first anniversary

We'd had the thought of going to visit Fallingwater in Pennsylvania for our anniversary but we seriously dithered about it so long that there weren't any tickets left for in-depth tours. So that was out the window. This left us without a plan for our long weekend - turns out we were geniuses for getting married both on a Friday making our first anniversary a Saturday and on a holiday weekend meaning we'll have a 3-day weekend within a week of our anniversary all the time!

We came up with a basic plan of doing some of our favorite things around town, getting a nice dinner and maybe catching a movie. And only doing chores on Monday (Columbus Day) after all the fun was had. We'd originally thought we'd go into DC on Saturday - our actual anniversary - but the weather made that idea terribly unappealing. So here's what we actually did:

Saturday aka "day for new things" - breakfast and gifts at home. My gift from Will turned out to be somewhat problematic which was my own fault because I didn't know that Tiffany's was no longer making what I wanted. As a result, our first stop of the day was Tiffany's in Tysons to find something - so awesome to have the sales lady open 4 different cases for me because, of course, the last option was the winner. Then we decided to try the Corner Bakery in Tysons Galleria - really yummy! - for lunch. Then we barely made it to Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse for an afternoon showing of Up! - amazing movie. I highly recommend it and the beginning turned out to be bizarrely appropriate for a wedding anniversary. By then we'd figured out that we had a theme of trying new things going for the day and decided to try a new restaurant - Jackson's in Reston - for dinner.

The food was amazing as we expected from the newest memeber of the Great American Restaurant group. Then it was home for Trivial Pursuit (I finally let Will win because I was 2 pies behind and it was getting late),

wedding champagne,

and the top layer of our wedding cake which survived surprisingly well.

Sunday aka "day for our favorites" - The weather was fantastic as we went into town with our new camera to go to the National Gallery of Art which turned out to be great because 2 new exhibits opened this day. Robert Bergman portraits in the west building and Jasper Johns: Working Proofs in the east building with a stop for lunch and our fav gelato in between the two. We even sat in on a lecture about the Jasper Johns exhibit.

The West Building - my favorite columns in town (they're not white!)

Will's gelato and the fountain in the cafeteria between the buildings

the light installation between the 2, the East Building

We would have loved to stop and check out the Solar Decathlon but the lines were ridiculous! I had to be content with taking pictures from the edges.

one of the houses and the planning board

We then headed home to get in some time shelf reading since I was going to be away the following week and headed to church as well - hippy dippy mass but it's better than nothing. Taco soup for dinner brought the day to a close.

as an added "bonus," they were doing track work at L'Enfant so we got some unprecedented signage.