National Cathedral

Last weekend, Brad and I wandered up to northwest DC to check out the FlowerMart at the National Cathedral. What we found were cool booths with arts, crafts, food and a few flowers. I got some great shots of the very photogenic cathedral that I thought I'd share. The rest of my shots, including the ones from our climb to the top of the bell tower, can be see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54672484@N00/sets/72157600115719294/

Being married means...

doing something nice for the other person, even when you don't want to. This week, Brad is attending training for work out at a hotel out by Dulles airport (ie in the middle of nowhere). This training requires him to stay at the Hilton hotel where his training is, resulting in a mini business trip without really leaving town.

Last night, after a long day of work and a reception I had to attend after work, I drove the 45 minutes out there to meet him for dinner. I was exhausted, but excited too. We had a great dinner at a very random thai place which was recommended by the Washington Post. We never would have gone to the place had it not been for the Wash Po!

After much back and forth, I decided to stay over night at his hotel. It was so nice to crawl in to the big king sized bed with my hubby after spending the night before apart. We were nerdy and not only went to bed early, but I stayed up and watched a documentary on PBS about Bush 41's presidency (hey, it was pretty interesting AND the room had a huge like 40-something inch flat screen HDTV!).

The downside of all this? It took me almost two hours to get to work this morning, instead of my usual 20 minutes :( But it was all worth it to spend the evening with my sweetie, especially since we won't see each other again until Friday.

The moral of the story: being married means sometimes you have to give a little bit more than you feel like and it's almost always well worth it in the end.

Almost Famous?

I'm not sure how many of you know about an awesome travel resource called Schmap. This site offers cool suggestions of fun things to do in a variety of cities around the globe. I am proud to say that one of my photos was included in their latestest East Coast edition. They dug up an old photo of Camden Yards I took off my Flickr page and it's featured in their Baltimore section! A screen shot is below (click on it to view it better), along with the original shot. Could this be the first step toward photographic stardom? :)

Six Months

So, apparently I'm a bad wife. After checking out numerous blogs, it appears almost a requirement that if you're a "newlywed" (I use that term loosely now!) that you're supposed to brag on your six month anniversary. Ours was last Sunday. Opps! So, just imagine I'm posting this on Sunday :)

Six months ago, Brad and I became husband and wife. It was such a great, happy day for both of us. We're not much on celebrating random anniversary's, but Brad still treated me right for this one. Saturday night after 5:00pm Mass, we went to Il Porto, our favorite restaurant in Old Town for a fantastic dinner (same restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner!). Since we're frequent diners here, we've gotten to know the manager pretty well and were greeted warmly, as always. We had a great meal - salad, pasta, even dessert and coffee! Afterward, we headed home and watched "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark" - obviously a very romantic movie! We're plowing our way through all three old Indiana Jones movies before the new one comes out this summer :)

Sunday morning we were able to relax a little, since we had gone to church the night. We met our friends Gena and Mike for lunch, since they were in town for the weekend. They're getting married in June. Gena was my maid of honor and I'm a bridesmaid in her wedding, which I'm very excited about. She and Mike are a great couple. After lunch, Brad and I took a good ol' fashioned nap, which was fantastic. One of those really good quality naps where you fall deep asleep and wake up an hour later totally refreshed. Sunday night, Brad made me a fantastic dinner. I should have taken a picture, it was so good. Baked chicken marinated in Italian dressing, broccoli with some melted cheese on top (Brad HATES broccoli, but knows it's my favorite... now that's love) and some bowtie pasta. Oh yeah, and Yellow Tail Cabernet-Shiraz, which I promptly finished with last night's dinner. It was just great. Afterward, we just hung out, watched some baseball on TV, prayed the Rosary and headed to bed.

So happy (belated now) anniversary honey! I'm so happy to be your wife!! :)

It's official...

As far as the Social Security Administration, DMV, my bank, credit card companies, and car insurance are concerned I am officially Mrs. Saull as of Friday afternoon... some art to follow later today. A little scary if I must say...

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Mass in D.C.!

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at the Washington National's new ballpark this morning. I'm sure many of you watched it on TV, as I did. However, my boss and one of my coworkers got to go to the Mass (we pulled straws to go, and I lost!). I thought I'd share some of their pictures.

Nationals Park, ready for the Mass

Bishops enter

Republican Leader Boehner and Speaker Pelosi chat it up before the start of the Mass (Catholicism apparently breeds bipartisanship!)

the Popemobile makes its rounds

Pope Benedict enters the stadium to celebrate Mass

my boss, Congressman Sullivan, after the Mass

Welcome to D.C. Pope Benedict!

Unfortunately Brad and I won't get to see him in person, but everyone is very excited he's here!

Happy Birthday to Brad!

I hope I can speak on behalf of my hubby and say that he had a great birthday! After work, we headed up to DuPont Circle, where we had 8pm dinner reservations at Al Tiramisu. Before dinner, we walked around a little, stopped by the Starbucks we went to on our first date and browsed through Books-A-Million. After a great dinner, we headed home for presents and cake! Happy Birthday sweetie - I had a great evening with you!

the birthday boy enjoying a beautiful spring DC evening

it's time for presents! it's time for presents!
Happy Birthday!

Hershey!

Last weekend, my awesome husband took me away for a mini-vaca to Hershey, Pennsylvania. I'm still sorting though all my pictures, but I thought I'd give you a sneak peak :)

She Knows His Love's in Tulsa..

I'm back from my four day trip to Tulsa. It was a fun city to visit - got lots of good work stuff done, really got to see the entire area (which is rather vast and flat), hang out with some great people, drive down Route 66 and eat lots of fried, bad for you food (Sonic, Quick Trip, Coney Islander... ugh...). I (stupidly) didn't take my camera, which is unfortunate because there is so much cool art deco architecture. So I thought I'd steal a few pictures from my photo savvy coworker so you could get a glipse of Green Country (thanks Tidwell!)

a huge, art deco Methodist church on the edge of downtown
the famous Cain's Ballroom concert hall - a Tulsa treasure!

Happy Spring!!!

Spring has finally arrived in Washington (I hope!!!) Thought I'd share some fun tulip macros with everyone to celebrate its arrival. I'll be in Tulsa Tuesday through Friday, so hopefully I'll have some fun Tulsa pictures to share upon my return.

So you say it's your birthday...

I had a great 26th birthday celebration yesterday! Thank you to everyone who was so generous and made it special.

The festivities actually kicked off Friday night when Brad treated me and two of our good friends, Laura and her boyfriend Saiful, to dinner at The Majestic, a restaurant I've been dying to try since they reopened a few months ago.

Brad was very brave and ordered a whole Branzino (a European seabass), which came with the head and tail still attached (eye ball included!) and all the bones still inside. I'm very proud of him - he ate the whole thing!

Laura and Saiful enjoying their yummy dessert

I waited all of Lent to have some chocolate on my birthday and it was well worth the wait!

Festivities last night kicked off at dinner at my favorite neighborhood Italian place, Monroe's. Nicely located right across the street from our apartment, we frequent the place about once a week, so it's nice that the waitstaff and hosts kind of know who we are. I had a great meal of scallops and pesto pasta and Brad had their amazing porkchop. I was surprised with a big hunk of chocolate cake with a candle in it. We we got home it was time for more cake and presents...

the candles were like mini 4th of July type sparklers - they were sparking all over the place!

chatting with Dad to thank him for the awesome travel books and photography class

thanks for the fun springtime stuff Noni and Papa!
being so happy that I'm finally not the only person in the entire world without an iPod. Thanks to EB (my boss) and Senger (a coworker) for helping Brad navigate the iPod world :)
loving my new camera bag from Brad
Brad made it a very techie birthday with an iPod AND an external hard drive that can store up to 145,000 photos!!
Gena and Sophie made me some very yummy birthday cookies - thanks ladies!

Reflecting...

As the big 26 comes one week from today, I've been thinking about how awesome my birthday has been the last few years since Brad and I started dating. This Friday we will be headed to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, The Majestic, with my good friend Laura and her great boyfriend Saiful. I can't wait!

The first year we dated, we went on our first date the week after my birthday. I has only been in D.C. for a few weeks, didn't know a soul and this stranger from one of my OSU poli sci classes remembered me and that it was my birthday. He took me out for a fabulous dinner and it turned into our first of many dates.

The second year we dated, we decided to do something low key. I think we went to dinner somewhere and hung out at my house afterward, hence the crappy sweatshirt in the picture below with my yummy ice cream cake:

Last year, Brad took me out for a great dinner to celebrating the big 2-5, even though we were broke saving for the wedding and never went out. Afterward, he got me and AWESOME cake from CakeLove, this amazing bakery in D.C.

my fancy drink at dinner!