Travelog for: Plaid Moose

What an exciting week here in the United States! Tuesday was election day! I've been following the race while I've been here in the U.S., so I was excited to get to go and vote! Mara and her husband went to vote in the morning - it was rainy, but there was great turnout (there was a line inside the school). We couldn't take pictures too close (or inside), but here we are before we went in!

After I voted, they gave me a sticker to show off!

Because this was such an important election, a lot of businesses had promotions if you came in with your "I voted" sticker. So after we voted, we went to Starbucks for our free cup of coffee!

This also made Mara happy, since Starbucks is her favorite, and Starbucks has switched to their red holiday cups! That night, we went to her parents' house to watch the election returns. Here I am listening to Brian Williams (one of the NBC anchors) tell us about some of the states:

And at 11 pm, they announced that Barack Obama had won the election! We were so excited! Mara let us stay up late with her to watch his speech! And the next morning we all read about the historic election in the paper!

I'm so glad that I was able to be a part of it!

Hello! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, so we're getting ready tonight. Mara goes to her cousin's house, and makes chocolate cookies (with TONS of powdered sugar!) every year to bring. Since she made 12 dozen, I helped with the baking! Here I am helping to roll the balls of chocolate dough in the powdered sugar...

And here I am with some of the cookies I baked!

I am excited for tomorrow - I'm sure it will be a lot of fun!

Happy Thanksgiving! It is Thanksgiving here in the United States, and I'm excited to share it with Pebbels - it's his first Thanksgiving! The day started with us watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's a huge tradition here - everyone watches it! I liked all of the big balloons - it was a lot of fun!


Then we went to Maryland to Mara's cousin's house for Thanksgiving dinner! We celebrated with lots of family and friends - here we are at the table before everyone sat down!

Americans eat turkey and LOTS of side dishes for Thanksgiving - here I am eating turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and asparagus - now I see why Mara says that Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday!

After awhile, we had desserts - Pebbels and I checked them out beforehand...here we are with the cookies we helped to make!

And look at how yummy these apple pies look!

And the desserts tasted just as good as they looked!!

What a great day!

After all the fun of Thanksgiving yesterday, today I got to experience another American tradition - Black Friday. Black Friday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. Stores have HUGE sales and people try to get their holiday shopping done. Some of the malls opened at midnight, and most of the stores were open by 5 am for the early crowds! We didn't go quite so early, but we did go to a few places! Here we are in the car...

The area of Fairfax where we were shopping is called Fair Lakes, and has tons and tons of stores. There was also a funky sculpture of a girl with her dog that Pebbels and I saw from the car

Here I am in front of Michael's (a big craft store):

And here I am at one of the other sections of the strip mall!

Everyone here is getting ready for Christmas. All of the stores are decorated, and there is Christmas music playing everywhere you go! This week I went to the mall with Mara. The decorations were really beautiful. The first one is a little dark (it was hard to take a picture where you could see me and the decorations!), but can you find Santa in the second picture? He's taking pictures with kids in the mall!!

Even though it was a rainy day, I hopped in Mara's purse today with Pebbels and headed in to Washington DC with her! She was meeting a friend for lunch at Union Station - a huge train station that also has tons of fancy shops and restaurants! Here I am outside...



Inside was all decorated for the holidays, including a huge tree and a cool model train! What a fun trip!

Thank goodness Fenway finally arrived back home - we left for a trip to California to celebrate Christmas just a few days after he got here! Here we are, ready to go...

The flight was really smooth, and I liked being able to see all the snow on the mountains!

While we were in California, we drove through Niles Canyon. Mara got really car sick, but I liked seeing the beautiful mountains with Fenway!

California is warmer than it is here at home, and they have different things than we do here in Virginia. Here I am in front of some palm trees...

And I even found a cactus!

And Mara's family says that no trip to California is complete without a trip to In-n-Out, a famous place to get hamburgers!

Since we were visiting to celebrate Christmas, Fenway and I found lots of cool Christmas decorations. Here we are with a perfectly-sized snowman on Christmas Eve...

On Christmas Day, we went for a walk and found this house with TONS of decorations...

We especially liked this light-up Yukon Cornelius (a character from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer)

The hotel had lots of pretty decorations too. Here I am on the staircase:

And we liked this palm tree that was decorated for the holidays:

And, of course, we had to take a picture under the Christmas tree!

We had a great trip to California, but I am happy to be home! Last night I helped to celebrate the last night of Chanukah by lighting the menorah. We lit two - one for Mara & her husband, and one for me and Fenway! Happy Chanukah!!

Hello! It has been REALLY cold here in Virginia, but I have been keeping warm and keeping busy. The weathermen say that this is the coldest January we have had in decades - but still no snow! The biggest news was the Inauguration last week of President Obama! Even though we live close to Washington DC (about 16 miles away!) we decided it was too cold and too crowded - 2 million people were there! So we watched on tv - here I am watching President Obama being sworn in!

And here I am with Fenway with the paper the next day!

Other than the Inauguration, the other big news here is that Mara and her husband are getting new kitchen cabinets. Fenway and I helped to pick out the new cabinets - they went with our choice!

I have also been doing some shopping (since it's too cold to play outside!). We like to go to Border's - a big bookstore with a cafe. It's a nice place to sit and have coffee and read a book!

Speaking of coffee, I have been to Dunkin' Donuts as well!

And today we went out to lunch - YUM!

I had such a fun day today! It snowed here in Virginia - the first snow of the year! So Fenway and I went outside to help Mara shovel and to play in the snow! Here I am in front - we did a pretty good job shoveling the walkway...sort of!

And here we are in the snow on the steps! It was cold but fun!

And here we are in the snow covered tree! Can you find us?

Hello! Mara feels bad that we haven't been updating my travel log recently, but we are having a good time! A couple of weeks ago Fridolin arrived. He is a very sweet cat, and we are having fun playing together. We all went together to a basketball game! Mara lives near George Mason University, and we went to go see a basketball game there. Fenway told everyone about how George Mason was in the Final Four (the NCAA basketball tournament) a couple of years ago - a HUGE deal for such a small school!

The weather here has been strange - we have some warm days then some really cold days. But when we woke up today there was SNOW! Here I am in front of the house, looking at all of it!

There was a LOT more than the last time it snowed - finally a real storm! After looking at it, I decided I wanted to play in it. So all of us jumped in on Mara's car!

It was a lot fluffier than I thought it would be! But we had a great time!

We've been super busy lately, but we managed to take a few pictures last weekend. It was rainy, but that didn't stop us from running errands...

On this trip we went to a grocery store!

All of the rain makes the trees bloom - even in the rain they look beautiful!

Hello! Fenway and I have been having a ton of fun with Fridolin, even if Mara has forgotten to help us post the pictures (she feels horrible about it!). A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Passover. It was Fridolin's first Passover, and Fenway's first home in a couple of years, so I was so excited to share the Passover seder with them both! First, I helped to set out the seder plate...

And we put a haggadah (the prayer book) at each person's place

Then we covered the matzah up until later in the seder

During the seder we helped to say the blessings over the candles

And at the end of the seder I enjoyed some matzah!