Lucy's Top 5 Washington moments

1. Riding the carousel on the Mall outside the Smithsonian Castle (twice)

2. Drinking babyccinos at Ebenezers cafe (across the road from our accommodation)

3. Seeing the Washington Monument and telling everyone each time

4. Visiting the National Zoo and seeing an elephant have a bath

5. Sending a postcard to grandma from the National Postal museum and driving the purple(!) delivery truck

DC

We're off on another summer adventure, this time to Washington DC. It should be a 6 hour drive which is about the same time it took to the Outer Banks. However this trip we are driving on interstate roads at 70mph so it is further away. To stop, revive, survive we are stopping at a few civil war battlesites along the way. We're looking forward to seeing the White House, eating Ethiopian food and visiting the National Herb Garden for some tips.

We applied for some behind the scenes tours through our Senator's office and yesterday we received an email response - we were 'denied' a White House tour (ie they were full) but were 'accepted' for a Capitol tour. We meet at Senator Dole's office and head off from there (though I'm sure she won't be the one giving the tour).

See you in July!

The things mums do!

When we go out to eat Lucy is usually provided crayons and a colouring-in sheet by the restaurant. I keep some of these crayons in my handbag for those times when I want to wait for my meal in peace. My handbag was starting to feel unusally heavy so I cleaned it out only to discover to my horror that there were 29 crayons in my bag! These have been culled significantly. Can you see the triangular 'crayangles'? These are awesome as they don't roll off the table onto the floor.

Product of the week: Elmo cupcakes

I couldn't resist putting this photo up. We visited Apple Annie's bakehouse as we were at a shop nearby and a few people had recommended the bakehouse to us. It is a bakery specialising in cakes and bad-for-you treats. Lucy saw this Elmo cupcake and had to have it! Immediately! (But she had to wait to get home for a taste) She knows Elmo from a couple of books we have not from watching Sesame Street so she had no idea who the blue cupcake next to Elmo was (cookie monster). The head was mostly icing and thankfully Lucy had a few bites and then gave up.

Weekend quarantine

Lucy was out of sorts on Friday so she was shipped off to the doctor. 2 and a half hours later she was diagnosed with sand gnat bites and sent home. That afternoon green goo started oozing from her eye. After another 2 hours at the doctor on Saturday morning, with a belly full of Cracker Barrel blueberry pancakes, she was diagnosed with an ear infection and conjunctivitis (hence the quarantine). It is the same ear from the other week so she is on stronger antibiotics than before and has to have eye drops three times a day. It is not fun putting 2 drops in each eye of a 2 year old! Thankfully Lucy has not shown signs of the predicted diarrhea and vomiting but her eye is looking good now.

So we missed gymnastics and strawberry/blueberry/blackberry picking. But we had fun at home and did lots of gardening (ie weeding and mulching) so the main bed out the front is looking ALOT better. We still don't have enough mulch though. We used 11 bags and covered half the bed. We are thinking of getting a truck to deliver a ton to make it more economical to do the rest of the beds.

We also celebrated Fathers Day on Sunday! Andrew got a cup of tea in bed and after a little reluctance from Lucy he was given some presents (various salts including Peruvian pink, a salt mouse to serve the salt and an All Clad saucepan). Andrew and Lucy played in the sandpit together and then cooked lemon ricotta fritters with lemon curd dipping sauce. They were awesome! They are kind of like mini round doughnuts with a lemon zing to them. Lucy had fun sifting the flour and eating the lemon curd.

Now Andrew is in Boston again. It's another crazy week and then we head off on holidays on Friday.

Gardening with a twist

One of our favourite garden nurseries is Pender Pines located about half an hour north of Wilmington. It has a fantastic range of plants including bottlebrushes. But what makes this nursery really great is that it also has a lovely garden walk, a duck pond (with food to feed them) and believe it or not, 2 emus. Admittedly emu is pronounced 'e-moo' over here but they are genuine emus nicknamed Rhett and Scarlett. Lucy loves feeding the ducks but she especially loves seeing the emus when we visit here. Although she constantly denies that she is Australian there must still be some Aussie in there somewhere!

America's Test Kitchen

I like to cook. So when we moved here I sought out good food and new recipes. Although I constantly lament the poor food choices available I am happy to say that I have found a good source of American recipes at Cooks Illustrated. They test different food brands and products (much like Choice magazine in Australia) but best of all they support the idea that cooking from scratch is preferable to cooking from a packet (and it usually doesn't take much longer). They have a tv show called America's Test Kitchen which demonstrate some of their recipes. Although they do sometimes cook with corn syrup I have found that on the whole their recipes to be very good (ie lemon layer cake from Andrew's birthday) Generally the process they take is that they determine what they want to cook and then they use different ingredients and cooking techniques until they determine the best way to produce that particular item, often trialling the different recipe variations 100 times. It does mean that the recipes always work unlike some recipes from famous international chef that don't always turn out the way you expect. In any case if you have some free internet browsing time check out their database of free recipes. [Bear in mind though that Australian butter performs differently to American butter due to a different fat content but that is a story for another day]