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While we are a little over 20 days into the new year, we are still recovering from the holidays. Particularly on trying to keep up with the blog.  So, maybe the best thing is just to hit some highlights and give some general summary.

We decided to venture out to watch Arkansas play in the Cotton Bowl.  

We first headed to Trusty's, but as Trusty's is the local Arkansas bar, the place was packed. We decided to watch the game at a bar down the street, were we meet up with a high school friend of Ben's.  The game was closer than everyone would have liked, but the Razorbacks pulled away in the 4th quarter.  After the game we headed back to Trusty's to meet up with a few friends and catch up after the holidays. 

The late night was cause for sleeping in on Saturday. Ben decided to get out of bed and start the day on the right foot with homemade sourdough biscuits and deer sausage gravy.  

After brunch we took care of some life chores and finished up the night by watching "The Debt" with Helen Miren. It was a suspense/ mystery about a botched espionage mission from 1966. It was a bit confusing, but overall not bad. We are glad we waited for it to come to DVD.

We kept it fairly casual the next week and spent time at home with the dogs. Kelly's family had congregated in Destin, Florida, where her parents are spending time during the winter.  Kelly decided to  abandon Ben and the dogs to head south for the weekend. Kelly played a few rounds of golf with her dad and spend some quality time with the twins before heading back to D.C. It was a short trip, but fun to see her parents act like teenagers in their retirement community. Unfortunately, her mom and dad were eliminated in the first round of the shuffleboard tournament, but we are sure they will be a team to watch out for in the near future.

While Kelly was gone, Ben and the dogs took the opportunity to catch up on some movies that Kelly would prefer to miss.  

It was a pretty intense couple days, but we got through X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, Captain America, Fast (& Furious) Five, Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part II, and Cowboys & Aliens.  When Kelly returned she was not sure if the moisture in Ben's eyes was from the joy of seeing her again or watching about 12 hours of explosions. 

Sunday evening, Laura and Ron, who we worked with in Missouri, came over to the apartment for dinner. Ben made homemade pizza and root beer floats for dessert. It was good food and great company.

We spent the Monday holiday (MLK Day) catching up on life chores and running errands. One of our errands was returning something to Dick's Sporting Goods. Kelly noticed they had a hi-tec indoor demo net with a launch monitor. After almost straining her back to increase her driving distance (to beat Ben), they decided it was time to leave before they broke something. 

After only reuniting for one day, Ben had to fly to Orlando for a work conference. In true rock star fashion, he flew down early Tuesday morning and flew back late Tuesday night. This schedule made for a long rest of the week.

Kelly's office is still in the process of moving, which means she is still working from home. It is great in the mornings because the commute is about 15 seconds, but the days can be long with only the dogs to talk to. Overall, it has been a great experience working remotely and has been very productive.

The weekend was highly anticipated. We were looking forward to sleeping in and spending quality time together. We started Saturday with delicious breakfast burritos. We headed downtown to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for a IMAX film called "Coral Reef Adventure". It was somewhat disappointing because it wasn't in 3-D, but overall it had some beautiful shots and some interesting facts about the dangers facing the coral reefs. We walked around the museum for a bit after the movie before heading out of the district to do a little shopping. The highlight of the afternoon was finding a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle dart board.

On our way back to the district, we stopped for lunch at Red Hot and Blue. So far, it is the best bbq we have found on the east coast. The rest of the day was spent playing darts and watching the movie "Ides of March".

We started Sunday out by watching "The Help" and enjoying a special breakfast treat made in Ben's corndog maker that he got for Christmas.  He covered sausages with pancake batter and they turned out to be pretty delicious.  The only thing missing was a stick.

The rest of the day was spent picking up around the house, doing a little work, watching football and welcoming Steve from Jefferson City, who is in DC for a couple days.

With the blog back on track, we should be off to a fabulous 2012.

Happy Holidays! Part 3

We woke up early Monday morning and headed for Pasadena to see the Tournament of Roses Parade.

After struggling with the crowds, we found a good spot to view the floats. Neither of us had seen much of the parade on TV in the past, so we were very impressed with the detail and design of the flower covered floats.

Following the Rose Parade, the "Occupy" movement had their own parade, filled with creative signs and props. 

There were hundreds of participants all under the close supervision of riot control forces.

With most the restaurants around us closed, we decided to grab a deli sandwich at a nearby grocery store and ate lunch on the bleachers of the parade route. It was a beautiful day in Pasadena and nice to be off our feet. As game time approached, we headed down to the tailgate area outside the stadium. 

We played a few games, drank several Coke Zero free samples and Kelly sent a few frantic work emails before heading into the game.

We had great seats in the Wisconsin fan section, which created some friendly banter as Kelly took her seat in Oregon gear. Ben wore his Wisconsin jersey and an Oregon hat, which created an unbelievable amount of confusion with people. Once we explained that Ben's grandpa played for the badgers and Ben attended University of Oregon law school, people's concerns were eased. It was a great pre-game show, including a fabulous Wisconsin marching band performance. We also saw the B-2 stealth bomber fly over after the national anthem. 

The game was exciting from the kickoff. Each team scored on their first 3 possessions and we saw a total of 10 touchdowns in the game. 

It was back and forth for much of the first half, but it was the Ducks that had a great defensive stand on Wisconsin's final drive to secure championship.

After the game it was a race back to Las Vegas to catch our 1am redeye flight back to D.C.  Luckily, we also squeezed in a stop at an In-N-Out Burger.   

We made it home by noon the next day and enjoyed the rest of the day before getting back to work. 

Happy Holidays! Part 2

After spending about 36 hours back in DC we were off again.  On Thursday morning we caught a plane headed to Las Vegas.  

While Las Vegas clearly has a little something for everyone, our plan was not the typical Vegas trip.  In fact, it was actually a very relaxing time.  We stayed with Ben's aunt and got to spend some quality time with a lot of family.  We also managed to get in some quality lounging time.

Friday afternoon Ben's aunt Noel took us golfing at the Angel Park course nearby. It was a beautiful course, with mountains everywhere you look. We had so much fun and were grateful for the opportunity to be playing golf in late December.  

On Saturday we headed over to Red Rock Canyon for a little dose of nature. We took off on the "Ice Box Canyon" which included cool temperatures and lots of challenging boulders that stood in our way.  

After about 2 hours of hiking, we were ready to get back to the house and relax. After lounging around most of the afternoon, we had a wonderful dinner of pork and dumplings, a family favorite.

(Ben, cousins Karen and Katie and their 95 year old Grandpa Lynn)

Ben's grandpa played football for the University of Wisconsin so to we were excited to show him the personalized Wisconsin jersey Ben had made last year.

After a great dinner, we headed to the casino's to ring in the new year. Due to our paralyzing frugality (and awareness of odds/math), we spent much of the night watching Karen dominate the blackjack tables.

(looking classy but ready to party)

(This is what leaving the casino $7 richer looks like.) 

From Las Vegas, we had planned to drive to Los Angeles, but decided to take the scenic route.We got on the road around lunch time and headed to Death Valley National Park. We have a goal of visiting all of the major National Parks and it just so happened January is the best time to visit Death Valley. Once outside of Las Vegas, we were quickly in the heart of the dessert with no rest stops, gas stations or cell phone service for about 100 miles.

 Once in the park, we stopped at Zabriskie Point for a great look over the valley.

Our next stop was at The Devil's Golf Course. This area gets its name from the large salt formations that create a surface the "only the devil could play golf on".

(the Salt Pans)

Our final stop was the Badwater Basin, which is the lowest point in the United States.

From Death Valley, it was only supposed to be three hours to our hotel.  Unfortunately, we got stuck in the New Year's day traffic from Las Vegas to LA.  We arrived at our hotel around 10pm and grabbed a few hours of sleep. 

What happened when we woke up?  Stay tuned for part 3 to find out.