Thanksgiving Break

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Wow, what a busy week this has been. We have had three thanksgiving dinners to attend. While I did not host any dinners, I did make food for each one. Here are the recipes I experimented with and made this week.

 Pumpkin Cheesecake: I got this recipe off of Annie Eats Blog which has quickly become my favorite foodie site. Unfortunately the top did crack but other than that it turned out delicious. Even  my family members who don't like pumpkin liked it.

Pumpkin Ooey Gooey Cake. This is a Paula Deen recipe and it shows it with all the butter and sugar.  I have to say that this recipe was the best received of everything all week.  It was so good and I would not be amazed if I get asked to bring it again.
Broccelli and Cheese casserole: Turned out good but nothing amazing will still be looking for the perfect recipe.

Cookie Dough Truffles: I  made these for fun and to bring to work for co-workers. Oh my, they are a dream to eat and so much fun to make. I might make this every year.
  On top of the time spent cooking, cleaning the house, visiting family, reading a book, we completed almost all of our Christmas shopping, wrapped all our gifts, and decorated the house for Christmas.  No wonder I have gotten the beginnings of a cold/cough.  We did go Black Friday shopping. I have to say that waiting an hour in line at 2 in the morning in the really outside of Kohls was worth it. We got a King comforter that would  normally  cost 100 dollars for only 25 dollars! We also got plenty of pillows, sweaters, and items for half off.  You cannot beat buying sweaters for only 10 dollars.  I was pleased with our purchases, by using Black Friday Sales we were able to buy gifts hundreds of dollars less than we normally do.   We have shopped Black Friday in the past for specific items we wanted but this was the first time I used it to shop for gifts.  We got a lot done on our break which is great because finals start this week-which mean I will have no time for anything else for the next three weeks. Do not worry we had lots of fun. We went to Harry Potter 7 part 1 and  loved it!  Definitely the best Harry Potter Movie. I loved being with family this week and I am just so grateful for the love and support they offer me and John.  I will post pictures of Christmas Pictures and tell how we survive having a Christmas tree and cats.

Wicked Play

Sunday, November 14, 2010

On Saturday we went to see Wicked the play.  This was a real exciting play that tells the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West from the wizard of Oz.  It tells of her friendship with Glinda and the what really was going on when Dorothy came.  Even John loved it-which was up for debate since it was a musical.  Afterward, we decided to try our Cajun Wharf.  The building is beautiful but we really did not enjoy the food and the service was poor, probably will not go back.

DC Trip Day 5-6, Monday/Tuesday

Our last two days had a different tone than the rest of the trip. John was in conference both days.  I caught up on some homework and went shopping in this downtown outdoor mall.  The stores in the charlottesville shopping center were all small local shops that were fun to look at.  We ate at this really old restaurant on Monday night that had a menu in such old english we could barely read it.  The food there was amazing though.  We had a midnight flight home on Tuesday night and got home at about 1am.  We have spent a lot of the rest of the week catching up. In all it was a great trip.

DC Trip Day 4, Sunday

Sunday marked a new chapter after another 2hr drive back to Charlottesville we rushed to see Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  

His home was gorgeous and regrettably another place where pictures are only allowed outside. Inside you walk first into this room with artifacts from the Lewis and Clark exhibition, and then you walk into his large library that connects to his bedroom.  His bedroom is where he died on July 4^th.  What I loved about the house was that he designed and had it built.  The ceilings were large and the beds were built into the walls.  He had clocks, doors and windows that worked on a pulley system, and all sorts of different features you do not normally see in a house from that time.   

tunnel under house

The house is built on a hill and he took advantage of that to build the slave quarters, food storage, and stables under the house as a basement.  We went to the graveyard and saw his family plot, sadly he outlived all of but one of his 6 children and most of his grandchildren.  

Jefferson Tomb

 He also died in tons of debt from reckless spending so his daughter had to sell everything after he died.  He had tons of servants that he sold except for the Hemming children which DNA has proved were his kids with Sally Hemming a slave.  It was so interesting. 

Gardens

After settling in our hotel in Charlottesville called the Omni, and paying 30 for a taxi ride to get here, we were pleasantly surprised.  The hotel is extremely nice and we even have robes to wear.  There is a street of shops and restaurants behind the hotel that were nice to walk down.  We ate pizza from real Italians.  The pizza was prosciutto and goat cheese, which was really good.   

Pizza

The pizza has pesto, mozzarella and goat cheese, tomatoes and prosciutto on top.  After it got dark outside, we went on a ghost walk.  In older cities tour guides take you on a walk of the town telling you ghost stories that happened in some of the homes.  For our tour we also relived the last hanging in Charlottesville.  In short, a prominent mayor was hanged after his wife was found murdered in the bathtub, the evidence we heard from the presentation made me at least believe that the mayor had part in her death but that it was not just him involved.  We then had gelato at Splendora’s even though it was freezing outside.  For the ghost walk and gelato one of John’s co-workers joined us.  I have never had gelato before so this was a real treat for me.  It is so creamy and soft.  I had four flavors: salted caramel, chocolate sorbet, white chocolate lemon, and raspberry.  My favorite was the salted caramel.  I actually did not like the chocolate sorbet because it was too dark, which meant that John loved it of course.  So Sunday was an easier day on our feet, still fun, better food, and less stressful than the rest of the week as been.

DC Trip Day 3, Saturday

Well the plan for a good night’s started out right, but at 7 am that morning as we were lounging in bed the fire alarm went off.  So we had to jump into some clothes, grab our valuables which were already in travel bags, and head outside into the freezing 30 degree weather with the other 8 floors.  Instead of standing outside, we went to the store next door and got breakfast.  It was of course a false alarm and we were able to go back after we got done with breakfast.  After we finished getting ready for the day we took a taxi-yes no walking from metro-to the Lincoln Memorial.  The memorial was amazing the size is so large.  

 Next to the memorial are the Korean and Vietnam War memorials.  John’s grandpa Franks actually served in the Korean War.   

From there we walked down to the WW2 memorial which has each state represented on a monument in front of a beautiful fountain. 

This then lead us to the George Washington monument which was cool to look at, it was disappointing though that they were out of tickets to go up in it for the day. 

Since we did not want to be late for our second attempt to the white house, we went to the park near the White House.  We were not there more than 15 minutes when the cops started marking off the area and told us we had to leave. In fact, they set up a couple of block perimeter that no one was allowed to enter.  Since they told us that they were closing down for at least 2 hours, and that our tour would be honored later we left.  The only reason I think they may have done this was because one of the president’s family must have been leaving the white house.  We stopped now at our first Smithsonian, the museum of American history.  My favorite exhibits were the flag from the war of 1812 that was used to pen the anthem the star spangled banner, the first ladies inaugural ball gowns, and the ruby red slippers from the wizard of oz. 

  We then headed back to the white house which had reopened and had a massive line that we were in for about 45 minutes.   The White House is another area that cameras were prohibited, we got to see about 6 rooms including: the veil room, the green room, the red room, and the blue room.  The dining room and all the rooms are so beautiful just like a castle.  There are portraits of former inhabitants along all the walls. 

  After finally getting to see the white house we had lunch and went to see the Museum of Air and Space.  This is where they have old planes and space craft’s.  John decided he wanted to do this flying simulator-which I agreed to ride with him.  Big mistake the machine spins you 360 multiple times in a row, I made it to the 3^rd one before I pushed the stop button and we were sent to ride the other kiddy ride.  I know I am weak but seriously I had just eaten and I hate fast moving objects much less ones that flip me.  After this museum, I was really tired and we headed back to the hotel for our last night in DC.  What did we eat while in DC?  Well for breakfast we had subway and egg sandwiches from a mom-and-pop store, for dinner we ate quesadillas from room service and ordered a pizza-which turned out to be burnt.  I was not impressed with any of the food, and felt everything was majorly overpriced.

DC Trip Day 2, Friday

 Friday started with a trip on the subway.  Except for the fact the subway was crowded with morning commuters it was a fun trip.  Everyone is so quiet on the subway they either are listening to an i-pod or read a book.  Our first stop was the Supreme Court. It is a self-guided tour and you just walk around a few rooms looking at the building.   

 

We got some great pictures of the chamber where the judges sit and arguments are heard. 

Other than that there isn’t much more you can do at the Supreme Court. 

Next, we went to the Dirksen Senate Office building were we meet our Senator Mark Pryor’s intern who gave us a tour of the Capitol building.  They have an underground tunnel that connects the senate building to the Capitol but there was a package that had a suspicious liquid in it so they closed off the tunnel and we had to go to the Capitol through the visitor’s center in the front.  The Capitol is so beautiful there are so many things to look at. 

Each state is allowed to have 2 statutes in the Capitol.  There was also a duplicate of the Freedom Statue that is on top of the Capitol dome.  

 We first watched a video then we went and visited the old house and senate meeting rooms. 

They are no longer used today except for swearing in new members.  From there we saw the old Supreme Court room until they built the court their own building.  All of this was build after the fire during the war of 1812 that destroyed the first capitol.  This all lead into the rotunda which has statutes from all the original 13 colonies and beautiful paintings.  The rotunda is the room that presidents have a procession in before they have their funerals. 

Rotunda ceiling

After we went through a new round of security we then got to see the current house and senate meeting rooms.  We were not allowed to take pictures of these rooms for security reasons, but they as look so much smaller than what you see on C-span.  That was the end of our tour and we got to ride the subway senate train back to the senate office. We had planned on going to the library of congress after this but ran out of time. We did get some good pictures of the outside though since it is down the street from the capitol. 

  Our next stop is a tour of the White House.  Now we had to send security information in months ago to get on a list to see the white house and we had to do this through our senator’s office.  The White House does not allow really anything other than a wallet and keys when entering the building so we left our belongings in the senator’s office with his staff who looked after it for us.  So after another metro(subway) ride, and more walking we were able to find the visitor’s entrance to the white house. After 30 minutes of waiting, the guard told us that there were no more tours for the day and that we had to leave.  Since we knew we had an appointment for that time were really upset.  This lead to me calling the intern at the senator’s office who confirmed that our time was right, and after an hour of haggling over the phone with the white house visitor’s staff she got them to admit they had made a mistake with our time.  They gave us another time for the next day.  Thank goodness for the senator’s staff they really came through for us.  The problem with this is that we would again have to leave behind our belongings somewhere tomorrow or not bring them at all. It was just a lot of hassle.  Since it was late in the afternoon and we were starving, we walked down to the national mall to try to find food.  Apparently we did not get the memo that the National mall is really a park.  Yes that is right, the mall is not a mall were you shop but a park you can walk in.  Thankfully after walking more blocks we found a restaurant at one of the Smithsonian’s, which by the way we learned the Smithsonian is really multiple museum buildings.  After our late lunch, we walked over to the National Archives were we got behind this really long line of teenagers and waited for over 30 minutes to get in. We finally got in and a really nice guard let us cut line and go into the room that has the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  Unfortunately, they no longer allow pictures because the documents cannot handle the flashes.  But it was awesome getting to see the originals, and to see my ancestor’s signature on the Declaration of Independence.  It was really crowded so we left after that and headed but to the metro which took us back to the senator’s office to get our belongings.  Another metro ride and we were glad to be back at our hotel.  Our feet were so sore from walking miles and miles, I also was wearing boots because I was afraid of it raining again and having wet feet.  Both of our feet were in pain but what really sucked was that my feet swelled from walking in the boots.  What we needed was a good night’s sleep.

DC Trip Day 1, Thursday

John had a work conference in Virginia so we added a few extra days and went to see DC here is all the fun we had.  Our trip began with an early 4 am flight.  We had one layover in Atlanta and from there flew into Charlottesville.  It was a bumpy ride so we did not get much sleep, so at this time we were running on 4 hours of sleep.  We rented a car and drove to DC.  The landscape in Virginia is beautiful, the trees are changing colors and it reminds me a lot of home.  We were tired and it was raining but we decided this was a good time to visit Arlington Memorial Cemetery. The cemetery is so large it has shuttle buses you ride everywhere.  We stopped at several areas including: the Kennedy gravesites, General Lee’s home before they buried soldiers on his lawn, and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  

Eternal Flame at Kennedy Grave

Field of soldiers

General Lee's home

Tomb of Unknown Soldier

 The tomb of the Unknown Soldier has the remains from WW2, WW1, and Korea that were never identified.  They actually had a soldier from Vietnam but were able through DNA to identify him.  The tomb of the Unknown Soldier is guarded by soldiers who are there no matter what; they also have a symbolic method of changing the guards that is pretty neat to watch.  I never expected the cemetery was so large; it was a sobering site to see all the soldiers and famous people who were buried there.  Even though it was raining and we got soaked, it was a worthwhile stop.  After this we went to the Hilton Garden Inn-Arlington and went to sleep.