These days

Here's a round-up of what we've been up to the past few days.

We've been dog-sitting for this cute creature:I also baked A LOT of cookies. The first baking party with SYL yielded three different cookies: chai shortbread, black and white striped cookies, and a classic sugar cookie.My observations: fresh ground cardamom will leave your kitchen smelling like cardamom for a long time; the black and white cookies were really good, but sooooo much work; and, by the time you've made all these cookies, the last thing you feel like doing is icing the sugar cookies.

The second round of baking was with Scott and Meh. They'd make sugar cookies and I brought some gingerbread. We'd planned to do this Christmas Day, but then it looked like this:Which is nice for memories, but bad for driving.

So we postponed our cookie-decorating party for a day. Here are the results:I still have more cookies left to bake for our family holiday swap. I'm making gingerbread, plus something else. Right now I'm leaning toward the chai shortbread, but we'll see. . . .

Christmas morning, I made these 90-minute cinnamon rolls. I've never had good luck with cinnamon rolls before, but these worked out great - and they really only did take 90 minutes from start to finish. I'd totally make these again.Last night we had a lovely dinner with Scott, Meh, B-hatch, Jenji, and a special visitor from the frozen lands.

A few of my favorite things

When the baby sleepsWhen the librarian bakesWhen the dog poses

Warrrrshington DeeShee

The last stop on our east coat tour was our nation's capital. We were mostly there for the nuptials of one of our friends from grad school, but we managed to squeeze in a few other things as well.

We stayed with one of Mike's friends from high school. Can you find him in the picture below?And here are the boys playing stratego:We also saw Marianne's mom for a very delicious brunch. She gave us some fudge and other treats, which we've been enjoying mightily!

The wedding was lovely - the bride beautiful, the groom happy, the food delicious - a good time was had by all!We also saw a few other folks in D.C. - a friend from grad school, and a friend of Mike's from college. Alas, no pictures there - I always bring my camera, but then I feel weird taking pictures when nothing "significant" is happening. I think this is only going to get worse, since it seems like our point-and-shoot camera is on the way out, meaning that we'll be relying on my baby more frequently. The only problem is that my other camera isn't exactly purse-friendly or easy to take pictures with on the sly. Oh well.

Knitting

As promised, here's a shot of my gift from Marianne. Amazing, no?
And here's a quick hat I knit for Mike to match his coat. It was all one skein of yarn, so it was sort of neat to see the colors change and fade as I kept knitting.

North Caroline

After leaving Boston, we flew south to visit my friend Marianne. It was significantly warmer than Boston.

We had a very pleasant and relaxing time in Greenville. Marianne's house is very cute. We did some knitting together, and she gave me a beautiful present [pictures of which she has, so I'll have to post them later].

We also did some neat outdoor things. Here are some pictures from a walk we took at the city park:And here are some pictures from our canoe trip on the Pamlico(?) River. There were four of us - Marianne, Brian, Mike, and myself - in one canoe. As you might expect, the canoe rode a little low and was a little tippy!We also did some Cook's Illustrated-inspired cooking. We made a vodka pie crust [it didn't actually taste like vodka - the vodka just keeps it moist so you can roll it easily without overworking the dough] and some sugar cookies. Yummy!

Boston

Mike and I are on a bit of an east coast swing. Our first stop was Boston, and we were there for four days. Mostly, we were in town for events related to the release of my great-grandfather's book, which had been newly translated into English. My great-grandfather was a doctor who was working in Armenia/Turkey during the Armenian genocide. He eventually rescued nearly 8,000 orphans, moving them to Beirut, Lebanon. He published his observations in German in 1921, but this is the first time the book is available in English. You can read some version of the story here [and how weird is that?]. I wish I had the ability to link to a page with an image of the book, but I can't seem to find one online. My grandmother spoke at the book launch party, and then many people came up to speak with her afterwards - to tell their stories about how her parents had saved their parents - it was incredibly moving.

Our time in Boston was a whirlwind of seeing friends and family [people in our family came from Lebanon, England, Switzerland, the Bahamas, and various points in the U.S.]. I took far too many pictures, so I'll just share a representative few.More pictures can be found here and here.

Chanukkah cactus

or something.

Also, I've probably watched this video ten times in the last few days. I can't explain why I like it so much (especially since I'm not wild about the other videos from this same sock), but, let's just say that any vlog that can mention shambalic organizations and dendrology in the same clip gets my vote. For real.

Water, water, everywhere

We've had a lot of precipitation lately up here in our corner of the world.

First, on Saturday, it snowed. So it looked like this - and it was beautiful:
And then, all day Sunday, all night Sunday, all day Monday, and most of the night Monday, it rained. And it was less pretty. I've never seen flooding like this in any state I've ever lived in. Check out the story and pictures from southern Washington.

Local coverage

Here's a piece the San Diego paper wrote about my grandfather.

Resolution Run

It's that time again!

That's right: time to register for the Resolution Run! Dipping is optional, but come on . . . . you know you want to! $25 buys you the right to be considered totally insane by all your family and friends.

This is a little heads-up for all those warm and dry people that I saw last New Year's Day who were, like, "Oh, that sounds like fun." Of course, maybe they were backing away slowly as they said that. But, no matter: This is your chance! I promise you a thrill (or at least a chill) that lasts all day!

Tackfodelsedag

This year, Mike and I hosted the whole gang (or much of the gang - his parents and sister, my mother, grandmother and brother) for Thanksgiving. For the meal itself, we were joined by two of our good friends, Jen Em and Turan. We had a good time with all our guests!Here are some pictures from our festivities:

Making cranberry sauce:Apple Pie:Dinner (not the best pictures, but with all that yummy food on the table, it's hard to focus on the camera!):The day after Thanksgiving, the ladies went to a tearoom for lunch. The tearoom was pretty, as it was all decorated for Christmas with all the Victorian trappings.We also played some games: And took a walk around Green Lake.As you'll notice from the walk pictures, it was actually quite sunny; this meant it was pretty cold, though. Thankfully (or characteristically?), the rain and the insulating layer of clouds are expected to return tomorrow.