Thanksgiving weekend

Kraig is here to visit for the holiday weekend! We were able to hang out a little bit before I had to go into work. He would have gotten here soone though if I had not sent him on a wild goose chase for candy corn on his way here. You see, I was making these "turkey" cupcakes for my coworkers and patients on Wednesday night, and I was supposed to use candy corn as the turkey's "tailfeathers." Well, apparently candy corn is only sold at Halloween on the East Coast. People looked at me like I was crazy when I went to the grocery store on Wednesday morning looking for it. Well! at home... you can get it year round in one of those cheap candy aisles!
Kraig had no luck either finding candy corn so I resorted to Reeses Pieces instead. The turkey ended up being really cute and the patients really appreciated them. I think I will make "reindeer" cupcakes for Christmas. I did this kind of stuff when I worked at Memorial but haven't since I started traveling. I guess I really do like the NIH.
Anyways, Kraig got reacquainted with Baxter and is working on "disciplining" him. That's fine because he needs it!
For Thanksgiving, Kraig and I went to one of my coworker's (Eve) houses for dinner. They had a big family meal, and it was quite good! It is always fun to see what other families do for the holidays or taste how their food is different than what I am used to having. Their whole family was really nice and friendly. Kraig and I helped Eve's granddaughter write her Christmas list. She just came up to me, sat down, and said hey... "what should I ask to get for Christmas?" I was thinking.. oh girl, you came to the right person. I am an excellent list maker. Some of the ideas she used were My Little Ponies, a Power Wheels, clothes for her new puppy, and swim flippers. By the time she was done with me, I had helped her add about 20 things to her list (I apologized to her family)! The best thing about the evening was that they set off fireworks from their back porch. They were really loud ones too. Kraig and I loved it! It reminded me of the burning of the Christmas paper that we do on Christmas Eve.
The next day, Kraig and I went to Frederick, MD to visit another coworker of mine, Cindy. We went there to help her make a gingerbread house. Every year, the NIH has a cut-throat gingerbread house decorating contest between groups in the clinical center. The prize is a pizza party, but the glory is forever! I thought that it sounded like a really fun creative thing, so I wanted to help out. I had already made plans to go before Kraig knew that he could come to MD.. so, we both went to help out with the gingerbread house. He was actually a lot of help and came up with ways to engineer some of the design- including the actual house.
The gingerbread houses that are made for the contest are very immaculate and not just your run of the mill gingerbread houses. They might be forest themed or story-book themed or even a gingerbread model of the White House- and it is all very intricate. We decided to do a "gingerbread aquarium" so our house was actually a sand castle made by putting frosting on the gingerbread and then putting coarse brown sugar on top of that. I learned a lot about cake decorating, fondit, and icing. It is kinda hard but was really fun. Kraig and I also enjoyed hanging out with Cindy's family. I am going to go back again next week to help finish it up! I told Kraig that I want to decorate cakes now.. He did not seem too exceited about that.
We finished off the evening by going to one of the many malls in the area. We walker around the mall and then ate at the food court. We love to eat there! I also love it when they are handing out free samples!
On Saturday morning, we went to see Twilight: New Moon. I enjoyed it much more the second time around. On top of that, the movie theatre that we found was much closer and had $5 matinees! We spent most of the day shopping (including buying a new laptop for Kraig) and hanging around the apartment.
I had to go to work that night so Kraig got to spend some more quality time with Baxter. They are getting along really well- and despite what Kraig says.. he loves that cat!
I will be sad to see Kraig leave in the morning. He is going to start work in Spring City, TN tomorrow. It is 9 hours away and actually closer to drive there from MI than it is from here in MD. Hopefully, he will be back next weekend, despite the drive.