Easter Weekend

(We have been slacking on our posts lately.  Sorry - we blame the dogs.)

When we last posted, we had just run the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler race on April 1st.  The next day, we discovered the joke was on us as it was hard to get out of bed. The 10 miles had taken its toll, but we managed to make it through the work day. While a relaxing evening and early bedtime was what we needed, instead Ben went grocery shopping, Kelly did a weeks worth of baking (english muffins, pizza crust, bread), and we stayed up until midnight watching the national championship game. 

Tuesday was a big day Mosely. She had to get a haircut and the groomers is located near our office, so she got to walk to work with us. We dropped her off before heading to the office. She got to spend some of the day in "doggie day care," where we are sure she thrived with all her new found friends. After work we picked her up and headed home. 

Approximately 10 minutes after getting home, Mo passed out on the couch. She is not used to having to be awake for more than 4 hours a day, so all the activity had taken it out of her.

The rest of the week passed fairly quickly.  We started utilizing Capital Bikeshare even more, which sped up our commuting considerably.  That gave us a little extra time in the evenings to get ready for the Friday arrival of the fam.  

Everyone arrived on Friday afternoon.  After the long drive, everyone was ready for an early evening.  It was nice to catch up and plan out the weekend ahead. 

Ben made biscuits and gravy from scratch on Saturday morning.  After breakfast, he headed to work and everyone else headed to Eastern Market, which is always a good Saturday morning destination.   

After leaving Eastern Market, Kelly and the fam headed out to the Air & Space Museum Annex.  Even the second time around, Kelly was still impressed.  

The fam seemed to enjoy seeing all the aircraft on display.  Steve took a particular interest and probably would have stayed longer, but the twins were ready to go.

After the annex, it was back at the house for the evening.  Our plans changed a little when Layla's developed a fever.  Steve and Abbey took Layla to get checked out and the rest of us hung out at the apartment and then went for a walk up to the Capitol.

(Uncle Ben keeps an eye on Jaxon)

Easter Sunday started at the apartment.  There was a lot of cooking followed by a lot of eating.

Full, we headed out to walk a bit of lunch off.  The fam went to see the MLK and FDR memorials, while Ben and Kelly staked out a good spot in the park. 

After seeing the monuments and the tail end of the cherry blossoms, everyone was excited for the traditional Easter egg hunt.

(Mo did not understand the Easter egg hunt)

After the Easter egg hunt, we played a round of croquet.

Running Errands and Races

March 24-25 was an exciting weekend full of golf, basketball and cherry blossoms.  Kelly has made a concerted effort to watch all of or part of each game in the NCAA tournament. With the help of two computers and one TV, this dream became a reality. The bracket challenge with Kelly's family made the games even more exciting. 

As of Final Four weekend, Kelly overtook her Dad, who had the lead for most of the tournament. Ben was in a respectable second place, but with all the same picks as Kelly, there was no way to make up any ground. Kelly's sister Katie had an outside chance of winning if Kansas were to win the national championship. We will keep you updated. (Update, we didn't post the blog in time for there to be suspense, but you the reader can just pretend.)  

Sunday we watched the final round of the Bay Hill invitational. Tiger Woods had the lead and was trying to win for the first time in 3 years. He played excellent golf and steamrolled the competition to secure the win. It was good to see him playing well, even though he is a jerk, because of what he means to the PGA. It will be interesting to see how he plays next week at the Masters.

We went for our final long training run before the cherry blossom race. Since is was only 5 miles we thought Mosely could come along. She quickly proved us wrong. Soon after the Capitol, Mo decided she had enough exercise and would rather seek out attention from tourists on the mall. With 4 miles left to run, we use constant encouragement and breaks as motivation for her. We stopped by to tidal basin for one last look at the cherry blossoms, or what was left of them, and Mo somehow found the energy to go up to every person for a little attention.

Dexter on the other hand, simply wanted to run and did not enjoy the slower pace, several breaks and all the people. We managed to get Mo back home and in one piece and she and Dex quickly past out for the rest  of the evening.

 

Monday was dreary and chilly so to lift our spirits, we met up and had lunch from "Red Hook Lobster  Truck".

 

Their specialty is the lobster roll, with the lobster flown daily from Maine. The fresh lobster meant it was a high dollar sandwich. We have heard great things about this truck so we figured we would bite the bullet and give it a go.

 

It was delicious, however the $15 price tag took away some of the enjoyment of the meal. As frugal people, we felt our hard earned money could have went a little further somewhere else.

We finally completed our taxes and shipped them off to Uncle Sam. Due to the complexity of our taxes this year, we had to take them to a professional. Different jobs, living in different states, moving, getting married etc. all contributed to the headache. We took the Metro up to Cleveland Park on Wednesday to sign all the papers and as a reward, we had lunch at our favorite Thai place.

Another big development for us was our membership to Capitol Bikeshare.  All over the city are Capitol Bikshare racks and you can check a bike out in one location and drop it off at another. This allows us to walk to work and then ride a bike home or visa versa.

Our first experience didn't go so well.  Nervous about riding in rush hour DC traffic, we got all flustered and took the worst route possible to work. Because of our poor judgment and execution, we were unable to get a feel for how practical it will be as a mode of transportation to work.

Friday brought to close a long week for us. We decided to celebrate with lunch at Loeb's Deli. It is located in the middle of our two offices, so it is a good meeting place for lunch. Kelly got the "Loeb" and Ben go the "Times Square". Both delicious, Kelly's sandwich was on a great twist roll and Ben's featured a fried egg on pastrami. What more could you want?

After work we rode our bikes to the National Building Museum to pick up our race bibs for the race on Sunday. Our training program for the race was somewhat suspect. We had good intentions, but laziness often won out. However,  along with a few long runs, we had consistently been running from work which we hoped payed off on race day.

On Saturday, we took care of a few chores.  We had to get the oil changed and take care of some shopping.   While out we decided to have lunch at Chevy's, which holds a special place in our hearts.  Also, Ben had acquired a game piece that got us a free lunch.

On the way home, we stopped by the kite festival that is part of the festivities for the cherry blossoms.

Sunday morning we got up early and headed to the Mall for the race.  It was a crazy scene on the Mall. Thousands of runners and spectators were gathered at the base of the Washington Monument milling around before things got underway. We did a little stretching and were ready to go. We started near the Washington Monument and headed toward Arlington National Cemetery. We ran around the round-about and came back into the district. Then we headed toward the Kennedy Center along the Potomac River for a mile and then headed back south for two miles. We ran past the tidal basin and into Hains Point for three miles. In terms of cherry blossoms, Hains Point had the best offering. We finished back at the Washington Monument in 1 hour 46 minutes. We were pleased with our time.

 

After the race, we grabbed a snack, water, and our medals before heading toward the metro. Ben had to work from from 10-2. While Ben was occupied with work, Kelly took this opportunity to shower and pass out! The day was not done yet. After practice, we had to take the dogs to get their vaccinations. There is a clinic in Price George's County (on the MD side of DC) that offers cheap vaccinations on the first Sunday of the month. With Mosley's haircut scheduled for Tuesday, we had to take this opportunity to get her shots up to date. While not terrible, the experience did require us to stand in line for 45 minutes with dogs constantly barking and the sun bearing down on us. On a typical afternoon, this would have been ok, however the fatigue and soreness was setting in from our morning activities. All said and done we were out of there in an hour. As a reward, we got ourselves and the dogs an ice cream cone.

We spent the remainder of the day recovering which involved watching the movie Footloose. A modern day take on the classic film was entertaining, but did not have enough dancing in it for Ben!

Spring Has Sprung

Its been a busy few weeks for us and unfortunately our blog posts have suffered.

A couple weeks ago, we finally managed to track down Wizards tickets and with some luck of scheduling, they were playing the Lakers. It was Kelly's first NBA game and we were hoping for a decent one.  Unfortunately, the Wizards are one of the worst teams in the league.

(Verizon Center is home to the Wizards)

The stands were pretty full as a lot of people came out to see Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.  For much of the game it seemed like at least half the crowd was for the Lakers.

(Kobe has been sporting a mask since having his nose broken in the All-Star game.)

(Kobe and John Wall)

(Kobe Bryant scored 30 points)

At one point the Lakers were up by 19 points and fans had to be amused by puns on the score board.

 
There was also some good fan-cam dancing that was embarrassing for this woman.

However, as as the game went on, something began to change. 

(G-Wiz, the Wizards mascot, seen here bribing the ref with a burrito.)

Whether it was the free burrito for the ref or that the Wizards began playing well and Kobe went cold... the Wizards somehow managed to win!  The crowd got pretty into it and it was fun to see what will likely be the highlight of the Wizards season.

Ben made a trip back to the midwest last week for work. He had a whirlwind tour through St. Louis and Jefferson City, but managed to visit a few old friends and old favorites, like Oscar's Diner. 

We have continued to walk the 2.5 miles to work in the mornings, which have become more pleasant as Spring arrives. The unseasonably warm weather has caused D.C. to start blooming.

Dexter and Mosley are doing well. They are enjoying the nice weather and the long training runs on the weekend. We took them both for a 6 mile run on the national mall a couple of weekends ago, however Mosely was not impressed after the two mile mark. She was a trooper and made it the entire 6 miles. We decided to leave Mo at home for our 7 and 8 mile training runs, and let Dex pick up the slack.

After an entire year of anticipation, the cherry trees have finally blossomed. It is the 100 anniversary of the Japanese giving DC over 3,000 cherry blossom trees. Our first visit was last sunday on a run. We tried to run past all the major groves of trees including the mall, around the tidal basin and through East Potomac park. The blossoms were truly specular. A few days later we decided to head down the see the blossoms at their "peak". The peak means that 70% have bloomed. It was a beautiful evening and perfect for taking pictures.

Knowing that storms were coming and that the warm weather meant a short season for the cherry blossoms, we made another trip down to the tidal basin area on Saturday morning.

It was interesting to see how the blossoms had changed in only a few days.  The were more pink than they had been on Wednesday, but many were beginning to lose their petals.

With our fill of cherry blossoms, we headed out.   Ben had seen an advertisement for a beaded Beetle at the Native American Museum. Intrigued, we decided to stop by and check it out. The picture doesn't do it justice, but this Bug is covered in hand woven bead work. Very impressive. After a very brief visit in the museum, we were back in the car and off to brunch.

We finally made it to the Argonaut on H street. We drive by often and always put it at the top of the list of places to try, but have never made it happened. It was definitely above average and has a few items we would like to try. Due to its close proximity to our apartment and its really cool vibe, we will go back at some point.

After brunch, we headed home to take care of a bunch of life chores around the house.  With storms coming, it was a good day to get some things done and to finally put up a new post on the blog.