Little Bear

The sweet little boy I've been watching since April is going back home to NYC this morning. I'm SO sad. As I put him down to bed last night I said, "I love you, Little Bear" and he gave me a big grin and a giggle. I wasn't being funny, but he knows how much I love that giggle - it was the sweetest parting gift.

picture of us from last month at the Aquatic Gardens

Oh sweetest little boy, how I will miss you!

An Ode to Summer

A beautiful short film best viewed in full screen.
Happy (almost) summer weekend.


An Ode to Summer from Kinfolk on Vimeo.

American Art Museum & Portrait Gallery

In one of our last outings (*sniffle, sniff*), Jason and I took Colin out to the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. It's a very pretty museum inside with a huge variety of exhibits. I'm sure we'll be back!

Make sure you read them!

 Little navigator

Summer Produce

Summer food! I'm so glad that my joy of cooking developed in the summer - it makes meals so easy with all of the in-season fruits and veggies. You can make delicious meals without much effort! I made some spinach edamame hummus yesterday - a bit more than anticipated - so I'm trying to think of creative ways to eat it. Any ideas? Please let me know if you have any ideas (or WANT some of it) because I have a giant tupperware full of it! Below is my first meal made with it - a sandwich flat toasted with the hummus and some cheese and topped with tomatoes. Eaten with a side of (more) spinach and some watermelon (I can't get enough watermelon)!

One of my favorite summer combos is this little dish of sauteed zucchini, summer squash, onions, garlic, and tomatoes.

It's delicious roasted as well. You can do so much with it - eat it with poached eggs and toast in the morning, as the insides of an omelette, on its own, over pasta with a little parmesan, a topping for pizza... the combos are endless! Yum.

July 4th

I call Independence Day the red-headed step-child of my favorite holidays because it's in the summertime and I love winter. But it's still a fun one for me because I LOVE fireworks. They're so magical! It was a HOT one this year. I wanted to go down to the National Mall.... so we did. But not before we sort of dressed up: Jason wore a blue shirt and I wore a red and white one and also painted my nails black with multicolored sparkles like fireworks (which a hippy-looking dude - a guy you would least expect to comment on a woman's nails - complimented while we were out walking around)!

We took so many other photos throughout the day but this is literally the only one worth sharing. Once we got to DC I was feeling miserable with the heat, the mall was a constructional mess (I knew this ahead of time but ignored the facts), and we weren't near any music or anything festive - just craploads of people. After stopping in at Fogo de Chao to get a couple caipirinhas, I said, "Alright, I've been in DC on July 4th. Let's go back to VA now." HA. So that's what we did. After sharing a cup of Pinkberry for dinner, we watched the fireworks from across the river with a sweet little neighborhood with a view where we all had a little "Firework" singalong (Katy, of course) and got distracted by a cute chihuahua during the firework show (we're totally going to wind up with one sometime soon)... It wasn't much, but we enjoyed it. Happy Burfday, 'Murica!

Katy Perry: Part of Me

By now you know of our joint love for Katy Perry. On Monday night we attended an early screening of Katy's movie, Katy Perry: Part of Me in 3D. It's out today and it's good -- go see it!

Jason took the day off (and Monday is my day off) so we thought it would be fitting to go to Shake Shack in DC for lunch. The first and last time we dined there we did so for lunch before our first Katy concert just a little over a year ago on June 15. Happy memories!

Ya like Jason's short haircut? I love it. 

And then the movie... It was a pre-screening for fans so when we got there we got special 3-D glasses, a poster, and glow sticks (we sort of grabbed three of everything between the two of us). The girl who was standing guard in front of it all looked at Jason and went, "you look just as excited as the other guys who are getting dragged to see this." I just smile and laugh inside when people say things like that... because I know secretly (or maybe not so secretly) he really loves it. He even updated his Facebook status with "KP time." Cryptic enough that most people wouldn't know what he was talking about. But I know and am blowing his cover because I love that he was excited enough to post it. I love that he loves her. If it wasn't for him, we never would have seen her live for the first time and the past year wouldn't have been as much fun as it was!

There we are wearing our awesome 3-D glasses. I'm keeping them to use for other 3-D movies because they didn't squeeze my fat head and give me a headache like other ones usually do! Also? Jason voluntarily took this picture. I didn't have to force him or even ask him - it was his idea! Love.

We had a running joke that I would probably cry through the whole movie, so Jason timed how long it took me to start. It took me 7 minutes, 24.5 seconds to tear up for the first time. At that point in the movie, you hear the opening cords of the beginning of the tour, which generated the same reaction from me each time I saw her live last year. I never full-out cried during the movie all but I got teary-eyed about a dozen times. Parts of it are really moving and heartbreaking. But I'm also a giant sap.

She's a pretty inspiring lady and the movie is empowering -- after all, the tagline for the movie is, "Be yourself and you can be anything." She's really worked hard to get to where she is today and she stayed true to herself all the while. If that's not inspiring and empowering considering the music industry nowadays, I don't know what is. I could go into detail but you should really go see the movie.

P.S. Apparently our power is back as of this afternoon - HOORAY!!!

Power, Where Ya At?

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! We have plans to go down to the mall, but Jason is so not excited about the prospect of being outside in the heat (and doesn't love fireworks like I do) so we'll see what really happens... he's tried to keep me from wanting to go by telling me that Katy Perry will be on TV but it's not working... I figure I'll hear "Firework" all day anyway and we got a good Katy fix the other night (more on that later when I have internet to work with again) so I'm rearing to hang out in our nation's capital!

[photos from July 4, 2010]

As for our (lack of) power situation... Allow me to quote a neighbor friend's Facebook status from yesterday:

In my email today: "We still have no estimate for restoration of your power, because we just strung caution tape around the tree resting on your power lines and called it a day. Our billing department has power, though, so here is your bill reminder. Up yours, xoxo, Dominion."

Still no power 'round these parts! Today is day 5 (6 if you count Friday night) without power. Apparently there were 1.5 million people without power following the storm and as of yesterday there were about 300K. We're hoping by the weekend we'll have power again... but who knows?

I am so thankful for my generous in-laws that don't mind us hanging out in their house. Recently they were complaining about how rarely they've seen us lately due to my wonky work schedule... they may never do that again because we've been invading their space since Saturday morning!

Hopefully it'll come back on soon because our apartment is seriously cookin'. That, and I have a lot of things to blog about and very limited internet! So stay tuned...!!!

Go

This is something that's pretty important to us, especially while we're childless. I'm not really one for repeat vacations (other than our mini ones to the lake). We may fall into the repeat vacays when we have kids (but I hope we don't), but for now there are so many places in this big world to see! Each year, we try to take a big vacation and visit a new place. Last year, it was our drive down most of the Pacific Coast Highway from Seattle to LA.

This year? Europe. More specifically, Brussels. Other than that? Probably France and Italy while we're out there... but we haven't really decided on anything yet other than we're flying in and out of Brussels so we can hang with our friends Maitha & Andreas (their wedding was part of our trip last year)! Jason is going for a week and a half and I'm going for three weeks before school starts. At this point we have less than a month before we're headed off - we're leaving later this month! Any suggestions for places to visit while we're out there? We're all ears!

[image from here]