Celebrating Beth's Birthday, Again and In Style

This year, my wife Beth celebrated a big birthday, leaving behind her 30s.  Much like our Christmas celebrations, we've extended Beth's birthday over a fairly long period (reaching 10 days now from her actual anniversary of coming into the world), and yesterday, our friends Becky and Dwayne took us to our favorite restaurant, 2941 (consistently rated one of the top restaurants in Virginia).

We never turn down a chance to visit 2941 and enjoy the food, though we tried to dissuade Becky as it's not exactly a cheap place to eat!  But she wouldn't take "no" for an answer, so we got to enjoy a fine night of food.  Beth had an absolutely fantastic fish: the "pesceterian" enjoyed a dish of spicy lime-infused Suzuki (Japanese-style sea bass); Becky and Dwayne both opted for an equally good black bass, and I indulged my carnivorous side with the first rabbit I'd had since a 2002 trip to the UK.

Even though the restaurant didn't have the chocolate dessert which graced a recent Washingtonian Magazine cover (as the server explained, they'd begged the magazine to use a photo of a current dessert vs. one from over a year ago), dessert was great.  My only disappointment is that 2941 seems to have discontinued their practice of bringing homemade cotton candy with the check (or should that be "cheque"?), though the English toffee they did serve was good--if not up to the par set by my friend (and trained chef) Matt Perkins' standards for the dessert.

Christmas Day Is Here (and Cookies, Too!): The Many Days of Christmas, Day Four

Christmas Day is here at last--and to be honest, a few days too soon given the state of our holiday preparations (with decorations still unfinished, many a gift yet to be wrapped, and even some family presents sitting unmade and on the proverbial drawing board). But here nonetheless, and in-between visits from friends--Gina and Todd dropped off a bit of holiday cheer and had coffee--and trips over to a couple of the neighbors to deliver some edible gifts, we managed to unwrap a few more of our own presents.

We're very focused on the garden and landscape here at Chateau Papillon (a fact of which if you've read this blog from the springtime onward you're probably quite cognizant), so several of the items on my Amazon "wish list" had a garden theme to them. Books, yes, of course, and those already have Beth and I dreaming of warmer weather and the yard tasks ahead once Old Man Winter passes along his way, but also some practical tools, like the Fiskars hedge shears which filled that tall box I'm pictured with to the left, a gift from Beth's mom which will be put to great use.

I also opened another of the presents from Beth, which was beautifully wrapped in rice paper she'd been saving for years from her grandmother. Inside were many equally-beautiful gifts, all of them brassy little yard implements for the fairy-mansion-to-be, like a little picket fence; watering can; several miniature pots; and a birdhouse, bird bath, and planter all on little stakes to go around the fairies' yard.

We also finally got to the making of a batch of Christmas cookies, though using a box of vanilla sugar cookie mix via Costco instead of the scratch recipe in our family cookbook (the latter requires the dough chill for several hours before working). The Costco mix, though very tasty, isn't the best for cutting & baking shapes, but we did end up with several Papillon-shaped cookies (both dogs and butterflies), a Dachshund, Christmas trees, snowflakes, dog bones, and for the daydreams of a more tropical holiday, a palm tree and pink flamingo:

We also finally opened the gifts from Beth's brother, sister-in-law, and their kids, Ferris and Amelia, revealing two hand-decorated plates from the kids:

Also, we did at long last sit down to watch It's a Wonderful Life, a holiday tradition we both enjoy (and one which I introduced Beth to; growing up, we typically had it on while baking our cookies on Christmas Eve). I'll have to do a separate post about the film, which despite my non-religious perspective I find to be one of the most inspirational (and in fact, among the best overall) films made.

Christmas Eve & A Minor Camera Disaster: The Many Days of Christmas, Day Four

Christmas Eve is here at last, and that means a couple more presents to open for each of us as we draw out our holiday celebrations over a span of several days due to time constraints. On her lap (along with the Papillons and the blanket my parents gave her), in the photo above Beth holds up two more gifts from "her sweet Gibbie-goo." As usual, I tried to craft some interesting labels: I packaged LOST Season 1 on Blu-Ray (reusing wrapping paper and ribbon from earlier gifts!) with a label indicating it was from "philosophers and airlines"--references to the characters John Locke, Danielle Rousseau, Desmond Hume, and so forth, and of course the dramatic airline crash that started the entire series.

Continuing the theme she started with the fairy house book she gave me on our first day of Christmas, Beth gave me a set of fairy house windows--we're going to be busy in the springtime building a miniature fairy mansion out in the backyard, that's for sure! (This does make some sense, really; we're trying to build a "fairy path" in the garden, and Beth gave me a little planter and several alpine plants to create a "fairy garden" for our anniversary this past year, too.)

Amidst the Yuletide cheer, I did discover an unfortunately expensive habit from Mr. Parker, though. When I went to pick up my camera and flash, the power pack was no longer connected to the flash. That's right: Mr. Parker chewed through the cord that connects my Canon CP-E4 flash power pack to the flash, and unfortunately chewed through it right at the cord strain reliever on the side of the power pack (so no chance of soldering the cord back together for temporary use). That's a pricey piece of equipment even from big photo equipment wholesalers like Adorama and B&H, running in the neighborhood of $150 (the power pack was itself originally a Christmas gift two years ago from my mother-in-law).

The local camera shop, Penn Camera, fortunately had a replacement in stock and was open until 6:00pm despite it being Christmas Eve, but it set me back over $180 (ouch!). Problem is that I really needed that power pack to do my holiday photo shoots over the next few days, and there was no way it would get here from Amazon or any of the wholesalers in time. I'll probably order a replacement cord from Canon and repair the original, then e-Bay it to recoup some of the cost (I should be able to get $120 or so on e-Bay; used professional-grade camera gear sells for nearly the new cost most of the time--minus whatever Canon charges for the replacement cable, of course).

Mr. Parker has also apparently partially chewed through a couple of laptop power cords; he must like the low voltage shock on his gums or something (he's never tried to chew on a 120V cable, fortunately--and that's something we've got to nip in the bud right now!).

Good thing I got the replacement power pack, though, or I'd have missed this incredibly cute photo of Chance as he "breakdanced" on his pink bed with his "early," a small pink squeaky toy. I managed to get four or five photos in sequence, all of them keepers--without that flash power pack, I'd have gotten one, maybe two, as I'd have had to wait for the flash to recharge much longer between shots.

While I was out driving Beth to one of her petsitting appointments, I had time to pick up the flash power pack and even drop off a few holiday gifts for friends (Bon Bon du Papillon--I'll have to blog about those confections later...). Unfortunately, no time this evening to make Christmas cookies (sorry, Santa!), nor to watch our holiday favorite It's a Wonderful Life, but given we're spreading the holidays out, I suppose that's okay, too.

Enjoying the Gifts One At a Time: The Many Days of Christmas, Day Three

We're not yet even to Christmas Eve, but Beth and I have had three days now of opening a couple of gifts each night as we simply won't have much free time on Christmas itself. Don't get me wrong: it's not like we had truckloads of gifts which we're flaunting at the less-fortunate; we did have some overly-generous family members--you know who you are--but have been opening and savoring our gifts one at a time, rather than tearing through them all in a matter of minutes as children seem so wont to do.

Today's gifts brought a bluebird house from Beth, along with several CDs, books, and DVDs from our families. Not to mention the plush blanket from my parents to Beth, which the Papillons are certainly enjoying.

Celebrating Several Anniversaries

Today marks several anniversaries.

Beth and I met at a dessert party on June 21, 2002.

We held our wedding on June 21, 2005.

And we first looked at the home that would become Chateau Papillon on June 21, 2008.

It's also often the first day of summer, the Summer Solstice, come June 21.

Not a bad set of celebrations, eh?