Girls Day

My friends and I often do a girls night, but we hadn't done one in awhile.  A few of my friends had mentioned that they hadn't been to my house since I moved in.  It was definitely time to have them over.  However, it's a long way to come just to chat and I really like trying to do something active when we get together.  It's so easy just to get together and eat.

Well, I was at my chiropracters office and heard someone talking about this place called Rebounderz.  It's a warehouse (kind of) that has huge sections of trampolines all lined up together.  I had seen something on the news about one in California and thought it sounded like a blast.

So here we are ready to jump.  There were tons of little kids, but we had a great time.  They had good music playing so it almost felt like we were dancing.  I wished that I could do flips, but I was too worried about landing on my head/neck.  We really worked up a sweat.  They also had one area where they had these Styrofoam blocks that you could jump into.  Alison just went up to it and let herself fall backwards into it.  Tiffanie and I both jumped.  It was hilarious and somewhat difficult to get out of.  We were all glad we went and jumped--we worked up a sweat, laughed a lot, and basically had a great time. :)

Afterwards we went back to my house.  I was getting out cake and the three girls just plopped down on the couch.  It looked so funny I had to take a picture. 

Kristina kindly tried to take pictures of us in action, but as you can tell, the camera couldn't just pick up the images.  I thought this picture of Melissa was hilarious.  She seemed a bit worried about jumping too high so it was really funny to watch her jump about a foot high.  She's so fun!

It was also funny to get together because everyone wanted to know what was going on with Tom and I.  They wanted 'the dirt'.  I couldn't figure out what 'the dirt' was.  I told them that we had been dating for five months and were enjoying getting to know each other...what else was there to say.   At lunch I mentioned that we were going to see Tom's family in March and Melissa let out a little scream.  I was told that this was part of 'the dirt'.  I forget that when you are not dating you want to know what people who do date are doing.  So, I filled them in on a few things that Tom and I had been doing.  It's kind of fun to be the center of attention.  :)  My friends are awesome!

Valentine's Weekend

Tom and I decided to celebrate Valentine's Day over the three day weekend.  He took me to Georgetown, bought me chocolates at Leonidas (my absolute favorite chocolate place in the States as they fly their chocolate in from Belgium every week and they have hazelnut pralines.  YUM!) and a Belgium Brownie from Le Pain Quotidien.  Heaven! 

We walked around Georgetown, went into several interesting shops and then went to Sequoia's for dinner.  The two pictures above are of Sequoia.  It is such a beautiful restaurant right on the water in Georgetown.  The blue you see are flowers, but what you can't see are all the little white lights coming down from the ceiling.  They have amazing focaccia bread and their fish is perfection.  It was the perfect place to go for Valentine's. 

Tom had sent me flowers for Valentine's Day, but they were never delivered.  Poor guy--he was very upset about it.  It was such a sweet gesture!  I appreciated the thought.  Our whole weekend more than made up for it. :)  I love that Tom is so thoughtful and knows what I like. 

My mom told me that when I was very young (I think between 3-5 years old) they couldn't find me one Valentines' Day.  They ended up calling the police.  Evidently this was during a time when my mom had banned us from watching TV for a month.  When they found me I was at a neighbors house watching TV.  I thought that was so funny.  If I couldn't get what I wanted at home I just found another way to get it. :)  I am still very much like that.  I am perhaps a little more discerning now, but I will still really work on getting what I want.

To celebrate President's Day we actually did something related to the presidents.  I haven't done that since I was a kid.  We went to Mt. Vernon--George Washington's home- to celebrate President's Day.  

We found out that everyone in Virginia and possibly five other states come to Mt. Vernon on President's Day.  We ended up parking about twelve minutes away.  It was cold, but the sun was out and it made for a nice walk.   

These sheep were on the property and looked pretty cool. When we were here in December they had a camel.  It was so sweet.  I wish it was a permanent fixture, but instead we had the sheep with horns. 

When I was a kid my mom would make a cherry pie with pie dough hatchets to celebrate President Washington's birthday.   (I have never liked cooked fruit so I don't think I ever ate it, but I imagine I enjoyed the pie dough.:))  Tom and I basically spent several hours at the museum they have at Mt. Vernon.  The museum was excellent with lots of interactivity.  I thought this picture was hilarious because it's a little kid with an adult head of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree.  Evidently this is just a myth.

Mason Friends

Me, Paul Bousel, Nancy Dickerson, Lynn Siegel, Sondra Snyder

When I worked at Mason, my office staff was really close.  We went out to lunch often and would have meetings at each other's homes.  Lynn decided to get some of the old gang together.  They have all retired except Paul and I.  Paul is still at Mason and is planning to retire in about three years.  It was so fun to get together and catch up.  Sondra is still the stereotypical Jewish mother, Lynn is almost done with her Bachelor's degree (I am so incredibly proud of her!!!!), Nancy is the the stereotypical army wife, and Paul the guy with the perfect comeback.

Chinese New Year Events and Tom's B-day

So after the monster truck rally I really did need some culture. :)  Tom took me to Dim Sum in Falls Church.  It was so fun.  Dim Sum is where they bring trays of food around and you choose what you want (if anything) from the cart.  Our favorites were the steamed shrimp and pork dumplings.  The chicken was really good too.  What's even better is that it is Chinese New Year right now and they had a show.  They had three dragons do their 'dance' (not sure what it's called).  It is really fun to watch them.  People give them money in red envelopes which is good luck.  You can see the guy putting his hand in the dragons mouth in the picture above. 

They also did fire crackers inside.  It was a bit loud and smoky, but cool too.  The fire cracker noise wards off evil spirits.   I am amazed at the guys in the back of the dragons.  They have to basically stay bent over for most of the time.  When they are doing their 'dance' they do stand up and the person in the head jumps up on their shoulders, but other than that they are bent.  I couldn't do it.  They must have very strong backs!

We celebrated Tom's birthday on Saturday even though his real b-day was on Sunday.  We went to a place that I thought was go-kart racing.  I had been told that it was the 'funnest date ever'.  I wanted to do something special and memorable for Tom's b-day and this seemed like it would be perfect.  Well it ended up being kind of an intense go-kart racing place--not what I had in mind.  They were also running very behind (and didn't tell us) so we had to wait for about an hour and a half (or a little longer) to even start our race. 

When we did get to race, I thought it was scary.  People seemed like they were out there to beat a racing record and everyone on the track.  It wasn't until we were almost done that I remembered that this was supposed to be fun. :)  There were some fun parts, but some really scary turns where I was constantly afraid of being run into.  I had been run into by two cars.  I realized after a few laps that I wasn't supposed to break around that part, but just turn the wheel really hard.  It would have been more fun with less people. 

I don't know if it was the fumes, the intensity of the race, or the noise, but both of us were kind of dazed when we were done.  I felt kind of weird and undone somehow.  Tom had hurt his shoulder during the race too.  We could have gone another time around the track, but we were not interested!  I felt like we couldn't get out of there fast enough.  It was quite the experience.  It wasn't really what I had in mind when I planned Tom's b-day, but it was memorable. 

Luckily cake--comfort food, makes everything better.  We headed over to Cheesecake Factory and brought our favorite kinds home.  It was a much better ending to the evening than the car racing!  Yum!

Sunday we went to the Chinese New Year parade.  I had no idea it would be so crowded!  Tom found us a good place to stand.  People started to move and shift so after awhile I was able to see.  They had the dragons there and the one you see above.  They would do things like a wave with the dragon and  other things like jumping over parts of the dragon (the people who were holding each part.)  It was cool to watch their performance.

What I liked about the parade is they had kind of a 'show' after the parade.  There were a bunch of dignitaries who gave speeches and then different groups gave a performance.  After the performances they did a ton of fire crackers and the dragons performed again.  We couldn't really see that part, but we could hear the fire crackers. :)