The open house had all kinds of planes on the ground that you could go up to and check out. They had both old historical planes and current working planes and vehicles. Also throughout the day they had air demonstrations of various military aircraft as well as the army’s demo jumper team (Golden Knights). The highlight/finally of the day was the performance by the Blue Angels which was awesome. I’ve never been to an air show that I can remember so it was a ton of fun. Here are just a couple of pictures of the day (I took 750 pictures).

The historical fly by with a WWII plane, F16 and F22.

Entrance to the show

Nicole and Michelle watching the planes up above.

Michelle in the cockpit

Army’s Golden Knight jump demonstration

Geico Skywritters.

Nicole and Michelle in front of a helicopter

Ross found a gun to play with

Abrams tank.. I want to drive this on the beltway.

Blue Angles diamond group. Look how close they are to one another.

Blue Angles high speed pass.

More Blue Angels

All 6 blue angels.

Nicole and Michelle waiting to get on the bus back to the metro. Only bummer of the day was that it took almost 2 hours to get back to the metro.

Ross and Nicole at the metro stop waiting to go home.

• Meeting Wally
• Food
• Being bumped from our hotel because of the volcano and being put at the helmsley carlton house on Madison Ave.
• Waking up early on sunday and walking through central park at taking some awesome pictures
• Full English breakfast at this tea house
• Riding the Bolt bus there and the mega bus home

Sean getting wally to show off

Sean and Wally. One of the few decent pics of Sean

Out walking around nyc

What did you see Wally?

Nicole walking wally

Lunch time at a hole in the wall Cambodian sandwich place. Ross and Sean

NYC at night

The living room of our Helmsley Carlton in 1 br suite.

The bedroom

The apple store

Ross in Central Park

Nicole under this pretty pink tree we found with the NYC skyline

Nicole in the subway

Nicole and Sean at High Line Park

Times Square

Ross playing tourist

Mega Bus line for the ride home to DC

Nicole on christmas morning.

Nicole’s mom made it back to Cincinnati around 3 in the afternoon and it was a good thing she hadn’t come home any sooner since we had finally just gotten showered and cleaned up just as she called. So we packed up all our stuff and said goodbye to Phil and headed over to Jean’s place. At Jean’s place we hung out for a little bit and then exchanged gifts with her. I think Jean really liked the wedding album that Nicole had made and finally given to her. For dinner we did snow crab legs because it was fast and easy to do since Jean wasn’t home for most of the day. After dinner we went downstairs and setup the Wii and tried playing some of the new games that Nicole got for christmas. Unfortunately the Mario Party 8 that I had gotten for nicole didn’t work which was a bit of a bummer for the day.

Ross opening one of the shirts he received from jean.

Jean and Nicole looking at the wedding album.

Our snow crab dinner. So yummy.

Saturday was another relaxing day. We started of the day by getting a little bit of shopping done. Surprisingly it wasn’t really that crazy while we were out shopping but that could have been because we were out early and were home by 2PM. After a nap and some video game playing and hanging out we went out to dinner. Jean wanted to do a special dinner for us and instead of cooking we convinced her to take us to Montgomery Inn since I had never been there. This place is known for their ribs and is a favorite of Sean’s. Unfortunately because they are so good and popular they only take reservations for 5PM and anytime after that you just have to show up and wait. We ended up just getting reservations and going to dinner early. The place was enormous and had a ton of different rooms where middle to small functions could be held. It was also kinda interesting since as you moved through the place the atmosphere changed from really casual bar dinning to a more formal dining depending on which room you were in. I of course got the ribs since thats all I had heard about from the place. I thought they were quite good and better than anything I could get here in DC but they weren’t no dinosaur bbq ribs.

Nicole and Ross at Montgomery Inn

Jean at Montgomery Inn.

The next day was the end of our trip and after a quick breakfast with Jean we headed out. Since we got a good start in the morning we made it back to DC just after it got dark which left us with plenty of time to unwind and to go to the grocery store to get food.

The next day was Christmas Eve and started off with a quick trip to the mall so I could pick up the last of my gifts for nicole. Originally I was supposed to get it the weekend before but thanks to snowpocalypse that didn’t happen. Luckily we got an early start in the morning and managed to get to the mall soon after it opened so it wasn’t too crazy while I got the shopping I needed done. Afterwards we went to the third place that nicole loves to go to when she is back home. We had an early lunch at Skyline Chili. I have to admit that the place has really started to grow on me over the years and now I really do like going there especially cause their cheese coneys are so yummy. All that finely grated cheese just can’t be beat.

Nicole and Phil outside Skyline.

After lunch we headed into downtown Cincinnati to go and see a model train exhibit put on by the local power company. When we got there we were greeted with a free warm cookie which was awesome. The train exhibit was a little small but still very good. The line moved quickly and we got to see the model train after only a few minutes. I really liked it and there was a surprising number of things going on.

The model train exhibit.

Nicole and Ross in front of the model trains.

Phil and Nicole in front of the trains.

The model train exhibit.

Look at the little construction workers. They even moved around.

After the trains we headed home and just hung out for the rest of the day. Nicole spent a little while trying to teach her dad how to play the Wii. Phil was a good sport about it and did a pretty good job playing. I spent most of the afternoon working on dinner since we were having prime rib and I was in charge of the meat. After dinner we headed out to catch midnight (10 pm) mass.

Phil playing the wii.

Nicole having fun beating her dad at wii golf.

Ross working on preparing his prime rib.

Nicole and Phil before church.

View from our apartment.

The visibility at one of the heavier points of the snow fall. We could barley see down the block for most of the day.

Hehe I pushed nicole into the snow.

Uh oh what is Ross going to do with that.

Nicole’s snow angel.

Ross’ attempt at a snow angel. Yeah I clearly don’t know what i’m doing. But hey I’m from hawaii.

Unfortunately for nicole the weekend we got all the snow was also the weekend we were supposed to go to the theater to see Young Frankenstein. For most of the day I figured we’d be in good shape since the website was saying all shows were still going on and I thought we could just jump on the metro to get there even if the roads were awful. Around 1 we got called from the restaurant where we had dinner reservations to see if we were still coming cause they weren’t sure they were gonna open. An hour later they called us back to cancel so we where left without food before the show. So we headed over to Harris Teeter since it was nearby. Walking over there wasn’t bad since most of the walkways around the mall had been cleared properly and it was only lightly snowing. While we were shopping for food we got the bright idea that we should check the Kennedy Center again. Turns out they had just called off all the late afternoon and evening shows. Nicole was kinda bummed out since she was really looking forward to her show. We ended up wandering around the supermarket for awhile and bought a ton of food for dinner since we were kinda hungry and were trying to cheer ourselves up. For dinner we ended up with rib eye steaks, canned spinach, fresh  tortellini with sauce, brussel sprouts and bacon. Yeah totally random but it cheered us up.

All Decorated.

Before we decorated it.

The one hiccup we ran into when trying to decorate our tree was that we could only get 3 of the 6 strands of lights to work. Unfortunately we figured this out at 9PM on sunday night. So nicole went out all over the place looking for somewhere that was both open at had christmas lights. She tried cvs, then the Harris Teeter, finally she got in her car and went to the wallgreens in clareden to find the lights. While Nicole was out driving around Ross stayed home and went through each of the bulbs testing them and was able to get 2 more of the strands working in the time it took her to come back.