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.

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.

We started our weekend off with an IBM sponsored picnic and baseball game at Camden Yards.  The picnic started at 5:30 (1.5 hours before the game).  We decided that it should be safe to leave the apartment at 3:45, and we would have plenty of time to make it up to Baltimore to enjoy the picnic before the game.  What we didn’t anticipate was “worse than normal” Friday afternoon traffic (according to the radio traffic reporters).  It took us 2.5 hours to drive up to Baltimore — and didn’t make it to the stadium until about 6:30.  We were still able to take advantage of the hot dogs, popcorn and beer. After we were done eating and chatting, we headed up to our seats.  Even though everyone we were with had purchased our tickets through the IBM club, our seats were all over the place.  We just decided to head up to the nearest seats. Luckily, even though it was a Orioles vs Red Sox game, there were still plenty of open seats in the Upper Reserve.  The Orioles lost (of course), but we had a great time at the game.

Saturday evening we went out for a sushi dinner.  We hadn’t had a sushi dinner since Mid-July and were really craving some good sushi.  There are several sushi places walking distance from our place, but none of them looked to be “good” sushi places.  So, I went online to find reviews and choose a sushi restaurant. Many of the places in DC seemed to be very trendy sushi places — where you pay a lot for the atmosphere, not necessarily the quality of the fish.  Then I found Tachibana in McLean, VA – just about 5 miles from here.  It looked like an authentic, traditional style Japanese sushi bar and restaurant.  It was absolutely wonderful!  I think Ross and I have now found our favorite sushi restaurant.  We sat at the sushi bar and ordered as we went along.  I thought the fish was great — especially the magaro.  We really enjoyed our splurge of a meal.  We will certainly be going back in the future.

Sunday was a beautiful day — warm, sunny and not too humid.  I wanted to get out of the apartment and do something outside since it was such a  beautiful day.  So, Ross and I headed to the National Botanical Gardens.  It was very nice to be able to hop onto the metro to take us to the gardens.  The Botanical Gardens are located between the Smithsonians and the Capitol building, and is free to the public.  The Botanical Gardens themselves were quite beautiful.  They had many different rooms including an orchid room, dessert , exotic plants, rainforest, and even a small Hawaii area. The rainforest area was quite tall, with a catwalk where you could walk above the plants – which I thought was pretty cool.   They also had an exhibit with different scents and spices from different plants — it was interesting to smell the different curries, spices and fragrances from around the world.  There was also a “children’s garden” where children could dig, plant, water, and play.  Ross was fascinated with the water fountains.  I think he wanted to play with the fountain that you could pump yourself — but there were too many kids already playing with it!

After we walked through the Botanical gardens, we headed outside to the National Garden.  All the plants and flowers in the Botanical gardens were nicely arranged and manicured.  I expected that the National Garden would also be a nicely manicured garden.  However, it was more of a “natural” garden with paths running through it.  It was a disappointment after the beautiful Botanical Gardens.

Al, Dan, and Ross at the baseball game

Outside the gardens

Ross checking out one of the smell exhibits

Nicole in front of the orchids

Ross playing with the water

Ross didn’t want to leave the kid area

Outside the gardens

PS nicole wrote this post about 3 weeks ago and I only now got around to adding the pictures.

A few weeks ago, one of our family members (Jenn) was in DC for some training for work.  We were able to get together with Jess, Glenn and Jenn for dinner in DC at Capitol City brewing company.  It was great to catch up with Jenn — we hadn’t seen her since about the same time last year before she moved out to SanFran. While we were all sitting at dinner, we realized we completely forgot to invite another cousin, Sarah, to join us for dinner. Whoops!

The following weekend, Ross and I met up with Sarah to check out the newly renovated American History Museum.  It was one of our favorite museums before it closed a few years ago for extensive renovations.  Although it has re-opened to the public — they are not totally done with renovations and many areas of the museum were still closed off.

One of the biggest parts of the renovations were a new entry and Star Spangled Banner Exhibit.  I love the abstract flag that hangs in the main entry near the entrance to the Star Spangled banner exhibit — it was pretty cool.

My two favorite parts of the museum were/are the First Lady’s dresses and Julia Child’s kitchen.   Since the museum isn’t finished, the first lady exhibit is quite limited.  I was disappointed that Michelle Obama’s dress was not on display.  I did learn something new though – Did you know that the first lady was not necessarily the  president’s wife?  It was historically a hostess position, and was often taken over by the president’s daughter, niece or other relation.

Sarah and me checking out the dresses

Julia child’s kitchen was always a favorite of mine at the museum.  With the release of “Julie and Julia”, I think the exhibit got a lot of extra traffic.  It was fun looking at the layout of her kitchen (very functional), seeing her original stove (which she used for ~50 years), and all the cooking gadgets she had.

We went through a lot of the rest of the museum, but ran out of steam to go through it all.  We’ll have to go back and see the rest. Good thing the Smithsonian museums are all free =)

Ross and Nicole in Atrium

Sarah and Nicole in the atrium

Restaurant week means 3-course meals for $35.09.  Some restaurants offer a very limited menu, but Bistro Bis offered almost their full menu (with a small upcharge for some of the more expensive menu items).  Bistro Bis is a french bistro style restaurant in the Capitol Hill area of DC.  Ross and I took advantage of our metro-accessible location and took the metro to Bistro Bis.

Starters:

I stared with the caramelized pear, endive, blue cheese salad.  I would say the salad was okay – not enough blue cheese or pears for my tastes — and I learned that I don’t really care for endive.

Ross started with the mussel and liguica appetizer, in a sweet tomato broth.  The serving size was huge — almost a whole meal in itself.  He really enjoyed the mussels, the sausage and broth.

My monster appetizer which had a ton of mussels

Main Course:

I had the sea scallops served over a cauliflower mousse.  The scallops were huge and perfectly done – so yummy!

Ross has the pork belly served over polenta with a corn and butter bean salsa.  He really enjoyed the pork belly.

Dessert:

Ross and I were in such a hurry to eat our yummy desserts that we forgot to take pictures.  I had a lemon sponge cake with lemon mousse served with a blueberry sauce. Light and summery.  Ross had an apple tarte Normandie – traditional French apple tarte — also very yummy.

Because it was restaurant week, and the restaurant was full of people who wouldn’t normally splurge on such a fancy restaurant — Ross and I decided to play tourist and take pictures of ourselves and the food.  Hopefully we didn’t make too huge fools out of ourselves.

As we were finishing our main course, we ran into some of our friends at Bistro Bis — totally by coincidence.  Ross’ friend Aaron and his girlfriend Jenni  were seated  next to us — they had also made reservations for Bistro Bis that night for restaurant week.  It was fun running into them!  Although, later Aaron texted Ross saying they got a free 1/2 bottle of wine…we were a bit jealous.  Wonder how they managed that one.

Ross and I had a great time at restaurant week and will partake in it again in January.