A Weekend Recap: Erica’s visit 2025

Hello friends and thanks for coming by again today.  I am so sorry for missing yesterday.  I totally did not pencil in “the flu” when making my Twenty Days of Christmas blogging ideas.  Ugh.  I am still running on an incredibly low battery but hope I can get the recap of this past weekend finished and posted.  I want to include pictures.  Yes, I have pictures.  But I have zero energy for uploading and then adjusting, correcting, cropping or whatever else might be an improvement.  They are what they are.  But I hope you will enjoy them just the same.  I will just jump right in…

Thursday, we went to a Christmas concert at the Museum of the Bible.  I enjoyed the songs although there were more “non-traditional” ones than I prefer and, I have to say, the entire evening seemed a bit unprepared.  As if they were flying by the seat of their pants, so to speak.  At point, one singer forgot his song.  Literally, forgot the words.  As he strummed his guitar, trying to get back on track (which he did!), he said, “Tomorrow’s performance thanks you for tonight’s dress rehearsal.”  He got lots of laughs but I’m not really sure he was joking.  Neverthelss, we had a good time.  But, let me tell you story.

We aim to arrive at events, especially downtown, 20 or even 30 minutes early.  We left in plenty of time….however, the traffic was awful!  As in, stand still, we are going nowhere awful.  GPS eventually re-directed us through the every twist and turn she could find, and we were pulling up in front of the museum with 15 minutes to spare.  My husband pointed out the parking garage that we typically use but we were in the wrong lane.  No problem.  We will “just turn around” at the next light.  As if it is ever that easy in the city.  We turned at the light and, viola, there was another parking garage.  We felt so fortunate and were even more thrilled when said lot was practically empty.  We had our choice of almost any spot.  (This is what the FBI calls a clue.  We, however, did not catch it.)  We quickly parked and were upstairs in the museum in record time.  Ten minutes to seven.  How nice.  Or, rather, ignorance is bliss.

After the show, it was cold outside.  We hurried down the museum steps, crossed the street, went around the corner and headed straight…..to a garage door.  A closed garage.  It only took me three seconds to find, and read, the sign that had somehow completely alluded us earlier.  The garage closed at seven o’clock.  Ten minutes after we had so smugly parked our car there.  And the sign clearly read, “All cars not retrieved by 7PM will NOT (yes, it read in all caps) be available until the following day.”  What?!  We had no car.  We were stranded in DC??  And we were now freezing.

Honestly, friends, I could not believe it.  How did I let this happen?  Truthfully, I have only ever been in garages that were open until 11:00 or beyond.  But, still.  We should have known something was amiss.  We did find a hotel lobby that was open.  The security guard had no problem with us hanging out there for a few until I could get my thoughts together.  She actually told us, “You don’t want to be walking around out there.”  Oh, nice. (I don’t think she was worried about the cold.)  Long story short, we ended up taking an uber almost all the way home.  About ten minutes from the house and my son was able to come get us.  He would have come all the way to the city but the uber was much faster.  Maybe not the cheapest uber ride but much better than the alternatives and we all agreed to split the cost four ways.  It all ended well but, even as I type this, I cannot believe we did that!!

The weekend went super smoothly from there.  We woke on Friday morning to snow.  Just a couple of inches…so it did not interfere with our plans and our Florida guest was ecstatic!  My goodness, if only take two inches of the white stuff to bring such happiness, who was I to be irritated with snow?  Yes, snow usually irritates me.  Truly…I need to work on seeing things from a different perspective!  We were originally planning to go back downtown on Saturday.  To see some sights and celebrate my husband’s birthday.  Obviously, that had to change and we were back in the city on Friday.  I have to admit the snow covered monuments and landmarks were rather pretty!

We visited the National Botanical Garden.  They had displays throughout the garden of all the city’s landmarks created completely from plants.  It was so impressive.  The photos really do not do them justice.  It is very nice inside there and we all really enjoyed our visit.  We had some extra time before our lunch reservation, so we also went by the Museum of Natural History.  But the highlight of our day was lunch at a new to us restaurant.  It is called Sfoglina’s.  Oh my did we have a great meal.  The restaurant is not large.  Intimate, I suppose with really nice decor (and great music playing)!  The food was delicious food and the service impeccable.  We were there somewhat in between the lunch and dinner crowd (which was good as there was a Christmas office party of 75 coming at 6:00…so I’m glad we chose earlier) and our server and the manager gave my husband the royal treatment for his birthday.  It was super nice!!

I don’t know why that last one is blurry.  It is not at all blurry on my phone.  Hmm.  But I definitely have to remember the birthday boy and our visit to Sfoglina’s!  We will definitely find a reason to go back there.

On Saturday, we drove south to Richmond.  It is almost a two hour drive from home.  Pushing my limits when I think of a “for fun” drive but I’m glad we went.  Each year, there is a huge Christmas bazaar there.  I typically go with friends but my husband has never been.  However, I have always thought he would like it.  I was not wrong.  My son went along as well and he also enjoyed it.  Just not for ladies, I guess.  Funny – looking at my phone, we did not many photos of that day.  Photos galore (at least, for me) from Friday but nothing from Saturday.  Probably two reasons for that.  One, we were busy shopping.  Lots of shoppping.  Spend some money?  Yes, we did.  We all found several great gifts.  And, two, it was about half way through that I started to crash.  I just knew something (no doubt the flu) was right around the corner. Ugh.

I did come across one picture from Saturday.  Hubby’s actual birthday.  He was refusing to smile.  We were all feeling the effects of our full weekend.  But, nevertheless…..

And, I was not wrong at the flu headed my way.  Sunday was not pretty.  And, major bummer, it did not go well for our guest either.  Apparently there were storms in Orlando.  Which meant multiple delays with her flight. The plane was loaded and then sat an hour on the tarmack.  Then they were unloaded…only to be re-loaded.  And then unloaded again.  (I’m not making this up.)  Believe it or not, they loaded again and did eventually leave.  About three hours late.  She was texting us but, honestly, I missed most of it.  Hubby was keeping in touch and was ready to go back to the airport.  But, all is well and ended well.  We had a great weekend!!  I am grateful!

Before I go, let me say my morning coffees have been rather disappointing lately.  I blame the flu.  But even before I was feeling yucky, the coffees were well, yucky.  One I had to throw away.  Now isn’t that sad?  It was spiced eggnog.  The others I drank but did not enjoy.  Here’s to getting back on track tomorrow.  And, with that, I will close.  If you read all the way to the end, thanks!  I hope you will stop by again tomorrow!