Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Celtic Woman, CrossFit and Pandas!

Man. What a weekend.
I am back on the blog today after spending the Memorial Day weekend celebrating our 2nd Anniversary in DC with Erin. We had a blast and got to experience every single thing we both desired. The highlights…

Starting on Friday evening we went to the Celtic Woman concert with my parents which was fantastic. They put on an incredibly entertaining performance full of songs and dance including some amazing instrument interludes. I love the whole Celtic culture and really find it fascinating.

We then left Saturday morning early up for DC. We decided to spend Saturday exploring the surrounding areas and spending the full day Sunday in the city. So since we couldn't check into our hotel until the afternoon (and made it to DC in good time) we spent the morning exploring NOVA and Erin gave me a tour of the area she lived in when she lived up there. It was fun. Got to see her old house, school and her Dad’s golf course. After that…. It was my turn to pick what we did. It just so happened that the Mid-Atlantic Crossfit Regionals event was being held at the Patriot center at GMU. I COULD NOT let this opportunity pass by. So Erin gracious came with me because she knew how much this meant to me. It was so sick! We explored the vendors, got free stuff and eventually made our way into the event and watched about 5 heats of both men and women. Even Erin started asking questions and cheering! Totally worth it. We then spent the evening in Tyson's Corner and shopped for a bit and Erin picked the grossest Mexican place ever. Epic dinner fail.

Sunday we got up and had the free shuttle service at the hotel take us to the metro station. The driver of the shuttle was a Kenyan native and we had some great conversations with him about Kenya and about our good friend Lemiso from triple r. We went straight to the zoo Sunday morning and it was great! Got to see the pandas in full action eating and climbing around. Ran into a good friend from high school at the zoo which was a pleasant surprise. We got to see the elephants and the lions which were sweet. The “lioness” or Nala as I called her had 2 cubs that were running around wrestling with each other which was really cool. The “papa lion” or Simba as I called him was freaking awesome. At one point the dude stood up and let out the most legit roar ive ever heard. #awesome

We then just explored the rest of the zoo and made secretly made fun of the other tourists that made us laugh. You see some characters in DC. Then we ended up eating lunch at the coolest place ever. Don’t even remember what it was called but it was a café/restaurant that was all open to the outside and served an eclectic array of brunch/lunch items. We forgot it was Sunday so we were stoked to see breakfast still being served.
Then we decided to hit the mall area and do the whole monument thing and walk around to see the sights. It was pretty cool being there for memorial day weekend because they had a bunch of events and concerts and stuff around. The coolest thing we got to experience was “Rolling Thunder”. Basically its 1.5 millions motorcyclists from around the US who ascend on DC for a ride to the Capitol. Literally the police shut down I-495 and people lined the exits and over passes waving and cheering the riders on. It took them from 9am to 4pm to get all the bikes through the loop. It was freaking epic. From Vienna to the Capitol Building around the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial the roads were shut down and 9 hours of continuous motorcycles. We spent some time people watching at the Washington Monument which is always fun in DC. After a brief annoyance of having to wait 45 minutes at the metro station waiting for our shuttle… we finished off the evening eating dinner  then hitting the hot tub and pool in the hotel.

We slowly got up Monday and hit the road stopping in Short Pump along the way. Before even getting home we stopped at a good friends house for a little pool party/cook out for her birthday which was actually kind of nice. After driving for 5 hours jumping in a nice chilly pool on a hot sunny day was totally refreshing. We hit the grocery store on the way home and FINALLY made it back and got to relax.

All-in-all it was a great weekend and being able to spend a fun stress-free weekend without any real plans holding us to a set schedule was totally refreshing. Albeit we totally missed Church on Sunday and all our friends.

Now its back to the grind. All though SOL’s are over for Erin which is fantastic. If you’re not married to a teacher you have no idea how wonderful it is when SOL’s are over!


Weekend = Success.   

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