Adam and Jen

Adam and Jen arrived on Saturday night after a grueling 2 hours in line at customs on the border...yuck! But they looked fabulous of course! I was so happy to have them here. Adam and I haven't spent a christmas together since we were teenagers! It was just so wonderful to have mom and Adam and Jen here. The house was wonderfully full of people, voice, love and wine! What more could you ask for!

Here are some pics of Adam and Jen having a traditional christmas fair...chinese food!

Yankee Candle

On Saturday we went to Yankee Candle. For those of you who dont know. Yankee Candle is the worlds largest candle store. Their store is beyond huge. They sell candles, ornaments, train sets, kitchen ware, cooking supplies, home and garden decorations, and more. The place is overwhelming...and pretty cool. We went ornament shopping there, some of those you can see in the video:



There is a room in Yankee, filled with christmas trees that actually snows on you! And it is real snow...it melts and is ice...well, snow! So it snowed on us while we were there. Actually that is the only time it snowed on us while mom was here. Ok, on wednesday, we got some snow in the am, that quickly went away...but really, that didnt count!

So here is mom and I at Yankee Candle, and yes, I know these are aweful pics.

Yule

Mom's first day here was filled with Christmas Tree shopping. We went to this cute little tree farm out in Bernardston and found a sweet tree. It was fun finding our tree, though the weather was spitting at us.



That night was Yule, so my friends Thalia, Lydia and Dimitri came over and helped us decorate the tree and drink and eat and generally be merry! It was a lot of fun! Thought I think miss cow was the most excited about the tree!

Mom comes to visit

Mom came to visit! Finally! YAY!!!

She arrived last thursday night. Her flight was fine with the exception of missing her connection in Atlanta. But she arrived in one piece in Hartford at 10 pm. She slept in the sun room, comfortably and warmly. Here are some pics of the sun room as it was getting finished and the living room before the mass arrival!




Yes, those are 8 ft long boards in the living room. That is where I was, and will be again, doing the staining. You can see the insulation in the background behind Dave, and the general chaos that was. The fan is newly installed, with its beautiful medallion and the floor recently painted. The room looks very good! We did not get a chance to finish the trim before mom's arrival because Dave cut open his hand on a piece of glass and needed 5 stitches. He is healing up well, though his hand is still sore.

By the time mom arrived. The living room was clean. The sunroom had a bed and a desk in it. 3/4 of the baseboard trim was mounted and we had a little space heater to suppliment the heat. All in all, it was quite nice...for a room still being worked on!

Working like a mad woman

So I have been working like a mad woman..which means that the house still looks like a construction site exploded...but it also means that we are getting closer to having this done! WOO HOO! So what did I do you ask? well here goes:

I have hung drywall. Mudded, sanded, primered and first coat painted the sunporch/guest room. I have also painted the ceiling and sanded the floor. We pulled the front panel off the underside of the sunporch (this is outside) and I got to crawl underneath there...and that was disgusting on a whole new level! But since I am small I get the pleasure of playing in the dirt. So I crawled underneath, we stapled in some insulation and put plastic underneath the whole thing.

While we have been doing the attic remodeling we have been removing blow-in insulation from the floor. Which has then been put in large garbage bags, which have been residing on the upstairs porch and a couple other random locations. Well, once we had the underside of the porch opened up, we have been shoving these bags of insul under there. This does 2 wonderful things: 1) it gets rid of a lot of garbage! and b) it insulates underneath the sun porch. This is a fabulous use of recycling. About half the underside was filled so when the other half of the attic is emptied out, it will go under the other half of the sun porch!

I also did some burning of scrap wood, sucked and mulched leaves, unloaded wood for the fireplace (so we finally have wood for the fireplace and I can stop buying stupid little bundles from the grocery store) and it is official...the pellet stove works!!!

So here are some pics of me sanding the drywall...looking entirely a mess! Plus a couple of pics of the sunporch windows which Dave installed and are beautiful 6 foot tall and triple pained!

Lincoln and Vietnam

The Lincoln Memorial has always been one of my favorites, no big surprise since that is the time I use to study. But he was stunning at night. It is quite imposing walking next to the water and slowly approaching the memorial, this huge building atop tall stairs just presiding over everything. It seems to put you in perspective of the world. We also saw the vietnam wall at night. I really appreciated seeing it at night, it seemed to change the way in which you view the wall. During the day it is so big and in many ways overwhelming, hard to take it all in, which of course is part of the point. At night, you cant really see the whole thing, you just get the impression of it. I found that because you had to take in each panel one at a time that it forced a more individual experience, less overwhelming and more solemn. It was a really nice experience.

WWII Memorial

The World War II monument was probably the most affecting of all the monuments. It was so beautiful and serene. It really made you stop and reflect and appreciate.

The Washington Monument

So this is obviously the Washington Monument and one pic of the Capital Building. We were walking the mall at sunset so the capital and the monument were colored by the sunset, it was beautiful. Then we made it over to the monument at night and saw it lit up. Quite beautiful at night. Of course, because it was night time I couldnt get the obligatory distance shot of Dave pretending to hold the monument...this is something for which I am sure he is glad!

Natural History Smithsonian

Ok, so if you ask me what most of these stones are I couldnt tell you...but they sure are pretty! The purple on is amethyst...I know that much. But the sparklies are my favorite things to see...though I didnt get to see the Hope Diamond, Dave did though...but I think he avoided catching the curse. (The Curse of the Hope Diamond)

And I had to get the pic of the elephant in the entrance...even if it is a crappy photo.

Air and Space Smithsonian

The first pic, I am sure you all recognize, is the lunar lander. It is strange to see it up close because the whole thing looks like it is covered in gold and copper foil wrap....and in reality, it is!

The two people in the picture that you are saying "hey, who are those people?" are Rae and Cav.

Then there is the pic of them in thermal imaging, because I like to have thermal images of all my friends!

And of course Dave in front of a plane. Well, what do you expect, we were at the AIR and space museum, we had to get a plane pic.

Washington DC

As I am sure most of you know, Dave and I went to Washington DC for thanksgiving. Our friends, Rachael (Rae) and Jaimie (Cav) live there and we decided to spend thanksgiving with them. Rae and I graduated Smith together:


This is us at the Ivy Day Parade.

Rae is currently going to Georgetown getting her masters in complimentary medicine and will be going to med school (school to be decided) next fall. Cav is her boyfriend, whom she met while at Smith. He basically has my job, just in video rather than magazine! So they are both fabulous! and we had just a fantastic time visiting them.

Rae cooked dinner and did a wonderful job. The turkey was great but the biggest hit of the night were the yams...yum yum.

So the following posts are us in DC! Oh yeah, and my favorite metro stop...Foggy Bottom! I am sure you can guess why!

Beercap Airhockey

Beercap Airhockey

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The epic game of bottlecap hockey between Adam and Dave!

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Arm Wrestling

Arm Wrestling

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Here is the first of what might be an annual thanksgiving tradition of arm westling...and I caught the whole thing on video..and yes, it is another bad video!

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Death and Pixies

Good Post Halloween everyone! Well, I thought I would share our costumes. I was a dark pixie type creature and Dave was...well, simply, he was death! Unfortunately I have been sick since this past weekend, so we didnt celebrate it up as we might normally had, but we still had fun. I wore my costume to work on monday and Dave wore his all night for the trick-o-treaters!
Death cooking eggs!