Let the holidays commence!

Apparently it's been a busy two weeks. Funny how the day to day things add up into a life. Here's what's been going on:

Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a lovely holiday. Ours was pretty great. We slept in (hooray!) and then made traditional Haws scones for brunch via the Homely method, because I am impatient and believe in immediate scone gratification. They were very good and no one was harmed in my first attempt at deep frying, so we'll label that a success. We spent the rest of the morning playing a new game and then went to Aunt Traci's friend Shelly's house for dinner. We didn't know anyone but Traci, but that didn't matter because everyone was super friendly and nice and we had a grand time. I embarrassed myself at corn hole, we ate lots of good food, Mike won the "dollar game", and my pumpkin cheesecake was universally admired (it's my mission in life to replace pumpkin pie with pumpkin cheesecake because it is astronomically better). I'm really grateful for awesome people. They make life worth it.

The most surprising thing that happened last week was that I was asked to help fill out the instrumentation for the Washington Temple Orchestra for their Christmas concert. I don't really know how they got my contact information, but I'm glad they did, because it was super fun. The DC Temple has an annual Festival of Lights with nightly performances in the Visitor's Center auditorium (which I did not know existed), and the Temple Orchestra was performing on Saturday. So I got the music and showed up and played with them and it was awesome. Everyone was really nice and very excited that I was there--apparently they only have one horn on a regular basis--and hopefully I'll be able to continue playing with them next year. I also made friends with the other horn players and learned about some other community bands in the area, so hopefully I will be able to keep playing with another group too.

We hit a milestone yesterday when we had our very first houseguest! Somehow in over three and a half years of marriage no one has ever come to stay with Mike and me until yesterday. This is a little sad. But Rachel came to visit, so all is well, and it was super fun. We ate lots of food (because feeding people is how I show my love--seriously, I don't know another way to do it), played games, and worked on Christmas decorations during the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Mike hung lights in the windows and I made Rachel cut out snowflakes with me to hang on the walls and we played "Spot Uncle Glen" during the choir numbers. We finished off the night with the fruit and cheese box Mike's parents sent (because I have the best in-laws ever and nothing you say will convince me otherwise) which was so so tasty. Those are the best pears I've ever had in my life. It was a delightful evening and I'm sad that Rachel had to leave so soon. Visitors are fun! Come visit, people!

Cheers,

Mrs. Hawsmo

Black Magic and Arsonist Pandas

So basically I sit down to blog and can't remember a single thing that happened in the last two weeks. Does this happen to everyone? Is it some sort of weird Pavlovian response to computer screens or writing in general? I don't understand. Here's the few things I do remember:

• Going to the temple. On Veteran's day Mike had the day off so we got to go to the DC temple. We got there right as a session started, so we decided to do sealings instead. It was nice. We got to help a couple with a big pile of family names. I think it really says something about the Church that our most sacred form of worship is made up of service. I thought about that the whole way home. 
• Later that week I went to an orchestra rehearsal for a Christmas orchestra that a friend's stake is putting together. She'd texted me and said they needed more horns, so I was curious and decided to check it out. It was absurd. I laughed the whole way home. If I had been expecting anything other than an enthusiastic but unskilled group of volunteers I might have been disappointed, but that was exactly what they had. We were all crammed in the choir loft of the church, trying to share makeshift stands and sightread songs that weren't always a good choice. Two versions of "What Child Is This" had been passed out--in different keys. We tried to play "Sleigh Ride" (to my undying horror. Ugh, that song) and since we were lacking a percussion section, the conductor's five year old daughter was in charge of manning the clapper to make the whipcrack (and she was actually really good at it). My stand partner was a tiny junior high school boy with glasses and a bowl cut who told me about how playing with three other horns was the most he'd ever played with, and I had to refrain from commenting that I'd been playing horn since before he was born. Oh gosh. It was hilarious. I would have gone back the next week just for the entertainment value, but we have a friend coming into town on the night of the performance and I couldn't make that commitment. Alas.
• We went to another Wizards game. Mike watched the game, I watched the people in front of us slowly lose their verbal filters as they became more inebriated. I think the highlight was when one of them--a dude in a beanie with a scruffy beard--yelled, "Kris Humphries you are a beautiful piece of man!" during some free throws.
• I started learning Mandarin! I found an app that takes you through it step by step (complete with a cute panda who gives you a thumbs up when you get something right and looks like he's gonna set your house on fire when you don't) and I'm liking it a surprising amount. It's like learning a secret code. I can't do much more than say "I am eating a yellow peach" yet, and I'm 600% sure that I won't understand anything spoken to me by anyone who isn't the little arsonist panda, but so far it's really cool and it makes me feel like I might actually be able to learn a new language. 
• I also organized our closet. This doesn't sound like a big deal but I'm excited about it anyway. I had to haul almost everything out and then rearrange all the bits and pieces, but the end result is so much nicer. I think it doubled the available storage space. Mike accused me of working black magic when he saw it all pretty. Now we just have to keep it that way...

This week we're looking forward to Thanksgiving (who isn't!?!) and celebrating with lots of food and pumpkin cheesecake. It kind of snuck up on me this year. Suddenly it's almost December and I haven't even thought about a Christmas list. What do I want this year? (The entire cheese aisle from Costco. What? Don't you?)

Cheers,

Mrs. Hawsmo

Autumn, wherefore art thou?

And by autumn I mean cold weather. Leaves are changing, the days are getting shorter, there's Christmas ornaments bigger than I am in the aisles of Costco, and it's still in the mid-60's. Is this normal? This time of year in college was marked by sleep deprivation and midterms and spending marching band rehearsals squinting suspiciously at the fall colors creeping down the mountainsides because they were the forerunners of the snow and I knew it was just a matter of time before my horn would freeze solid. This year I put on pants and a jacket to go shopping because I assume it will be a bit nippy and then I nearly sweat to death walking out of the lobby doors. I was out looking for new boots on Thursday (under the assumption that someday I will want good cold weather footwear because it will actually be cold) and came across a crew putting up an outdoor ice rink--complete with a zamboni laying down some ice. It was nearly 70 that morning. It hasn't even approached freezing at night. So I have to wonder how they expect to keep the ice there as ice instead of the world's shallowest swimming pool. Liquid nitrogen? Giant cold packs? Frost giants? At least warm weather allows lots of activities. I've discovered a rooftop balcony that faces south where I can go read in the sunshine when I feel like getting outside. I may just live there until it gets too cold.

In other news, Mike's been happy to live in a place that has a professional basketball team and has picked out games he wants to go see. We went to a Wizards/Spurs game on Wednesday and it was a lot of fun. Mike enjoyed watching the game (even though we were in the nosebleeds of the nosebleed section) and I enjoyed the people watching. Also the cheese fries we had at dinner. Mmmmm.

Friday we went to an ice cream social for the LDS people in Mike's training class. One of the class supervisors is LDS, so he and his wife make it a point to gather the LDS trainees together once training is over to mingle and ask and answer questions specific to being LDS in the Foreign Service. In those situations I always feel like I'm in the center of a venn diagram: Here's the circle containing all the FS people, here's the one with the LDS people, and here you are at the intersection. It seems to be a fairly small world out there. But it's also filled with nice people, from what I can see, so that's ok. Everyone at the party was fun to talk to and very complimentary of the maple cinnamon sunburst I brought to share (because I am a vain, vain person and I choose my desserts based solely on how impressive they are--and also because that one is super awesome). It looks like my evil plan of buying peoples' love with carbs is working. Mwa ha ha.

Cheers,

Mrs. Hawsmo

Aaaand we're back!

Sorry for the delay. I was waiting for A) the opportunity to completely take over and redecorate the blog (mwahahaha...I mean, thanks Jenny!) and B) moving to the new apartment. Both have duly been accomplished, so now I have no more reasons to procrastinate. Except procrastination in general. But I'm working on that. So, without further ado, here's some of our recent adventures!

The anticipation was killing me!

• Flag Day: Mike took it all in stride. I was torn between feeling nauseous and getting the shakes all morning. All the family members of the new hires were invited to come be nervous together as they announced our fates. I think the people in charge must enjoy watching people have heart palpitations because they announced all the posts by saying the location, the specialty (like facilities or IT or security) and THEN the person's name. But it did bring into sharp relief whether or not I really wanted to go somewhere. There were a few places I was surprised to find I really didn't want to get posted. But when our turn finally came...
• We found out we're going to China! Of all the guesses I collected, Bentley, Ruby, and Kylie were the closest, so yay for you, little people!  I was surprisingly relieved and excited to find out that

  

  The flag took over
  our IKEA plant

  we're being posted to Shenyang. Mike's excited because he gets language training and therefore gets paid to learn Mandarin. Because of that we're going to be hanging around DC for a while longer than we would have originally, which is fine by me. DC is pretty great (and it's more time for people to come visit, HINT HINT).
• We moved to our permanent place, FINALLY. Originally we were going to be spending a week in a temporary apartment but it kept stretching longer and longer and we ended up being there a month. A month is a very long time to be in limbo and I am so so so glad it's over. And I really like the new place (possibly because a quarter of it is the kitchen, which is totally awesome). Now we're all moved in and unpacked and I can finally feel like we're living here instead of in some really weird vacation dream. 

  

  A Hyatt family, erm, portrait

• We took a spontaneous trip over Columbus Day weekend (because it's a federal holiday for no reason I can fathom, but hey, three day weekend!) and drove up to Connecticut to visit friends from Alabama who moved away from us in June, those heathens. Because they are super awesome they were excited when we called and asked if we could come invade with only a few hours notice and let us stay with them for three days. It was all sorts of fun to see them again. We ate LOTS of good food, played lots of games, and a good time was had by all. Thanks again, Hyatts.

The rest of life has been spent settling into life here. We're getting to know more people, finding out more about the neighborhood, and spending lots of money at Costco (we now live literally across the street and it's both a blessing and a curse). It's still surprisingly warm here, so walking to the store is an easy chore, and the leaves are starting to turn colors. I may never get over how gorgeous autumn is in a place with real seasons. 

Cheers,

Mrs. Hawsmo

Hawsmo Abroad, 2.0

Hello all. In light of the fact that Mike decided to join the Foreign Service and I was (somehow) willing to go along with that, I've decided to resurrect this blog to record our adventures. We're not very abroad yet, although after living in Alabama, DC does kind of feel like a foreign country. (Maybe like paradise. I mean, I can walk to Costco and the library AND there's an enormous geology exhibit just a Metro ride away. Definitely paradise.) For instance, this is the view from our apartment window:

The pokey bits in the foreground are the mall parking garage. The Washington Monument is on the right, and the Pentagon is the hugely massive building taking up the rest of the space.

It's been a crazy week since we got here. Mike has been at Orientation (brainwashing) for the Foreign Service most of the time. I've been bouncing around the apartment and surrounding environs, exploring the neighborhood and going into raptures about Costco and the Sur La Table just up the street. I also had an orientation day myself, where they told us spouses all about things I'd never thought to worry about until now, like malaria and how much peanut butter you need to pack for a two year tour in Africa (these concerns are apparently of equal importance).

Last Tuesday the powers that be handed out the bid list for available postings--and no, I can't tell you what the options are, if I did I'd have to kill you--and it suddenly hit me that this is REAL and we're in it for good. And then I freaked out. Mike, being Mike, did nothing of the sort, and we've spent the days since then researching possible posts and weighing pros and cons like we actually had enough information to make a real decision, and also as if our decision would impact anything at all. Basically, we get to rank the available postings from "yes please send us here" to "over my dead body", and then the people in charge send us wherever they need us. We have to submit our list tomorrow morning, and then we'll find out where exactly we're going next Wednesday (so get your guesses in before then!). It's both exciting and pants-wettingly terrifying, so mostly I try to think about other things.

So! Now that the blog is up and running again, what would you like me to write about? What would you like to hear about our increasingly bizarre life? I will do my best to provide basic information and tell funny and interesting stories, but if there are specifics you want, please ask for them. I'll try to deliver (unless it's classified, which is something I never ever thought I would  say and makes me feel like I'm in some bad spy movie).

Cheers!

Mrs. Hawsmo