Fancy Free in Frederick

Last weekend Sean & I took a drive out to Frederick, Maryland's second largest city. It's a great little town, full of 19th century architecture, cool shops and tons of great restaurants.

We had a walk around their Carroll Creek Promenade, and came across the amazing Community Bridge. The plain concrete bridge was painted by a number of local artists in trompe l'oeil. The effect is so well done, you have to touch it to break the spell. There are dozens of hidden symbols within the paintings, see if you can find some! Here are a couple of pics:

Full House

I write this morning from an allergy induced stupor that just inspired me to open up a cookbook, mistaking it for a laptop, and start typing in it. Needless to say, the autosave function was not so great. And folks, this is me before medication.

The past month was a busy one, and also super awesome; my in-laws came to stay with us. All of them.

So for most people, the idea of having their in-laws stay with them, in their home, is the stuff of nightmares. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been a little worried. After all, since we used to live about 5000km apart, I'd only seen them on a handful of occasions. Plus, we'd invited the five of them to stay with us, in our 2 bedroom apartment.

All my worries melted away as soon as they arrived. It was so good to have family around and the apartment seemed to expand like a wizarding tent to contain us all comfortably. The week flew by much too fast as we enjoyed trips to the zoo & aquarium, science centre, fancy dinner out and family dinners in. Our nephew Sawyer was a pleasure to have around; he's so crazily well behaved and fun to do things with. Some of my favourite parts of the week were having a girls day out shopping with my sister-in-law & mother-in-law, and getting caught in a freaking monsoon at the zoo where everyone got soaked to the skin, jumped in puddles and laughed their asses off. Now that's family bonding.

We even got a couple of family pictures this week! Quite the feat as several of the subjects are notoriously camera shy.

I'm looking forward to our next family get together, which is only a few months away, and hope they'll all visit us again really soon!

The one not so good thing that transpired from the week was that our cat Max got really pissed off (pun intended) at having his kingdom invaded. He got his revenge by peeing behind our bed. I don't know when this happened (soo sorry Donny & Susan!) and if it affected our guests who might have been too polite to mention it, or if he waited until everyone was gone to let us know what he thought of us. Of course, to get back there to clean we have to remove the mattress and partially deconstruct the headboard and bed frame as it's too heavy to move. Next time, we'll have goldfish.