This weekend was egg dying time! Notice the before and after photos above :) The egg dying kit I bought had a tube of glitter so you can't really tell from the pictures, but the eggs sparkle! And just incase the glitter didn't add enough pizzaz, Jen brought over some googly eyes just to give the eggs an extra oomph this year. Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail...
My new food obsession is frozen yogurt and there is a perfectly amazingly delicious store in Georgetown called IceBerry that serves 5 different flavors and 15 different toppings. My favorite flavors are strawberry, chocolate, original, and honeydew melon...I guess that means 4 of the 5 are my favorite :) Green tea is not so good. But, it's real yogurt not just soft serve ice cream, so even people who are lactose intolerant can eat it without worrying since it contains live and active culture acidopholous. I love IceBerry and it makes for an excellent low-fat, low calorie snack during the afternoon. I've been packing my lunch for work so that I can work through my lunch hour and then go get yogurt midway through the afternoon :)
Here we go with round 3 of the birthday celebrations....I really love March :) My dear friends Chris, Alissa, and their 3 month old ADORABLE son Henry came to visit me this weekend. They came on a great weekend because it was the Smithsonian Kite Festival and the beginning of the Cherry Blossom festival - will try to get good Cherry pictures this week and post. We did lots of walking and went to mass at the Basilica on Sunday. Henry was a doll throughout the weekend; I tried to convince Chris and Alissa to leave him in DC and come back another day to get him but for some dumb reason they didn't go for it :( The kites were beautiful - everything from a pirate ship to a giant fish, plus lots of squids....apparently a kite store had a sale on squid kites cause no joke, there were at least a dozen of them I saw throughout the day! My friend Jen met us on the mall and brought two kites - a butterfly and an owl - so now I can say that I flew a kite in the Kite Festival!
The ball reads "Have a BALL on your birthday. Cheers!" Why, might you ask, do I have in my possession a large, pink bouncing ball?? Simple answer: I have a brother named CJ. He mailed this to me for my birthday...yes, that's right, he MAILED it to me just like it is with stamps right on the ball and my address. The people at the post office were laughing as much as I was when I went to pick it up. They were searching in the back room for my package and finally after about 10 minutes they came out holding the ball saying they didn't realize that was the package! Haha!! Thank you CJ for making my birthday just a little more interesting....and I now have a great back to kick around outside :)
My official birthday weekend! I can't even begin to describe how much fun I had hanging out with my friends and meeting new ones. 3 Ohio friends + 2 new Virginia friends + 1 unexpected Kentucky friend = a birthday I'll never forget :) I spent the weekend celebrating my 26th birthday in our nation's capitol surrounded by sunshine, 80 degree weather, my best friends, a couple protests, and non-stop laughter. I discovered my talent for playing the bass in Rock Band - and my non talent at singing and playing drums! That's an understatement :) I got a call Friday night that my law school friend, Joseph, was in DC to supposedly visit his friends, but unbeknownst to him they were actually in Mexico and he wasn't supposed to come until the following weekend! Haha! So it was a great surprise that I got to hang out with him and catch up! He left Saturday but Jess, Kacy, Tony, Sam, and I hung out the entire weekend visiting DC monuments, shopping at Eastern Market, walking our feet off, protesting healthcare, playing Rock Band, watching movies, taking in the nightlife of DC and Virginia, listening to music (or covering our ears at Tony's musical choices), bouncing a pink swimming pool ball through the streets of Capitol Hill (thanks CJ!), and most of all, enjoying and celebrating my birthday to the fullest! 
The most interesting dining concept I have ever seen - sushi on a conveyor belt. Not many things cause me to pause a shopping trip, but this sight did just that. I was at Tyson's Corner mall over the weekend with my mom and sister when we looked down over the second floor railing into the food court below and saw plates of sushi riding on a conveyor belt around this little restaurant for people to simply pull off what they wanted right there at their tables. What an efficient means of service! Imagine how happy people would be eating out if they never had to wait on food nor get up to go to a buffet line....on the other hand, not all people might appreciate eating food that has been sitting out and moving around tables where people could sneeze and breathe on it. My conclusion - conveyor belt restaurants are meant for Type B personalities only.
This is going to be a quick post because quite frankly the rat still gives me the heebie-jeebies, yet I felt it was something I should still share :) Lucky you! I was in search of gift bags for work, so I went down into our creepy, dark basement - there's only one door and you have to go down a steep staircase outside with ceilings so low I have to duck and barely enough light to see across the room - and stumbled across this giant rat. He was dead, thankfully, but it made my heart race nonetheless. I went back to the office, allowed my heart to stop racing, took a swig of water, grabbed my camera, went back down fully prepared to see the rat and take picture, then went back to the office and told the landlord. I even took my size 10 shoe off to show you just how large this rodent really was.
Happy birthday to me a week early! My dad will inevitably make a comment on this post about it NOT being my birthday yet and therefore I should NOT be opening presents, but hey, life is too short to waste time not celebrating your birthday....and that was a lot of negatives in that sentence but seeing as how it's almost 1am, I'm not going to consult my grammar book :) 
This is a picture of the Titanic memorial in DC. No joke. I was sorely disappointed that there wasn't a boat or pictures or the story of the Titanic. Nothing! This statue is basically a replica of Kate Winslet from the movie as she stands on the helm of the ship...or maybe it's called the bow...whatever the front deck of a boat is called. But anyways, guess it's one more thing to cross of my DC list of things to see - and one more place I will NOT be recommending to tourists!
I went to the national botanical gardens this weekend to look at the orchid exhibit and it absolutely took my breath away! Imagine walking under an archway of orchids into a room that smells like sweet, tropical jungle with every color orchid imaginable right before your eyes. Magnificent! I was in picture-taking overload, but these are just a few of my favorites :) I've sent the images off to be printed in various sizes and I plan on framing them and hanging them in a random, collage style mosaic on my bedroom wall. My grandma put it best when she looked at the pictures and said "Only God Himself could create such beauty."
Woke up this morning to the sun shining bright, so decided it would be a great morning to ride my bike to church. It's about 12 blocks from my apartment, so I dressed in pants and a jacket anticipating it to be a bit chilly despite the sun, but lo and behold, about 5 blocks into the ride, I have to unzip my jacket and roll up my sleeves! How wonderful! On the way back from church, I stopped at Eastern Market - a fabulous outdoor food, craft, and junk market :) My favorite place to go on the weekends... if you're a young professional living on capitol hill, chances are you'll end up at Eastern Market at some point during the weekend, either sipping coffee at one of the sidewalk cafes, jogging through Lincoln Park, riding bikes along Pennsylvania Ave., browsing the artwork and antiques, or walking your dog. It's a great place and exactly what I imagined and hoped DC would be like when I moved here :)
Driving on the freeway the other day, I was caught in traffic behind the painted RV and thought to myself "Yes! At least I have something to look at while sitting here!" I also started thinking that if I ever went on a really long road trip - like to Alaska - that's exactly what I'd like to drive....a painted RV. Not only would it be comfortable inside, I'd give other drivers something interesting to look at in traffic. It'd be awesome!
I'll start out by saying this is not my cat but yes, he is in my apartment. His name is Mr. F.C. Sweet Tea (full name: Mr. Fried Chicken Sweet Tea) and he is a Norwegian Forest cat...fat and fluffy. You might be wondering how he ended up in my apartment - simple really, I let him in :) I love cats and I'm not allowed to actually have one, so when my friend's cat follows her over here, I let them both in and get my cat fix for at least a couple hours until I can petition my apartment complex to let me get one. He is so sweet and did I mention fat and fluffy??
