A birthday story in pictures

First up: awesome happy hour with work friends at the always fabulous Zaytinya. Yes, the crazy hat made another appearance. You don't see me in hats much because they never fit on my enormous head. But this one did... hence its repeat appearance :)


After Zaytinya, we went to the Kennedy Center to see Wynton Marsalias, who was great. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that, so we'll fast forward to the actual birthday. Brad took me to the most rockin steakhouse, Bobby Van's, which is also the same place we went on our first date.


To carry on the tradition (apparently the tradition of promoting heart failure!), we both had the sirloin covered in gargonzola cheese. Unlike on our first date, I broke tradition of eating the entire thing and had a fantastic lunch the next day. It is really unlike any other steak I have ever had. Super fabulous.


Then, despite the fact that we hadn't planned on having dessert except for cake at home, they brought out a piece of birthday bread pudding. And who couldn't resist at least trying a bite or two. Or all of it :)

After dinner, we thought we'd burn off some calories by walking over to the White House, since we had heard they dyed the fountains green for St. Patrick's Day.

Well, either they lied or they used some weak dye, because you can clearly see that at least the north side fountain is clearly not green.

Once we were home, the present opening commenced. I won't post all the pictures, because they're all pretty awful, but thought I'd at least share the highlights:

new heart rate monitor for the gym (clearly a necessary item after the huge steak!)

a 50mm f/1.8 lens!! wohoo!

not the most flattering picture, but I thought you'd enjoy the story. I kept saying "I shall call it mini lens" (you know, from Austin Powers... due to its mini size compared to my other lenses? Okay, never mind!)

Then we had some cake. I had been telling Brad for weeks that I wanted to pretend I was nine again and have a Dairy Queen ice cream cake ("you know with the chocolate ice cream layer, then the fudge layer, then the chocolate cookie crumble layer, then the vanilla ice cream layer, then the whipped cream frosting!"). Well, he pulled through and while it wasn't the St. Patrick's Day themed cake he ordered ("No, birthday. Birthday ballons." - not so smart Dairy Queen guy), he pulled through and got an awesome tasting cake.

Happy (belated) St. Patrick's Day... from the Saull's!

Okay, so St. Patrick's Day was actually almost two weeks ago... but y'all can just continue the celebration!

this is Fitz, short for Fitzgerald II. Fitzgerald I is a wood shamrock that hangs on the front door

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

I know, I am wayyyy behind on blogging. It's not for a lack of things to blog about, it's about a lack of time to actually sit down and do it. Since March 12th:

• I'm a year older
• Brad took me to a fabulous hotel and spa to celebrate my birthday
• Brad hosted a happy hour for all my friends and coworkers to celebrate my birthday
• Brad took me to a fabulous dinner to the place where we had our first date to celebrate my birthday
• Brad's parents came to visit for a long weekend
• Work has been absolutely CRAZY busy
• Spring has officially arrived

I have some funny birthday pictures to share, so I promise to post again soon!

Things I Love

1. The old Brad Paisley song "Famous People"
2. Not realizing how good a picture is until it's up on my computer
3. Knowing exactly how fantastic a picture is as soon as I take it
4. Traveling, writing about traveling, photographying my travels, reading about other peoples travels
5. Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper (hard to find!)
6. Reading in coffee houses
7. Visiting cities I knew I would love (like Florence) and falling in love with cities I had no idea I would become so attached to (like Chicago)
8. My husband, who makes crazy faces just to see me giggle
9. The excited/nervous anticipating that comes with seeing old friends
10. A really good hunk of Italian bread covered in butter

What do YOU love?

A fancy dinner

I've been meaning to blog about this all week, but you know how the week just gets away from you sometimes? Yeah, I know you do. Anyway, last Saturday night, for no reason what so ever, Brad made a FANTASTIC dinner for us! Cheese and crackers started things off, followed by a salad featuring feta and apples, followed by a main course of cornish hens, baked potatoes and carrots, topped off with a fantastic chocolate mousse cake. I thought I'd document this rare occassion to share with you all:

my spring tulips... and that's Henry, the Ohio State football playing snowman. He sticks around until spring officially arrives. And, yes, our windows are open. It was 75 degrees last weekend. We're expecting snow this weekend. Strange city we live in!

To quote Carrie Bradshaw

"Hello lover" ;)

Snow Day!

So far this winter in D.C., we have had 2" of snow. Today we got 5"!!! Brad and I were both able to work from home today, which was nice since the bus system seems non-too reliable in the incliment weather. My office was actually on a two hour delay this morning (we follow the federal government), so while Brad was sleeping in and I was waiting for my coworkers to roll in, I went outside and snapped some pictures!

Around 1:00pm, we decided to walk up the street for lunch, only to find the cafe we were going to go to closed, as was the one across the street. Luckily there is a chinese restaurant two blocks away that was open. It is the first time I've had chinese in probably six months... it was good but, oh, do I feel full! The walk along the empty streets was pretty though.

cars parked on the street in front of our building
my little car, snowed in

BBQ grills in the courtyard!