Happy Halloween

We have finally settled in as an old married couple. With two weeks of marriage under our belts, we are pretty sure we have it all figured out.  Our biggest change has been adjusting to a new Kelly's new work schedule, which goes a little later. Working until 6:30pm and then commuting home means that we usually settle in for dinner around 8:00pm.  The shorter days have also added a twist to Ben's run home – namely darkness.

On his runs home this week, Ben continued to pass the people “ Occupying DC .”  Here are a few pictures of them.

(Seats are available for anyone looking to occupy DC)

The Cardinals unexpected appearance in the World Series filled most of our weeknights, including the ridiculous 11th inning comeback win in game 6. Our upstairs neighbor probably thought we were having a domestic dispute with all the yelling and screaming at midnight on a Thursday! 

On Friday, we were pumped to get home from work and get settled for game 7.

As you all know, the Cardinals were victorious and won their second championship in five years.  We decided the best way to celebrate the Cardinals victory was with a much deserved Saturday sleep-in. 

It was easier to justify catching up on sleep with the terrible weather that had moved into DC on Saturday.  It was cold and rainy and eventually we even got some snow.

With any outdoors plans out of the questions, we decided to make it a life chores day and headed to Macy's, Costco and Target. Outside of Target some guy said "congratulations."  Kelly and Ben both had the same questions running through their heads.  (1) Is this someone we know and just don't recognize out of context? (i.e. somone from softball in work clothes.) (2) If not, do we really have newlyweds painted across our foreheads?  After a couple of odd 'deer in headlights' seconds passed, the lightbulbs went off.  It was not newlyweds painted on our foreheads that he was congratulating us on, but rather the St. Louis Cardinals hats we were both  wearing.  After removing ourselves from the awkward encounter, we decided to treat ourselves to our favorite pizza place, Armand's.  We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning, planning various trips and watching college football.

 

Sunday brought much better weather and another flag football game.

We headed down to the mall and managed to navigate the Marine Corps Marathon which included 30,000 participants.

Our regular quarterback was unable to make it, so another guy on the team took the snaps for the first two possessions. After an interception and a somewhat embarrassing 3 and out, Kelly got the call. Her first few passes went to Ben for modest gains, but after settling in a bit the offense really got going. The first touchdown pass went to Ben on a slant route. He turned an eight yard pass into a 30 yard touchdown by throwing a few turbo spin moves at the defenders. After the score we never looked back, scoring 86 points in the victory. Ben scored four touchdowns, had approximately 400 all-purpose yards and two sacks. Kelly had eight touchdown passes, approximately 700 passing yards and one catch.

After the victory, we went to Busboys and Poets for brunch. We decided to let the dogs celebrate the win as well and took them to the dog park. Their stats: Dexter fetched approximately 110 tennis balls, peed 12 times and had 1/2 gallon of slobber on his face. Mo pooped 3 times, sniffed 6 dogs rear ends and solicited every human at the park for attention! The rest of the day was spent watching football, watching Ben cook dinner and lounging with the dogs. 

(Dexter went trick or treating as James Bond)

A few small steps for us...

We started off the weekend with a great dinner. Since Kelly didn't have to work this week, she took advantage of the opportunity to pick up a couple of sandwiches from the famous "Mangialardo & Sons". They are only open 7am-3pm Monday-Friday, which is not conducive hours for us. It is a small, somewhat dirty, unorganized place with no table or chairs and a limited menu. We had the G-Man, which is their most popular item and were not disappointed. It was great! It was worth making the effort to pick up sandwiches during the day to have for dinner. After dinner, we watched the movie Bridesmaids. It was very funny and reminded us very little of our recent wedding experience. We recommend watching it.

 (Kelly's bridesmaids - not to be confused with the movie.)

Saturday Ben made french toast with some of our homemade bread. We needed a hearty breakfast to take on our Saturday adventure. We headed to Great Falls, MD to hike part of the Billy Goat Trail. The trail is off of the C & O canal that runs 187 miles along the Potomac River and ends in Georgetown. It was neat and educational to see the lock and dam system and we even saw a demonstration of how they work.

(Old school poppin' & lockin')

We headed out to Section A of the Billy Goat Trail. Of the three sections, section A is the hardest and most strenuous.

(After the wedding, Kelly decided to take Ben's middle name of "Danger".)

(Mo and Dexter were not welcomed on this sections of the hike)

Section A of the Billy Goat Trail is essentially a series of cliffs and boulders along the Potomac river. The foliage was at its peak and provided a stunning backdrop for our hike.

The hike was as advertised and took some serious concentration. A part of the trail was a near vertical climb and left us concerned for fellow hikers that chose to wear Chuck Taylors to make the climb.

(Remember kids, it is important to wear sensible shoes hiking.)

Halfway through the hike we stopped and had lunch along the river. It was a much needed rest and a very peaceful spot to stop. It took us about 2 hours to finish the trail and 45 minutes to get back to the car. We took a beautiful trail along the canal to get back to the car and enjoyed not having to climb over rocks anymore.

Sunday Ben woke up inspired to make a wonderful breakfast. While Kelly slept it, Ben tried out

a new sourdough biscuit recipe. And then Ben thought, if you are going to have fresh biscuits, why not have bacon gravy to go with them.

(Jealous?)

The experiment was a complete success and a perfect way to start our Sunday. After breakfast, we headed down to the Washington monument for our flag football game. After the game we headed out for brunch on H street. We returned to the apartment to take care of some life chores and get ready for another week.

We have been working on our wedding pictures and wanted to share a few of them.

                                                 

We're Back!

Last week was one of the the busiest and happiest times of our lives. Everything culminated last weekend when, amongst other things, the St. Louis Cardinals won the National League pennant!

(Cardinals fans young and old were head over heels to see the Cards win.)

Prior to the Cardinals making a trip to the World Series, we made a trip to Sparta, IL for our wedding.  We left D.C. on Wednesday and made the 14 hour drive to Sparta. It was an exciting drive knowing that in just a few short days, we would be married.   Also, there was some decent fall foliage.

(On the road again...)

The drive was uneventful.  We could not stop at Chick-Fil-A because Ben was concerned about the impact of waffle fries on his ability to button the pants of his suit for the wedding.  Mo decided to cuddle with the pinata.

When we arrived in Sparta,  it was awesome to see the house and yard ready for a wedding. The family had done so much work in preparation for the big day. We woke up Thursday and hit the road running. Everyone had assigned tasks, picking up the tables and wine, baking cakes, printing programs etc. Thursday evening we met Ben's mom and friend Francie for dinner at Ben's favorite establishment, Pizza Hut. We had a great dinner and headed back to the house to show Barbara the layout for the wedding.

Friday was a busy day. Dad and Steve headed to St. Louis to pick up the chairs, while Kelly and Ben headed to the church to start making spinach cornbread. We had decided to make our favorite cornbread recipe for the wedding. It  didn't seem like it would be that overwhelming of a task, however baking 10 pans of cornbread is harder than it sounds.

We continued to put up lights, hay bales, pumpkins and mums in the yard all day and by the rehearsal wedding, it was ready for a wedding! We quickly ran through the ceremony and then headed to the church for dinner. Most of Ben's family had arrived in time for dinner and it was great to see everyone so excited for our wedding. So many people made such an effort to attend our wedding and it meant so much to us to have the entire family there.

We headed back to the house to continue getting everything ready. Steve and Kelly spent 2 hours ironing/steaming table cloths while Ben printed all the programs. By the end of the night, we felt very prepared for the next day.

We woke up very excited to get married and celebrate with our family and friends. Before we could do that, there was still a lot of work to do. Fortunately it was a beautiful day and perfect for an outside wedding. As a gesture of our appreciation for my parents hard work and generosity, we bought them an "October Glory" maple tree. We decided to plant the tree on Saturday to commemorate our wedding day.

After lunch, it all started getting very real. Before we knew it, Ben was headed to the hotel to get ready and Kelly had to start getting her hair done. As it was getting closer to 5pm, Kelly would head into her parents room to look out the window at the the yard and see everyone arriving and taking their seats. It was great to see friends and family interacting and having a glass of wine before the ceremony. We had wanted the day to be very relaxed and fun and it looked like people were sharing that same vibe. Kelly finally put her dress on about 10 minutes before show time and ran into a stubborn button on the strap. With the help of all three bridesmaids, they fastened the button only minutes before 5pm. It was a fun few minutes in the front yard before we got started. Taking pictures in the same spot that Kelly had taken hundreds of pictures over her lifetime. Pictures on Kelly's first day of school, Easter, homecoming and prom dances, birthdays and now her wedding.

The ceremony was perfect. The sunlight and weather couldn't have been better and it a very happy moment for us and we were glad to share it with everyone.

The reception was just as we had planned. It was more like a bbq than a wedding reception and people seemed to embrace that. We had great food, a great band and most important, we had a pinata! It only took 3 swings to bust the pinata and all the kids went nuts over the candy.

We had lots of fun at the reception and enjoyed seeing everyone have such a good time. We danced and sang until around 11:15 when we played the final song, "Wagon Wheel".

After everyone had left, we spent about 30 minutes sitting in an empty backyard with just the fam. We went over the day's events and just smiled about how perfect everything was.

We spent Sunday morning with Ben's family at the hotel breakfast, chatting about the previous nights events. It was great to spend some quality time with everyone before they all went their separate ways. We headed back to the house for lunch and cleanup. It was a beautiful day and we spent most of it outside cleaning up the yard.

Sunday night was game 6 of the NLCS and the potential clincher for the Cardinals to go to the World Series. We were inspired by the Cardinal's celebratory beer bath and decided to have one of our own. We took advantage of still having some beer left in the keg and had our own beer bath in the yard.

Monday we took back the chairs to St. Louis and ran a few other errands. We visited Ben's grandpa and dropped off some leftover food from the wedding. We headed to Crown Candy Kitchen for lunch with Nick and Jen.  They had flown all the way from Oregon for the wedding and tour the St. Louis area a little. We wanted to show them what might be the best BLT in the world
.

(The secret is the obscene amount of bacon.)

We enjoyed the rest of the day in Sparta and prepared to head back to D.C. in the morning. It was hard packing up and leaving the family. We had had such a great experience this weekend and made so many good memories.  It really was a fabulous weekend.

Our trip to the birthplace of cream cheese

We spent much of last week cheering on the St. Louis Cardinals during their fierce battle for the playoffs. After the Cardinals clinched the wild card, we decided to drive up to Philadelphia for game 1 of the National League Division Series.

We have wanted to visit Philly for awhile and this gave us even more incentive. Ben was excited to sing the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme song.  "West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days..."  Kelly felt like the limit for the signing of that song should probably be 10 times.  This forced Ben to mix in some "Eye of the Tiger" to pass the time on the drive up.

Our first stop was the Philadelphia Art Museum.  The museum building is stunning and probably has some great art, but the $16 admission seemed a little steep, especially with our limited time. Also, we have probably been spoiled by all of the free museums in DC.  The real reason that the Philadelphia Art Museum was our first stop, was its iconic place in the movie Rocky.

Also, the museum grounds are home to the Rocky statue from the movie.

With our Rocky pilgrimage complete, we headed downtown to check out Independence Hall. Unfortunately there was substantial scaffolding up for a rehabilitation project, but still we were impressed to see the building featured on the back of the $100 bill.

Long lines a limited time deterred us from going inside Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell exhibit.

Fortunately, much of downtown Philadelphia is preserved from the revolutionary era and it seemed everywhere you turned it was the birthplace of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the building were the Continental Congress convened etc etc. We took some time to visit the "The Carpenter's Hall" where the Continental Congress met and where Ben Franklin spent a lot of time holding secret meetings.

We were also on a quest to take in the best of Philadelphia's culinary offerings. We were determined to find the best cheesesteak and soft pretzel in the city. After much research, we were torn whether to try "Jim's Steaks" or "Tony Lukes" for a cheesesteak. We settled on Jim's Steaks  and were somewhat surprised to find a line out the door and around the block at 2:15pm, but we figured there must be a line for a reason.

Jim's is located on South Street which has miles of shops, restaurants and weird random stores, perfect for Ben's need to wander. Kelly decided to get in line and let Ben do his thing. 45 minutes later, we were able to order our cheesesteak.

(If Mr. T endorses something, it must be good...right?)

It was quite a process. We took a seat and finally took a bite of this highly anticipated cheese steak.

Immediately following our first bite our hearts sank with disappointment. The meat was a little dry, the roll was only so-so and the toppings left something to be desired. We commented that it needed a sauce, and cheese steaks shouldn't require sauce. We left shaking our heads and wondering what everyone was so jazzed about. We had never had a cheesesteak and if Jim's is "the best", we would rather just pass.

We regrouped and headed to the game. In typical Ben and Kelly fashion, we didn't have tickets but decided to roll the dice anyway. Ben started to work his magic, but was caught off guard when the scalpers said it would be $125/ticket just to get in the stadium and probably more like $200/ticket. We took a break from ticket hunting and we into McFadden's for a beverage.

We both were dressed head to toe in Cardinals gear, which in hindsight was probably not a great idea. We had been warned throughout the day that our gear might be dangerous, but laughed it off.  Ben informed several people that 'danger' was his middle name.  Most of the banter was "Cardinals suck" or "get outta here" or "really? oh really?" but our favorite comment was when we were  walking through the parking lot and Ben spotted the grill that we want to get and pointed it out to me. The Phillies fan quickly shouted to Ben "stop eyeing my grill or i'll kick your ass." That let us know we were going to be enjoying the game with a colorful bunch of Phillies fans.

We continued to struggle to find tickets and game time was getting closer and closer. After Ben let out a half-hearted "anyone got extra tickets," two girls responded with an excited YES! When we asked how much they wanted for the tickets they responded with "buy us two beers and call it a deal." Before they could rethink the deal, we gave them beer money and headed toward the gate. We got to our seats just in time for the first pitch.

Our trip to our seats was filled with chants of "you suck" and boo's. Fortunately, our seats were next to two friendly Phillies fans that were very cordial and fun. The Cards got out to a fast lead with a 3-run homer by Lance Berkman. We were obviously very excited and let out a celebratory cheer. It seemed as though one other guy and us were the only three Cards fans in the entire stadium.

Unfortunately, it was early and even though the Cards led for several innings, the Phillies are a solid team.  One very solid part of that team is St. Louis native Ryan Howard.

Howard's 3-run home run tied the game before the Phillies eventually took the lead for good.  The stadium erupted as you can see in the video below.

While the game went in a direction that we were not fond of, we did manage a lemonade out of lemons moment.  The stadium Tony Luke's location gave us a second bite at the ... cheesesteak.

This was a second bite worth having and tempted us to get a third bite, but will power won out.  The Tony Luke's cheesesteak was hands down a superior sandwich.

With our sandwich mission complete and the game over, we said goodbye to the stadium and got on the road back to DC.

It was brisk Sunday morning in DC.  The fall weather set the mood for our first flag football game of the season.  We joined a team from Arkansas and played near the Washington Monument.  Kelly had an MVP performance with an interception and a blocked pass on defense to go along with a passing touchdown.  Ben played a solid game at center and had a couple good catches.  In the end it was more than enough to dominate the Hawaiian team we played.