Greetings from Gaithersburg

I got to see lots of people on Wednesday! Paul went to work in the morning (and apparently had the whole floor of the office pretty much to himself) while I met my childhood friend and neighbor Noelle. We walked around the lake twice and got fancy drinks at the French-Korean bakery Tous les Jours. I only get to see her once a year when we're both back in the area for Thanksgiving, so that was awesome. Afterward, Paul met me back at our hotel and we went to La Madeleine for lunch (my favorite tomato soup in the world with five-cheese grilled cheese, which I have missed). 

By then my sister and some of her family had arrived at my parents' so we went to their house, took a walk around the neighborhood, and hung out for a little while. Nicole went to retrieve her other daughters downtown (thankfully not as chaotic as we feared after we heard about the DC shooting, which is obviously awful) and my parents took us to a new local restaurant, Pama Thai, which has excellent mango curry and pad see ew. Then we came back to the hotel to wait for Adam and Haley, who were driving from Boston in miserable traffic with Pepper -- and they finally arrived!