Urban Camping

So this morning, and by morning I mean middle of the night. A group of us from Georgetown camped out for tickets to see the National Tree Lighting Ceremony. 2400 free tickets are distributed to 600 individuals on a first come, first served basis at 8am on the first Saturday of November every year. We arrived on the Elipse near the White House visitor center between 2:30 and 3:00, with some food and blankets and popped a squat on the nice cold, hard cement. We received badges to mark our place in line, mine was number 108. It wasn't long before the night before caught up with us all and we hunkered down to get some sleep. It was very, very cold. After arriving home, I checked, and it was 41*F. I got a couple hours of sleep cuddling together with others to keep warm and woke about 7 with my toes almost numb. The view was amazing. In front of us was the Washington Monument and the National Christmas Tree which will be lit at the ceremony in December and behind us the White House. Finally after 8 am we received our tickets and headed back to campus, but not before seeing the yellow morning sunlight illuminating the capital.

Pictures from Halloween!

I had quite the unusual Halloween. I forewent partying with my friends, and instead went trick-or-treating with my 6 year old Star Wars pal. If you know me, then you most likely know who the handsome guy is below, if not, then I am going to opt to keep his identity on the DL. After we hit all the houses in walking distance Mr. Handsome and his friend's that went with us had quite the loot.

I then took off to go see a concert at the Strathmore up the road. The building is just beautiful and the acoustics were wonderful. The show called "The United" tour brings together Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith and was definitely worth seeing. The two gentlemen are at the top of the Christian recording world. I have a special connection to SCC as I have mentioned before, and with everything going on with Nate, talk about a heart moving concert.

Hope you had a good Halloween!

When at Home...

Various photos taken at home (or at least on the way). The first photo is connecting through Newark at a very early hour! See the empire state building in the background? I am so excited to make my third ever trip to New York in December, more in the coming weeks.


This is my house! Before we bought it , is was a drug house and you couldn't even see it from the street. Oh the number of trees that were removed, but now it is prettiful!Here are all of Nate's friends getting photos taken before homecoming. A real glimmer of hope in a dark and trying time. They figured they would save the 20 bucks and have their friend Abby taken them instead of buying the professional photos at the homecoming dance. The kiddos all arrived back at the house about 12:30 and some where still there at 5! By the way, the Redmond football team won the homecoming game!

My puppy, who is 18 months, and still thinks that he is a puppy, even though when standing on his hind legs he is particually my height! Here he is watching all the party goers out front and feeling very leftout!

Nate and I carved a pumpkin while home. Before being de-gutted it weighed in at 103 lbs and 43 inches around! When we were kids we used to do these elaborately carved genormous pumpkins, my dad would carve them with a jigsaw! We did his one with a serrated knife. Good memories, our neighborhood would go all out for Halloween, haunted houses and king sized candy bars! Again good memories.