Happy Holidays!

For the Christmas Holidays my husband and I are going back to Texas to visit my parents. My brother and his wife will also be there and my Grandparents just moved nearby. We are hoping to also catch up with a few of our friends and stop in to see my cousins who live in The Heights area. I am excited to have everyone in one place for the holiday.

After being in Houston for a week, we will travel to Austin to participate in a close friend’s wedding. During that time we will also be able to check in with a few college friends and my husband’s parents are coming to the wedding as well so we will get to see them as well.

We should return to DC during the first week of January and have few days to rest (and celebrate our one year anniversary) before my husband starts his new job.

Merry Christmas!

No Longer Under-Employed

My husband was offered (and accepted) a great job with World Resources Insitute working as a project coordinator. The job will include providing administrative and programmatic support to a team of researchers involved in US climate policy. He will be performing operational support for a large NGO with ample international connections, and will have the chance to demonstrate that his self-taught "radio" skills are more universally applicable than many potential employers have accepted.

The wonderful work environment is extremely open to cross-department brainstorming and actively encourages the extra-professional development of its generally younger staff. While it is not work directly in international affairs or elections policy, he should expect to learn a great deal about energy, climate change, and the balance between commercial, government, and advocacy organizations. WRI is a hybrid organization that seeks to demonstrate business advantages for climate-sensitive decisions or economic benefits to energy efficiency government policy.

We are very excited to have work (purpose), a salary and benefits.

Yeah!

White House Tour

A few days ago the production staff at the theatre and I went on a tour of the White House. Our tour was scheduled for 10:30 am and we all met up around 10 am to get in line together. Of course it started snowing exactly at 9:50 and as we stood outside in line waiting to go through security the snow flakes started getting bigger and bigger and wetter and wetter. We stood huddled next to the fence talking and laughing to make the time go by quickly.

Finally we made it to the first checkpoint at which we were asked to show our ID and recite our birthday before walking to the next checkpoint where we were asked to show our ID and recite our birthday before we were finally escorted to the building with the metal detectors. Eventually we all got into the main lobby of the White House. Then we were asked to wait again as Michelle Obama was passing though the building. When she had traveled we were able to wander through the beautiful building and look at all of the amazing holiday decorations. The theme this year was reuse, recycle so all of the decorations were being repurposed from old decorations or were made out of recycled materials. Everything was just wonderful but my favorite was the peacock themed room.

Happy Holidays!

Pumpkin Bread

This year I decided to make Pumpkin Bread instead of purchasing gifts. With that in mind I set aside today to spend baking. First I measured out all of the ingredients and prepped my the kitchen and my work area.

Ingredients Include:

3 cups Flour

1/2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp each Nutmeg, Cloves and Cinnamon

3 cups Sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 (16 oz) can of pumpkin

1 cup walnuts chopped (optional- I didn't add them)

1 cup raisins or craisins or a mixture of both

Then I sifted all of the dry ingredients together into a medium bowl.

Then I mixed the sugar, oil and eggs together in the large bowl.

Then mix the pumpkin into the sugar mixture.

Finally add the dry ingredients and fold in the raisins and any other materials.

Bake at 350 for 60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Then place on a rack to cool.

Wrap, decorate and give!

K-9 Dog Adoptions

Saturday we went to volunteer at a K-9 Adoption event in Virginia. There we a lot of very cute 1 year old dogs, a few older dogs and a bunch of puppies. The dog I was assigned to handle at the top of the event was very quickly snatched up so I ended up in the puppy pen for a few hours.

They were cute when sleepy but once they woke up the older ones were attempting to jump over the pen wall on a pretty regular basis. Once one of them made the escape the others all figured out how to leverage their legs on the wall and flop over the top. Luckily there were enough volunteers to put the older puppies on the leash and get them outside for awhile.

For more information check out: http://www.k-9lifesavers.org/

Office Holiday Party

Friday was our office holiday party. The Events Committee did a great job planning the event. There was holiday music, amazing food and lots of drinks. There was a cookie bake off with some great tasting treats and a White Elephant exchange that created a lot of laughs.

All in all pretty successful I think.