a lovely wooden bench

Some of you might have wondered why the header of this blog is an empty bench in a seemingly empty park... yes? Well, long story short that bench is where my sweet husband proposed to me two years ago today. But who ever likes a long story cut short? Not I said the fly. Of course, I hail from the days of Chi O's having candlelights every week, so perhaps I just enjoy a good proposal story... I can't help it. So if you don't care to hear about how we started this little journey of wedded bliss, you can skip this post. If you're a diehard romantic, you may want to stick around... ;)

Well, two years ago good ole husmate pulled the wool over my eyes and led me to believe that he needed help finding an apartment up in DC for when he started his job. Somehow it was simultaneously important enough that my advisor (sweet Dr. A) excused me from a mandatory Alumni Delegate function and common enough that my usually detail-oriented always-asking-questions mother simply said "be sure to take a camera!" Hmm... red flag, anyone? (Actually my mother being so keen on the idea from the start really did send up a red flag, but I just brushed it off and asked my dad if she was okay. Haha!). I then emailed all my professors that I would be absent on Friday (one of them told me it was my decision if I wanted my grade to suffer... I think I made the right decision in the end) and started to get excited to fly to my favorite city!

Since I now had a free weekend, I packed my bag and flew with then-boyfriend to DC eeearrrly Friday morning. He told me that the schedule consisted of job interviews on Friday morning and apartment hunting on Saturday, so when he left me at the hotel to go to his "interviews" I thought nothing of it. I climbed back in bed and took a nap, while the boyfriend was actually walking around the city memorizing his route for that night's plan & calling some friends to calm his nerves. He came back that afternoon saying his "interview" went well, and we got ready to go to dinner.

Boyfriend was super smooth in that he "let me" choose where to eat knowing that I would choose a restaurant we went to the previous summer while he interned up here and I was visiting friends. So still no red flag had been raised in my head. After dinner, I begged him to walk around the monuments at night because it's my favorite time of day to view them (again part of his evil plan). Still no red flag. 

As we're walking towards the monuments we pass the DAR Constitution Hall and see all these people milling about. By nature, I do not get curious about what others are doing but he does, so he asks if we could go see what was up and I agreed. As we're nearing the steps I see someone pull out tickets to be admitted, and I make a remark about how we don't have tickets and can't we please keep walking to the monuments? I got shot down pretty fast while also being pushed towards the door. Turns out he has tickets to some mysterious show that he won't tell me what it is until we're sitting down in our seats. Red Flag. 

Oh, it's just the Avett Brothers. My favorite band. Ever. No big deal. He tells me he discovered that they were playing here earlier this week and he bought the tickets on stub hub (can you tell how gullible I am with him?) and I totally believed him! Red flag is at half mast. Avett proceeds to play an incredible show, and naive little me- I comment during their song "Murder in the City" about a lyric saying "Always remember, there was nothing worth sharing/Like the love that let us share our name" that one day we'd share that bond. Ha! I crack myself up at how soon that was going to come true. 

So the concert ends and I beg again to walk to the monuments; obviously I am playing into his master plan... So we're walking and talking and heading towards a park that we both had mentioned we wanted to see. I start rambling on about how cute the ducks were in the pond being paired off, and he just lets me go on and on in my merry little nerdy ways. By this point we reach the Bench. We sit down and start chatting, and he tells me he has a small surprise for me. Now you would think that this would cue a red flag? Yeah, weirdly it didn't.

He pulls out a puzzle and tells me to put it together but not to flip it over. Hmm, what was that? Don't flip it over? So there's a part two to this? But that little train of thought exited stage right as I started to put the pieces together. Super sly one over there had collaged together all of the ticket stubs and receipts and trinkets from our relationship (even though he adamantly told me not to be sentimental about these things earlier in our dating relationship), and I was simply put quite mesmerized. He had to interrupt me from my trance to even remind me of part two of the puzzle. Ha, whoops... So I flip it over, and it was a picture of a little boy and a little girl kissing him on the cheek. And there was a speech bubble in the picture that said "Will you marry me?" WHOA. Hold up. Read that again... Yep, it definitely says that. I did not string this together out of my imagination... I look over and he's on one knee. He told me he loved me and asked him to marry him! 

The romantics of the story don't even stop there (I know, right? He's gooood). Inside the box was a gorgeous ring surrounded by yellow rose petals that he told me he picked the same night he told me he loved me for the first time. That night he had given me a red rose, and on our wedding night he gave me a dried white rose (also from the same night). Yeah, he thinks really far in advance...

After he put the ring on my finger, he told me there were a few more things. My mind is completely blank by this point. Can't even fathom what is going on. He hands me our journal and tells me that he wrote about his entire planning process, and in the binding was a scrap of paper I once gave him several months back of a quote by e.e. cummings: "Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense." 

After reading our journal, he said he also had a letter from someone that I might want to read... He hands me an orange letter in a wonderfully familiar handwriting that's addressed to Mr. Jordan Berry (and KB). My sweet big sis, Laney, had been tipped off and wrote a beautiful letter that brought on the first wave of tears. Her letter made our engagement real for me, and I couldn't have asked for a better way to come to the understanding that I was getting a new last name and wonderful husband to spend the rest of my days with. I was so numb from emotions by this point that all I could do was thank God over and over again for all of my many blessings, most of which were sitting on a park bench holding my hand. God is so good.

To end this scene on a note typical of us Berry's, my now-husmate looked at me before we left our little bench and pulled his hand into the shape of a gun and said "Boom!" as if to shoot the starter pistol my dad had always joked about (Boys only get to determine the start to the wedding, girls do alllllll the rest). 

Funny, funny boy whom I get to love for the rest our life. I am a lucky girl.

a valentine for my valentine

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I hope no one else procrastinated as much as I did to tell your special someone how much you love them (some things never change...). And I know we're all secretly excited to start seeing less pink and red everywhere and more Easter pastels in the grocery stores ;) Reese's eggs here I come! 

a rock, a hard place, & a broken heart

In short, this is a bittersweet post. Let me preface what I'm about to tell you by saying that I never in a million years thought that what has happened is something I would ever do. Which has led me to know that I have always judged people in the past for doing so, but the question remains which is the lesser of two evils?

After a tremendously hard week and a lot of tears shed (we're talking break-up tears here, people), we came to the conclusion that Scout would never be fully happy with us as her parents. Our beautiful and rambunctious Scout was the alpha of her litter in an alpha-type breed, and it became hard to ignore that we were never going to be able to give her the adequate amount of exercise to ever satisfy her needs. That puppy is quite the titan and can already handle several miles of walking at 8 weeks and still have plenty of energy to go on more. The honest truth is that it wasn't going to be fair to her to live in a 650 square foot apartment and never have the opportunity of having the life she deserved: running rampant on lots of land and investigating to her heart's desire all that nature has to offer. 

To set the story straight, we would never do something that would be a disservice to Scout. Even though she was only here for a week, she's left quite a void in our hearts. But she has now happily returned to her mama and the rest of her littermates, and I pray that she finds a loving home that will give her everything she needs.

In the short time she was here, she left us with plenty of funny and sweet memories:

+ her adorable bouncing and bumbling puppy run to jump in a giant pile of leaves

+ her incredible intelligence in learning the commands of sit, stand, off, take it, and here all in the course of 10 minutes (seriously), as well as knowing her name, Scout, almost from the start

+ her sweet puppy stretches after waking up from a nap and that anteater length tongue that came out in her yawns

+ her relentless confidence in meeting any and every person or dog she came across, including a ferocious German Shepherd puppy and a very large pitt mix dog. She never got scared even though she was pawed and barked at pretty hard (if I were her that little bob of a tail would have tucked between my legs and I would have scampered off). And when I say every person, I mean every person. In the course of 9 days, she met almost 40 people 

+ the way she ran around the apartment investigating while chewing her rawhide bone (quite the multitasker, that one)

+ her tendency to sit patiently at your feet (for a few seconds, mind you) and stare up at you as if she were waiting for the next item of business
+ her consistent and obvious distaste for my Uggs, which apparently are hated more by dogs than by humans (I didn't think that was possible). I'm guessing she thought my feet were part sheep.
+ every. single. time. we came back from being outside she would stop climbing the stairs midway to look at herself in the hallway mirror. She knew she was cute. This would usually cause husmate and I to hum "You're so vain..." while she stared at herself for a few seconds
+ one night at 3 am, husmate took Scout out to go potty. He got locked out of the building... without a phone. Together they walked in the 20 degree weather to a hotel a quarter mile away to call me. Let's just say both husmate and Scout were shivering with cold from that botched mission. And did I mention Scout hated cold weather since her fur is so thin? Yeah... The little diva was NOT a happy camper when she got back inside.

As for us, I think it's safe to say that it's not in the cards for us to have a dog right now. One day in our future we'll have the ability to love and care for some little (or not so little) ball of fur, but not today. 

Scout, we love and miss you. We hope you have a long and happy life and become the great dog we know you will be. 

We took the plunge and got a Scout

meet Scout.

Our precious, troublemaking German Shorthaired Pointer whose job it is to cause equal amounts of adorable and chaotic moments. And we've only had her for 24 hours... She's sure to be a handful, but also a wonderful addition to our little fam. We can't wait for all the adventures we'll have introducing her to life in a city full of other cute puppies and lots of walking.

{And FYI, even picking up Scout was quite the adventure. It involved driving through the snowy mountains of West Virginia and trying to find a house in the middle of nowhere. But all of the my anxiety was worth it for one the cutest dogs I've ever seen.}

Wish us luck.

scenes from the cold month of january

So I promise we haven't intentionally gone quiet here on the blog, it's just that it is January. And with January always comes the quick disappearance of a month and a bit of a haze as to how that happened. There's always such a build up to Christmas and New Year's that once they're both over, it's like time keeps going on around us and we're all still standing still. Or at least that's how I feel about the month of January. It's too bad I feel that way, too, considering my birthday falls in January...

To make up for the lack of posts, here's a recap of all the things we were doing in our absence here. We strolled around the District the day before the inauguration and admired the long and plentiful line of porta-potties on the National Mall (we're talking thousands). We tried new places to eat around Old Town Alexandria and the District, like the Crumbs cupcake above (who can pass on a yummy red velvet cupcake? Not this girl). I've been making a lot of doodles trying out new fonts. We've taken lots of walks around our new neighborhood admiring all the old and pretty brownstones. Husmate joined the oxford-wearing-cool-kids party (another score for wifey and her influence!). I made my first pie by trying out this yummy Chocolate Chess Pie recipe from the delightful 1canoe2 blog to (quite randomly) celebrate National Pie Day (not to be confused with the ever important Pi Day on March 14... Nerds unite! 3.14159265359...). I mailed a fun little happy to my sweet nephew. And I celebrated my birthday with a delicious breakfast at Founding Farmers and pink tulips from the husmate (Side note: I will be reporting back on our second experience to FF for their red velvet pancakes. Yes, you read that correctly- red velvet pancakes).

And now you're all caught up on our whereabouts for January! Best wishes for better accountability for blogging next month (fingers crossed)!

bewildered by the rain and fog

So let me preface this post with a few facts:

1. My mother had a conference in DC this past weekend.

2. She asked for my advice on packing as far as weather goes.

3. Even though I consulted my Weather Channel app 3 times, I pretty much made my mother freeze by telling her all the wrong things to pack therefore resulting in a daughter fail.

So despite the weather being at least 15 degrees (or more) cooler than was forecasted, as well as it raining like every day since she landed (when the highest chance was 30% for maybe one day), it has also been incredibly foggy. As in where is the horizon in the picture above?? Love must be in the air for some hot and heavy dementors in the area...

In trying to make the best of things and show Mom something in all this fog and rain, we hit up Mt. Vernon this past weekend. Apparently hardly anyone goes there when it's 40 something degrees out and the sky resembles a white screen (I couldn't imagine why)... On the upside, the guides do offer more information when fewer people are shuffling through the house. 

So after our fun and chilly walk about Washington's plantation, we headed to the National Harbor to drop Mom off to register for her conference. And while we were trying to avoid paying for parking driving around aimlessly killing time waiting on her, we decided to be all spontaneous and hit up some open houses. What are we... 30?? Ha, it was pretty fun I must say. Well, except for looking at some of the asking prices (especially the $400/month HOA fees...). 

But I think my personal favorite from this weekend is the car in the last picture above. Please take as much joy fathoming whatever it is the owner was going for as we did Sunday morning. That van's roof had at least three solar panels, a propeller, and a chair covered in camo. Any thoughts??

And after braving the cold and wet weather for as long as we could, the Berry's finally caved and made our first fire in our new apartment. Now all we need are s'mores :)

Our sweet Riley

Comparison may be the thief of joy, but so are sick puppies. And our sweet pup, Riley, was a very sick puppy. Along with his adorable speckles and gentle spirit came his exhausting case of distemper, and with distemper came a lot of maladies and sadness. After showing the signs of dehydration, lack of appetite, a terrible sinus problem, and unforgiving neurological ticks that prevented him from holding his darling head up, we decided that it was best for our gentle Riley to be put to sleep.

But there is a silver lining to this story.

Riley was a shelter dog. One that apparently had been left to survive walking about south/west Montgomery and who entered the shelter life with a cocktail of problems. Not only did he have distemper, but also a case of bordetella, a gastrointestinal infection, and a respiratory infection. He was quite the pup to want to try everything apparently, but despite being laden down with what seems to be everything you could possibly get sick with, he still wagged his tail and fought his hardest to get better.

My sweet parents gave him the best home that a shelter dog could ever dream of for ten days of his life, and he soaked up every minute of it. From discovering what excitement toys and playing with other fun dogs could hold to putting his front paws on the sofa until someone picked him up and put him in his own spot, Riley had a wonderful adopted life. And even for the short period of ten days, he got to know what it feels like to have a master love and care for him, even when he got scared to sleep by himself or needed someone to wipe his nose.

Riley, who knew that in the space of two days of being around you, I could get so attached? Even in our brief meeting, you taught me so much about how fleeting this life is and how even in the bad, you can find the silver lining. You were a great pup. And I hope that wherever you are, you are experiencing an existence free of pain and your milk-dipped tail is able to wag all day.