Panda-tastic

We headed over to the DC zoo this weekend, benefiting from the fact that as the zoo of the capital, we get Pandas from China. We got a good view of one of the pandas, hidden in the distance:



The rest of the zoo was good, especially the reptile houses with many small, brightly coloured frogs for Sarah. We found a lovely place for lunch, reminding us how many places we still have to see in Washington.

We've also received our new piece of furniture in the dining room, which looks great:

Bring on the Swedish Meatballs

Sarah and I went to Ikea, the Swedish meatball restaurant/furniture shop, this weekend to buy some things to prepare our house for all the coming excitement.

Whilst there, we rapidly realised that our plan to buy two china cabinets would be slightly complicated by the 44 page assembly manual. I have had trouble putting together bookshelves from Ikea, so building a functional china cabinet with glass, drawers, shelves and doors was perhaps not a good plan. The ikea price includes the cost of the item, but not the cost of marriage counselling, tears and broken plates from my complete inability to build things.

Luckily, on our way home, we stopped off at the Amish market we bought our table from, and they had a perfect match for us. This seems a better plan....

Decorating the Nursery

This weekend, Sarah and I took a quick trip to Great Falls, on the Potomac, to enjoy the beautiful February weather.

We spent the rest of the long weekend decorating the nursery-to-be in our spare room with Dinosaur decals. The decals are awesome, and look really good in the room:

Biometrics

On Friday, Sarah and I headed over to a small innocuous building in a Mall somewhere in the urban sprawl of DC. The building, between a Pizza Hut and a Subway, had blacked out windows and an unimpressive look. I was excited, as this was where I was going for biometric scanning to update my green card. I like the science in NCIS and Bones, so I couldn't wait to see the approaches that would be taken to biometricaly scan me. I imagined DNA readers, retinal scanners, maybe one of those cool machines they have at airports now to scan just under your clothes. I imagined there would be blue lights and infrared cameras.

It was disappointing when, after waiting briefly in line, I was fingerprinted and photoed by a very pleasant federal worker, and sent on my way. This was neat and all, but I somehow felt my high tech science hopes had been dashed....

Spirit of the Blitz

This week, Sarah and I decided to have a night without technology, trying to spend an evening together without the Internet, TV or computers. We decided that 1940s tech was ok, but didn't go as far as abandoning our dishwasher, washing machine or lights. We also don't actually own a radio, but think that Internet streamed radio is basically the same thing.

After staring for twenty minutes at the blank TV screen, we realised we might need to actually chat with each other. This lasted five minutes, and then we played a game of ticket to ride, which Sarah won handily.

Having survived the night with our marriage intact, we had a chill weekend. The weather is freaky warm at the moment, and we headed over to North Rock Creek park. If you watch NCIS or Bones, this place is where all the bodies are buried. We didn't see any bodies, but found a nice little lake:

Pics to follow!

Winter arrives

This weekend, winter came to Maryland. It snowed on Friday, and then iced over and has stayed cold for the weekend. It looked v pretty outside on Saturday morning:


I went on my Sunday run and survived the icy pavements and cold to take some picutres:





We spent most of the weekend sheltering from the cold. Took a trip to the baby store to see what we need to think about buying, freaked out some and then went and hid at home. There was a lot of stuff you could buy. Did you know, you can buy a machine to warm up baby wipes before use? Somehow, I think we can survive without that one. We also played some agricola to restore our sanity, ending in a fine draw:

Introducing our Proto-Baby

I have some exciting news, which we've been waiting to announce on-line for some time.

Sarah and I are expecting a baby, due later this year. We just went for our 20 week scan, and the proto-baby was doing very well, having grown to about 7 inches long. Here's a picture from this latest ultra-sound:

We are both excited at this up-coming addition to our family, and really delighted everyone is doing well.

I spent this weekend painting the room we'll use as a nursery, and have just finished getting this done. My clothes are now completely coated in paint, and I feel our proto-baby already has more coordination than me....

To take a break from getting the house ready, we also went on a walk to the C&O canal, where we met a man pulling a sled on the tow-path using Alaskan Malamutes - it was awesome.