Back in the States, Part 3

First off, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We obviously have so many things to be grateful for...we are so happy Aggie is in good health, and that our families and friends are doing well. Looks like W up there is pretty happy too...

So this is our last entry about our trip home in October (umm, and yes it's the end of November...can anyone say "slacker"?). As you have read from previous blogs, we got home at the beginning of October, went to a wedding, had a baby shower and family party, then headed out to DC. We had a blast in DC, and then we arrived back in Hamilton in the morning on Wednesday, Oct 8th. That evening we crashed at the Marriott in West Chester which was so awesome! For our one year anniversary, our contract with the Marriott (where we had our wedding reception) gave us a free night stay with dinner and drinks. The food was excellent and the champagne didn't stop flowing (because it was free...holla)! We definitely enjoyed ourselves and our stay....

Thursday we met up with the Renners family, Jenn, Stacey and my cousin, Kris. It was a nice evening and wonderful to see everyone. Also, Katie made an awesome cheese/chicken dip, and I'm excited to say Aggie got the recipe from her!

Friday we had a rehearsal dinner for Aggie's cousin, Teresa, who was getting married on Saturday. The dinner was at Montgomery Inn which, as all you from Cincy can attest, was an awesome venue to have the event as it's a one of kind, fantastic restaurant! The dinner was delicious, and we all left very happy and full.

The next day was Teresa's wedding and Aggie and her sister, Ann, were up early because they were both in the wedding. The weather was beautiful and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Plus, the bride looked gorgeous and the groom was looking sharp...and of course the bridesmaids (aka Aggie) were beautiful. Given the kind of day it was, Ann's husband Kurt wasn't looking too shabby either. The wedding ceremony was really nice and the reception didn't disappoint. The reception was at Paul Brown Stadium (where the Cincinnati Bengals' play), and it was a good set up. Me and Kurt even got to kick some field goals down on the field.




There were tours of the stadium going on, the dinner and music was great, and the Skyline Chili bar at 11pm was awesome! (Similar to Montgomery Inn, Skyline Chili is a traditional chili only found in Cincinnati/tri-state area.)

Sunday morning we woke up and headed up to Columbus to see some of my college buddies. It was a fun day of grilling, drinking and watching football. Honestly, what more could I want at this point!?



Monday, Aggie had family plans and on Tuesday night, we went to dinner with our good friend, Maggie, and her boyfriend, Mark. She took us downtown to a funky Mexican joint that was very tasty! I have to say - downtown Cincy has been revamped a bit and I was quite impressed. Wednesday we went to dinner with Ferd and Andrea then Thursday we hung out with Aggie's family. Friday we flew back to Zurich and arrived here on Saturday afternoon. WOW! That's everything about our whirlwind trip home....Now you know why we felt like this when we got back??

Back in the States, Part 2

The past few weekends have been a ton of fun. I ran a 1/2 marathon in Luzern, we went to the annual wine boat festival here in Zurich, and we went to Lugano (southern Switzerland, aka "clean Italy") with a group of friends. We have also had some pretty intense, yet positive and exciting discussions about whether we want to stay in Zurich for another year or move back to the States come May 09. We finally decided about a week ago...(drum roll please)...the States it is! We've LOVED our time living here, but moving home is the right move for us now. There were some talks of us moving to Boston, Cincy, Seattle, etc, but Chicago won out (at least for now!).

Speaking of the US, let me circle back to our time home in October. If we pick up where we left off, we basically need to write about our trip to DC and Aggie's cousin's wedding and then what happened in between.

We (Josh, Lauren, Ag and myself) drove the family minivan up to Dayton's Airport the evening of Zach's bbq and caught our flight with no problems or issues. Once we were in DC, Josh dropped us off at our hotel (we were crashing at a hotel for one night then staying with Steph and Pete the rest of the time). We dropped our bags in the room, then meet up with Steph and Pete for a few drinks. It was so great to see them!


On Monday, we all met in Dupont Circle for brunch. Josh actually took the day off and was our tour guide, which obviously worked out perfect for us! We grabbed a hardy breakfast then headed out to see all the sights. We hit up Arlington National Cemetery, then the National Mall and finally the White House. We gave a shout-out/send-off to GW and then headed out. We grabbed some wings and beers at a pub that had a happy hour goin' on, then made our way back to Steph and Pete's apartment. (Pete was doing a 6-week resident study in DC and his wife, Stephanie, came out from Seattle to meet him the same week we came to visit.)

That evening, we went to dinner in Chinatown to a pretty cool pizza resturant. At the restaurant we met up with our good friends, Jacob and Annette...who, you may remember, lived in Amsterdam when we lived in Luxembourg! Dinner was great and afterwards, the four of us (Pete, Steph, Ag and me) went bowling which was tons of fun.



On Tuesday we got up and headed to the Capitol Building and the museums. We went into two art museums and the Natural History museum. At the Natural History museum we went to the Omnimax theater and saw a 3D video about the ocean, which was pretty cool (plus we got to wear super cool glasses!).


That evening we went to dinner in Georgetown to a delicious fish restaurant. There we met up with Aggie's cousin, Jerry, Philip and Missy. Josh and his girlfriend also came which was nice. After dinner we went to a bar to watch the presidental debates. (Only in DC would this be a cool thing to do!) It was really funny because the whole bar was quiet and everyone was watching the TVs very intensely. A few times throughout the night, groups of people would come in to the bar, obviously just wanting to chill after a hard day of work. They'd come in kind of loud, and people watching the debate would go, "SSSSSHHHHHH!!" Needless to say, those groups pretty much looked around and then took off for a different drinking hole. For some reason we thought it would be a fun idea to make a drinking game out of the debates....we drank for everytime McCain said, "My friends" or Obama said, "Change". Needless to say, waking up the next morning was rough!


All four of us got up and moving around 5:30am the next day. Josh picked us up (he didn't go to the bar with us after dinner...) and dropped us off at the airport. We headed back to Cincy and Steph and Pete went on to NY for a few days. Fun times by all!