In March, we noticed that there were several rabbits hopping around our yard. A few weeks later we found a dead one in the road in front of our house. After that our rabbit sightings were sporadic until June when I spied a very large rabbit underneath the tree in our front yard. Later that month I saw baby rabbit in our back yard. Hmm. Was this offspring of the large rabbit I saw in the yard?

Jesse and I have had a lot of fun watching “our baby rabbit” grow in the last month. We see him or her every evening when we water plants and do other yard work. He or she was always alone … until tonight.

This evening I saw two rabbits roaming about our vegetable garden. I watched to see if they ate any of our vegetables; they did not. They hopped over to our neighbor’s yard, then a few minutes later came back and stopped by our rose garden. I captured these photographs. I love how they are both relaxing in the second picture.

I read an article in a newspaper a few weeks ago that said the Washington, D.C. area is experiencing a rabbit boom this year. This is the first year since we’ve lived here that we’ve seen any in our yard. I have a feeling that now that I’ve seen two, more may be inhabiting our yard in a few months …

In May we took a trip to Dallas, TX, to visit Jesse’s mom, Rebecca, and stepdad, John. We had a wonderful week with them–savoring good food, excellent sights, and a surprise or two.

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.

Jesse and I returned to our wedding ceremony site, the Antrim, to eat a belated anniversary dinner.

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.

Monday was our first wedding anniversary! We celebrated by eating a tasty dinner at home. I cooked salmon and butternut squash. The squash reminded us of the butternut squash soup with lobster that we ate at our wedding reception.

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.

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011!

Jesse and I traveled to Pennsylvania over the weekend for my brother Jimmy’s wedding to Kelly. It was a lovely wedding, with perfect weather. It was great to visit with more family members and friends from afar.

I did a lot of dancing that night, and my feet hurt the next day. I managed to get Jesse on the dance floor to dance to two slow songs with me. The highlight of the night was watching my precocious great nephews (yep, I am a great aunt already) on the dance floor. Ryan, age 8, and Jacob, age 4, have breakdancing careers ahead of them! They were awesome, and really wowed the crowd! Jesse shot some video footage of the kids dancing, and I’m sure he probably captured me dancing the “Cha Cha Slide,” but we won’t share that here.

Congratulations Jimmy and Kelly!

Jesse proposed to me!

One big, wonderful wedding has happened during that time!

You can view a slide show of photographs from our wedding on our photographer’s website. We have many more great photos that we want to share with you. Stay tuned…

I can’t believe it’s been over two months since our wedding! Thanks again to all of you who made the journey to the Antrim for our wedding. We sincerely thank you for all of your love and support!

Jesse and I have been busy building our nest. Spring is in full gear so we are now busy with yard work. We planted a vegetable garden the last week of April, and watched with amazement as our gorgeous rose garden bloomed for the first time this season. We promise to share some wedding photos with you soon!

Last night we had our wedding after party. The party took place 2 weeks after our most special day. The event occurred at the artdc Gallery in Hyattsville, MD. It was a tremendous event with good friends and family.  We enjoyed the close of an art show, and celebrated the next show to come which will open soon.

Guests, friends, family, artists, and neighborhood art lovers stopped by to send their best wishes for our future life together. We were warmly surprised with gifts from our crowd. Thank you all so much. It really has a warm impact on us to share affection with those who came.

After the party, Barry Schmetter shot some wet plate photos of Amy and I. He’s a tremendous artist, and I can’t say enough about him. He spent over an hour with us running back and forth creating plates, shooting them, and developing them. He did this, while explaining to his audience about the process and history, which is over 100 years old. He’s developing a rebirth of an old technique with a new current use. If you have a lover, buy them a unique gift like this. A portrait of the two of you in a vintage plate will be an amazing conversation piece with great meaning for the both of you.

See the images here:

Our after wedding party will occur on the 3rd of April, 6 to 9 pm at the artdc Gallery.  We look forward to seeing the friends and artists who show!