Then it was inside for the food. Jesse cooked a fabulous brisket accompanied by potatoes, carrots and noodles. Every time he cooks, I am thankful that I have a wonderful husband who is an amazing cook! Andrea brought a tasty M&M birthday cake that she made for Maxwell. It was unbelievably good!

We took the boys across the street to the park so they could burn off all the sugar they had consumed by climbing trees and chasing balls. Maxwell wowed me (and frightened me) with his monkey-like climbing ability.

Here’s a picture of the birthday boy.

Instead of focusing on the negative when it snows, I like to look at the positive. Here are a few shots from my yard.

The snowflakes dangling from the chandelier were so much fun to make! Jesse’s mom gave me a kit years ago to make my own snowflake ornaments. I kept packing it away with the rest of my decorations because each year I never had time to make them before the winter holidays. I stopped doing that this year, and finally made the snowflakes in May. They really sparkle under the chandelier lights. Our cat was mesmerized by them the day we hung them up, but luckily (for safety reasons) she seems to have forgotten about them.

We wish our readers a warm holiday season and a bountiful new year!

I spotted this great creature peeking into the windows of the Colorado Convention Center.

I was looking forward to returning to “normal” October temperatures in Washington, D.C., but today we had a very rare snowfall for late October. Throughout the day, rain progressed to sleet, and then to light snow by late afternoon. We have a light blanket on the ground now. I hope it doesn’t kill the remaining pepper and pumpkin crops in our garden!

Here comes the bride…

You can’t see it in the photo on the right, but there was a bee in Ciara’s hair during the ceremony.

Carissa gave a fabulous toast to her big sister and Rob! We were so proud of her! Check out the DJ’s hair! We thought we were back in 1988 again! Hehe.

It was a lovely wedding! Congratulations and best wishes to Ciara and Rob!

On Tuesday, Aug. 23, at around 1:40 p.m. we experience an earthquake that measured 5.8 on the Richter scale! It was a shocking experience and we weren’t sure exactly what it was. It was surreal to feel the low rumbling build into a more intense rumble, then drift off, and then…quiet.

Hurricane Irene stormed into town on Saturday, Aug. 27, drenching us with several inches of rain and high winds over an almost 24-hour period. It was  unusual for us to experience two major natural disasters in one week in our part of the country. We were fortunate to not have any home damage during either of these events, and did not lose power during the hurricane.

During the storm on Saturday we had a new faucet in the bathroom installed. This one is taller than our old one and it should make it easier to hand wash items in the sink. It sparkles too!

Here’s a picture of Ciara’s gifts. Soon it will be time to eat more wedding cake!

Our week was jam-packed with fun! We started with a picnic dinner on the banks of White Rock Lake. We ate delicious Texas barbecue and listened to the sounds of Celtic rock from the band playing an outdoor concert next door at the arboretum. Look at that sunset!

Dallas has some fantastic museums! The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University holds the largest collection of Spanish art in the United States. It was interesting to see such a huge museum on a college campus.

We visited Forth Worth one day where we strolled through the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and ate a delicious lunch at the Kimbell Art Museum. It was the best museum food we’ve ever eaten, probably because the museum does not contract their food services with an outside vendor. The chef has been at the Kimbell for 30 years, and has published her own cookbook, The Kimbell Cookbook. We had a chance to chat with her while she bused our table!

We also stopped by the Fort Worth Botanical Garden. The highlight of our visit was a walk through the spacious and lush Japanese garden. There we saw a huge zen garden, and had a fun time feeding the koi.

John surprised us Wednesday night with tickets to see the musical “Rock of Ages.” We absolutely loved it!! The performers and the musicians in the band were first-rate! I (the ’80s music aficionado) knew every song that was performed. If you have not yet seen it, we recommend it! Any child of the ’80s will love it!

On Friday we visited Southfork Ranch of “Dallas” TV fame! OK, that was my pick, but Rebecca and Jesse said they both enjoyed it too.  We took a tour of the house and learned a few tricks of the trade that the TV producers used when filming the outdoor scenes. Actually, the owner at the time would allow the TV producers to only film on the outside of the house, and they could only shoot during summer months. It was a bit of a cheesy tour, but fun.

We ate delicious Mexican food Friday night (including cactus) at a restaurant in Oak Cliff. That was followed by another surprise–tickets to see three Texas blues/rock bands at the Kessler Theater! The headliner, Carolyn Wonderland, was outstanding! She is a musician from Austin who reminded us of Janis Joplin.

Before we departed on Saturday we took in more awesome museums in Dallas–the Dallas Museum of Art and the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.  The Crow Museum is a bit on the small side, but it has some outstanding modern and ancient Asian art and artifacts. The atmosphere is very serene, and Rebecca has even taken a few tai chi classes in the upstairs art gallery.

We made excellent time on our journey and had a few moments to spare, so we stopped off at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center in Frederick, Md. It is a beautiful space that has several galleries and a gift shop. We’ve enjoyed our jaunts there in the past.

It was fun to walk around the beautiful grounds of the Antrim again.

Inside, we were seated next to the fireplace in a romantic room in the Smokehouse Restaurant where we listened to a pianist play throughout our entire meal. Our personalized menu wished us a happy anniversary.

The chef is top-notch and the food is always excellent! Our 6-course meal was amazing! We started off with bread, breadsticks and a plate of homemade hummus, crackers and sliced red peppers, followed by appetizers: fried oysters for Jesse and creamy cauliflower soup with roast duck for me. The spinach salad was sprinkled with cranberries and served in a cumin-flavored Indian cracker shell “bowl.” Then the intermezzo arrived–a small glass (similar in size to a double shot glass) with shaved ice drizzled with cranberry juice and champagne. Jesse ordered the filet mignon for an entree and I ate a softshell crab. Both were served with the most fancy and buttery mashed potatoes I have ever eaten!

Here’s a picture of us at our table. Pardon the poor quality. It was really dark in that room!

Our dessert was extra special! Our waiter presented us with a plate of various goodies: sliced bananas and strawberries with a ganache glaze, two meringues, a large fig bonbon (amazing!), Godiva chocolate mousse topped with homemade cream and a candle, and a dark chocolate bar that had “Happy Anniversary” written on it with white chocolate. We were so stuffed that we couldn’t finish all of our dessert, so we took the bonbon and chocolate bar home.

Our meal took several hours to complete. We had a wonderful time revisiting our special wedding site, and we look forward to future visits.

For dessert we each ate a slice of the top tier of our wedding cake. The cake suffered a few bumps and bruises (they happened when I was wrapping the cake in Saran wrap and aluminum foil to preserve it), but it tasted delicious! It was as moist as it was the day of our wedding! Everyone told us that year-old cake would not taste good and that it would get freezer burn, but ours did not get burned and it tasted delightful. If you properly preserve it, the cake should taste just as good as it did when it was fresh.

This is a picture of our cake at our reception. Instead of a traditional cake topper, we wanted two butterflies placed on the top of the cake.

We were so happy to see our cake again! It was one of the highlights of our reception. It turned out to be the exact color that we wanted it to be, and we were tickled to see design that we created on paper in cake form.

When we were finished eating, I sliced the cake in half. I wrapped up half of it and put it back in the freezer. We’ll eat the other half throughout this week.

Here are a few shots of the cake, before and after we ate it. The top two layers are red velvet and the bottom two are chocolate. I love chocolate but was never fond of red velvet until I tasted the cake that our cake baker made. We couldn’t decide which flavor we wanted. It was Jesse’s idea to serve a combination of the two.