Weekend craft project!

This weekend I got the idea to make complementary state pictures for Shep and me! At first I was going to do both like the NY one, but with Shep's in green (because that is his favorite color) but then decided it might be cool to have the land in green to represent his love of the forest and my blue represent water!
I also made tiny little hearts over Arlington and Setauket, but they had to be super tiny to fit on Long Island!
They are still drying, but we will hang them in the living room when done.

Weekend craft project!

This weekend I got the idea to make complementary state pictures for Shep and me! At first I was going to do both like the NY one, but with Shep's in green (because that is his favorite color) but then decided it might be cool to have the land in green to represent his love of the forest and my blue represent water!
I also made tiny little hearts over Arlington and Setauket, but they had to be super tiny to fit on Long Island!
They are still drying, but we will hang them in the living room when done.

Owl!

This is kind of a lie, because it actually doesn't come with a picture I took! This morning, I was looking out the front window and saw a barn owl sitting on the Japanese Maple tree that is right outside. I got very excited and tried to sneak forward to take a picture, but either it heard me or was startled by something else, because it flew off before I was able to get to the window! It was very pretty though. I used this very nifty bird finding site to help me decide what type of bird it was! I also thought Grandpa would like to explore this site if you ever find a bird that you don't know.

Brain Bee!

Tonight was the DC regional brain bee! We had 19 kids from schools in DC and southern MD. (There is a northern VA brain bee for those kids.) We had a professor from Georgetown university, Ben Walker, be our judge. He has been the judge for out brain bee for almost 10 years! He actually brought a human brain for the kids to see, which they really enjoyed.
Our winner was a girl named Sara from Richard Montgomery high school. She will be traveling up to Baltimore in early march for the US brain bee, and the chance to represent the US in the international brain bee in September.

Trip to Fredricksburg

We took a trip down to Fredericksburg for the day to see Mary Washington. We just did a bunch of walking around. They keep building and renovating! This is looking down the mail campus walk way.

This is of my freshman year dorm, VA hall.

This is just a picture of us.

We are always looking for evidence that the "University of Mary Washington" as it is now called was once "Mary Washington College" since we were the last graduating class of MWC. We found one here!

And Shep convinced me that we had to eat in the dinning hall... he has been dreaming of this moment for the past 9 years, since we graduated... he loves the idea of having unlimited access to food.... Anyway, we ate there, the food wasn't that great, but he was in heaven. This is a picture of him after being conquered by Seacobeck dining hall!

It was a chilly day, but we weren't too cold walking around. We just stayed for a few hours and came back home. It is nice that we are such a short drive away (only about an hour)!

We were thinking of also visiting Richmond, but decided that we didn't have much to do but visit our old house, so we will wait until the first weekend of May, when Arts in the Park is on, to go down there. 

Second show

Cake and Calculus had a second show last night. It was at a really nice place called 9th and Beats near the convention center in DC. I walked there straight from work! They played with a band from Philly and a number of people came, a lot who we didn't know! (Which is exciting because they want to get themselves know to many other people).

Happy Valentines day!

Shep got me some daffodils for our anniversary (Feb 12) and they are bringing a touch of spring into my office! This weekend we will drive to Fredericksburg, where we met!

Bread mixer

I've been using my mixer quite a lot lately! Here is the remains of a loaf of rye bread I made last weekend,

and today I am making cinnamon raisin bread! 

It is rising now, but I will let you know how it turns out!

Spring?

While you guys were enjoying all that snow, our front yard decided it was spring-time! (It hasn't been that warm, but I guess there have been enough pretty warm days to encourage the flowers!)

Basketball!

 I found a Groupon deal for basketball tickets the other day, so we want to a game! The Washington team is called the Wizards. They played against the Brooklyn Nets and won! Our Groupon deal came with free Wizzard scarfs, so we cheered the team on in style! (Shep took one of those 3D pictures - you can see my scarf but can't see my face very well!)

They were also celebrating the Chinese new year that day and were actually broadcasting the game in china as well! (Shep and I thought they were trying to recruit more Chinese basketball fans!) They had a number of people playing awesome traditional Chinese instruments in the lobby area. There was a xiao flute, a gijik fiddle, a yangqin zither, and a pipa lute, to name a few! Then, during half-time, some local students prefomed some traditional Chinese dances (the person who posted this YouTube video had a much better view than we did!)