Merry Christmas!
It is "Christmas in July" here in DC. A local radio station is playing Christmas music all day long. In fact, we're listening to it now. So feliz navidad to all of you! (Now playing: "Up on the house top, click, click, click"...Erika's maternal grandmother's favorite Christmas song.)

Donald:
Last Friday, Donald completed his computer programming class with his final exam. He feels that he did well on the test and is looking forward to learning his overall grade. This Saturday, he signed up for a pick-up basketball game with some guys from our church. Apparently it will be five-on-five and full court; he's really nervous about it. Plus, he slammed his finger in a window, and it's still sore. If he makes a fool of himself, as he expects, we'll just blame the finger.

Metiche:
She is doing this weird thing at night. She'll just start howling while we're asleep. She just wanders around the condo howling. Metiche is still enjoying the long summer days on the window sills watching the birds.

Erika:
The week before my mother and paternal grandmother came to visit, I decided to paint the living room. Unfortunately, the day I began, I started to get a head cold. However, since I started, I had to finish (Donald couldn't help because he was studying for his final). It took me an entire 2 days, but the color looks nice. On Saturday, we reconfigured the furniture, and the changes look great! Now all that is left to paint is the kitchen and hallway (we want to redo the entire bathroom later...that's a whole project in itself). We'll post those pictures later.

The flood (Yes, flood):
So, on the Saturday, the day before my mom and grandmother were coming over for their weeklong visit, we woke up early to get a headstart on preparing our home. We really didn't have much to do, just a bit of reorganizing things here and there. In fact, we expected to go to a matinee movie and have dinner and basically, have a relaxing Saturday. Well, our bathroom pipes had another idea. I was in the guestroom when all of sudden I hear Donald shouting for help and a bucket. I went over to find him drenched in water and found that water was QUICKLY making its way to our carpeted hallway. Yeah, we quickly realized that our bucket wouldn't do, and I tossed all our towels and fleece blankets on the threshold while calling for help (or lack there of). Hmmm, did we share with you that our condo is on the second floor? Ah, enter gravity. Well, I ran down a second time to warn our downstairs neighbors to find them coming up our stairs. Their ceiling was leaking water. To make a very long story short, the male, downstairs neighbor finally got the water to shut off but it took a very long while since the water was gushing several gallons a minute. Funny thing: since they're young and newly weds, we've been meaning to get together. While the woman from downstairs and I were using plastic bins to get the water off the floor and into the bathtub, oh and out the window when there was no more room in the tub, we shared a little laugh at that it would take something like this to get us to finally get together. Thank God for homeowner's insurance. Tip: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT (or renter's insurance) AND HAVE DOCUMENTS TO BACK IT UP. Our place you ask? Well, since our bathroom walls are tiled, the water only got to about 2 feet into our hallway. I went over to a nearby supermarket immediately after the whole ordeal to get a Rug Doctor to vaccum all the water, and we left a fan on the floor all night. That turned out to be a SMART decision on our part because we just learned on Tuesday that we have no moisture in our floors. Anyway, that's all we can really say now because the case is possibly still under investigation. Still, God is in full control as always. Oh yeah, and the flood set us back a little bit. We finished cleaning up at 10:30 pm. (So much for the relaxing Saturday. Sigh.)

The visit:Oh my, we did so many things! In a nutshell, here is what we did:
-Strolled through Rock Creek Park
-Picnicked at Great Falls, MD where Grandma disregarded a sign saying not to feed the geese
-Visited all the monuments
-Traveled on the only mule drawn boat in the nation on the C&O canal in Georgetown (where I played a washboard to make music, like they did during that time)
-Ate escargot (without telling Grandma until much, much later)
-Admired beautiful plants and trees at the National Arboretum
-Had Dim Sum and taught grandma how to use chopsticks
-Visited JFK's gravesite at Arlington National Cemetary after learning that Grandma met JFK when she was younger in Valley
-Ate Grandma's tortillas...YUMMY


Highlights:
-We became members of our church last Sunday.
-We finally visited with our downstairs neigbors.
-Erika learned some of her grandmother's recipes, like gorditas.
-Erika's cousin Rolo was honored by the city of Port Isabel for his second tour of duty in Iraq and featured in the local newspaper there.