunset made up for it! We were told by someone that there are some pretty neighborhoods on the northern side of the city that have a lot of blossoms that are pretty to drive around so we might try to check that out once my test is over this week.

Click HERE to see more pictures!



Not much else is going on around here. The weather is gorgeous and is even going to be "summer-like" in the next few days. I hope it goes back to "spring" after that, but my southern bones are still thawing out from the winter so I'm happy with all the sunshine and warmth I can get! Once Ryan's leg heals we hope to start riding our bikes and running. The bikes would have been handy for seeing the blossoms. Oh and to clarify, yes I have to wait for Ryan to bike because I still get easily lost in this city--it's the whole only traveling underground thing. :)

Hope everyone is having as beautiful weather as we are and are enjoying it! Miss everyone and have a great week!

Skication!

So this probably came as a surprise to most of you after hearing us complain all winter about we were tired of being cold and snowed in, but apparently we decided we hadn't had enough and planned a ski trip to Snowshoe, WV. We were told by multiple people that it was a little further than some other resorts in the area but that the extra drive was well worth it for better conditions and a higher vertical drop. For my family...no it's not like skiing in Breck, but for the east coast they had a LOT of snow this year. I was surprised by the conditions for it being March and in the south east. It was little slushy especially by the end of day but really not that bad and at least it wasn't a solid sheet of ice. The weather was absolutely fantastic the entire weekend--warm and sunny, no gloves needed! So it was the perfect winter-spring transition vacation.


We both had a blast. It was Ryan's 2nd time ever and the first was not that great of an experience. However I think I won him over and he now really likes skiing! (I think it was the teacher this time...me! :) ) A trip to Breckenridge with an intermediate lesson for him is definitely the next step. The little resort town was pretty nice but a lot of the restaurants were closed for dinner since it was the first weekend of the late season. However we managed to find one that had TV's so we could watch our Yellow Jackets win their first round tourney game. The food was pretty good too--Ryan had a pimento cheese bacon burger that he really liked!

Anyways, we can't say enough about how good of a trip it was, and we came back very refreshed. We were both a little physically worse for the wear--Ryan is on crutches now from a fall on his first day but still says he wants to go back next year so I think that's a good sign. What's really nice is that it's close enough that we were able to get 3 days of skiing in by only taking Friday off from school/work!

Click HERE to see more pictures from our trip to Snowshoe! A video from the 2nd day of Ryan is below. He improved a lot over the trip! The first day he ended up going backwards down the hill every time he tried to stop. :)




Note: We just added another post right below this one from an outing before the trip. Enjoy!

Fine Art & People Watching

A few weekends ago Ryan and I were pretty stir crazy so we decide to go into the city for the afternoon. We started at the National Gallery of Art. The collection is pretty overwhelming so we wandered aimlessly for the most part but came across some nice pieces in the process. I had been wanting to take Ryan there for a while because the architecture of the building is fantastic and I thought he would like that, which he did. It really is a beautiful building. We were so antsy from being locked up all winter that I thought some people watching would do us good so we bundled up and walked next door to the sculpture garden where they have an outdoor ice skating rink in the winter. We grabbed a cup of coffee and a seat right along the edge of the rink, and let me tell you--we had a great time and we didn't even skate! Let's just say there were plenty of opportunities for laughter. Anyways, click here enjoy the pictures!