Happy New Year!

It's been a great one: getting married, moving to Seattle, changing Congress, learning how to put on makeup (Alicia), acing the first quarter (Brian, 3.7 GPA), and an incredible roadtrip experience.

Here's to many more!
Love,
Alicia and Brian

It's almost Christmas! Brian is done with finals on Wednesday. I'm really excited to go see the Christmas boats once he's done. There are dozens of boats that are decorated with lights that tour around the lakes every night during the holiday season. We see one or two of them each night as they enter Lake Union and they're beautiful.

We're headed back to DC on Monday. We'll be in town on Monday afternoon until Wed afternoon.

Will anyone be around? Can we help you play hooky from work?

Sigh...
I'm still unemployed. I've been job searching and interviewing. But it's between holidays and no one is posting or interviewing. grrrr...
But I can go to the climbing gym whenever I want. Morning, noon and night. And thanks to the internet, I can job search in my PJs.

And my parents visited Seattle for the first time last week! The weather fully cooperated so we got to do all of the tourist things plus some. We did the Space Needle, took a ferry to Bainbridge, toured Pike Place Market, ate salmon, saw the Ballard Locks, did some Christmas shopping, and drank lots of coffee and beer. They loved our neighborhood

Memorable moments:
- Mom, "your neighborhood isn't as sketchy as I thought it'd be!"
- Dad's ability to eat Top Pot donuts immediately after a full breakfast
- Watching the sun set over the city and Mt. Rainier on the ferry ride back home from Bainbridge
- Dad sitting on our couch before dinner, "I can watch the traffic patterns from your apartment!"
- Brian loving the cheese we got at Pike Place
- Going to a sports bar to watch the Seahawks-Broncos game and Mom making a game out of figuring out the NFL flags around the bar "Arizona what? Chicago who?"
- Dad presenting Brian with a Stella glass as "something any good son-in-law should have"
- Pretending to have been spying on Brian studying in the apartment from the Space Needle

Anyone else want to visit Seattle? Maybe in the spring?

Whew! So many visits! Justin came to Seattle last week for some work meetings. We had a great time. Sushi dinner, snowball fight, and a tour of Capitol Hill.

Then, my parents came to visit over the weekend. Lots more stories from that.