 |
| George was so happy to see his play buddy! |
 |
| Joey and Lizz working on Thanksgiving dinner |
We had a great visit with Lizzie. George was so excited to see her. I thoroughly exhausted her, with visits to as many sites in DC as there was time, including Arlington National Cemetery, the Iwo Jima Memorial, Smith- sonian Castle, Freer Gallery, Hirshorn Sculpture Garden and Adams Morgan for Ethiopian food (its growing on me) on Wednesday. We covered all of the monuments and memorials on Thursday, as well as a trip to the Holocaust Museum. Plus Joey made a delicious, huge, food-coma inducing Thanksgiving dinner. Friday we started at 8 am with a tour of the Capitol, followed by a tour of the Library of Congress, over to Union Station, lunch in Chinatown followed by a visit to the Archives and the Smithsonian American History Museum, and a walk by the White House on the way home. Then we went out for dinner and drinks, culminating with a 1:30am visit to Ben's Chili Bowl. Saturday morning it was up early to the Eastern Market then over to Georgetown (including Joey's first time to a Dean and Deluca). I think by the time noon hit and we left to take Lizz to Baltimore for her flight she was completely worn out, as she was asleep within minutes of getting in the car. |
| Thanksgiving appetizers |
 |
| The delicious turkey |
Saturday night Joey took me to a romantic dinner at the very fabulous Marcel's restaurant. Then we were off to the Kennedy Center for the Nutcracker Ballet, which was just wonderful. I love getting all dressed up and watching the ballerinas twirl so gracefully. It was the perfect way to celebrate the sixth anniversary of our first date! Crazy how time flies!
We made our first trip to Costco last night. The final consumables spreadsheet contains 220 items, and I spent two hours yesterday afternoon estimating our monthly usage for each and every one of those items and multiplying by 23. Three hours and $800 later, we'd filled our cart, which is about as much as fits in the back of my car. Sadly, we believe this is probably the first of four or five trips. We are hoping that since yesterday's purchase was almost entirely toiletries it will be the most expensive. Razors (I wish I could use the cheap, disposable variety but I am Italian and that means a lot of thick, coarse hair. This, coupled with moving to Africa where it is always hot means I am going to have to shave my legs a lot more often than I like.), eye cream and and toothbrush heads were among the priciest items. We also bought a mattress topper (a little leary of the government issue mattresses) and new pillows.
We also spent almost an hour at the car dealership again yesterday. Thanks to many helpful comments on my blog, we avoided paying sales tax and seem to have a title or something like that, but as the manager of the dealership said, out of every thousand cars they sell, less than one is a diplomatic sale, and since most car dealers only last six to eight months, most have never completed this type of transaction, hence the time.
Rabies shot #3 this morning. Oh how I love getting shots. And vaccinations for that matter.
And on a final note (let me warn my male readers that you may not want to continue), I belong to a Yahoo discussion board for Foreign Service members and their families. I don't normally participate in the discussions, but every morning I get a digest of the conversations that took place the day before. This morning i cam across a recommendation for this lovely little device: http://www.rei.com/product/407267 and all I have to say is I wish I had found this sooner! It is going to come in very handy (no pun intended) in Nigeria.
