Merry (belated) Christmas everyone! It’s been awhile since I’ve posted with all the craziness leading up to the holidays, but we’ve had a fun couple of weeks.

We made the usual rounds to Christmas parties and this year treated ourselves to a day off of work on a random Wednesday to do some shopping on off-peak hours. We also managed to squeeze in two trips to the NGA to the Edward Hopper show and a wonderful little exhibit of American snapshots. I also managed to convince Drew to go ice skating with me in the sculpture garden. He had a really spectacular fall and still has the bruise to prove it!

We spent our Christmas in Winchester at Drew’s parents’ house in Winchester. It was great to see his sister Meg who came out from Lexington, Kentucky. We had a cutthroat “Fill or Bust” tournament (which I won!) and watched the Pope’s midnight service at St. Peter’s on TV before digging into a delicious Christmas dinner… and of course all those presents! A couple of the highlights are a Roomba (anyone know if there’s robot that cleans the bathroom?) and Guitar Hero 3—sweet!

We’re back in Arlington now since I had to be at work today—ew—but still enjoying the leftover cookies and our little Christmas tree. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and we hope to see you soon in the New Year!

We just returned to 40 degree weather in DC after of a week of sunny 80 degree days in Key West. We headed south with my family to celebrate my mom’s 50th birthday, which happened to fall on Thanksgiving this year. Our rental house was on Duval Street just a block away from the southernmost point in the continental U.S., near lots of art galleries and restaurants (not to mention the adult entertainment club across the street!).

Key West certainly lived up to its laid back reputation, though there were a few more tacky T-shirt shops than we expected. We managed to hit the couple of major sites: Ernest Hemingway’s house, where we played with the six-toed cats; Audubon House, where, sadly, John James Audubon did not stay while working on “Birds of America”… he actually stayed next door (a fact only found in very fine print in the very last room of the tour); and the Dry Tortugas, where Drew took lots of pictures and I saw a barracuda while snorkeling. Unfortunately, we missed the famous Key West sunset in Mallory Square because every time we tried to go there were enormous cruise ships blocking the entire view!

All in all, we managed to get some much-needed rest and relaxation (though I’m sorry to say we’re not tan at all). Now we just need to motivate ourselves to get back to work!

We took the early (very early) morning flight to Boston this past weekend to visit Jen before she wraps up her grad school days at Simmons in December. The weather was perfect, our timing worked out great, and man, are we tired. We hit the New England Aquarium, the Quincy Market, the T, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a great restaurant called Teatro, and walked all of Newberry Street. All in just over a day.



Jen lives in the Back Bay Fens—sound familiar? Like there might be a ball field there, or something? Oh, yeah, it was game 6 of the ALCS Saturday night at Fenway Park. Jen lives close enough that you can hear the cheers of the Red Sox fans from the stands.



The rest of my pictures are here.