Monday, April 30, 2012

Little Princess Lost

Once upon a time there was a princess that lived in a palace which was completely surrounded by magical silver trees. The princess’s name was Ava Lou and she loved to go on adventures.
DSCF6066
One day she decided to venture into the Magical Forest to see if she could find a new friend.
DSCF6057
She walked and walked, but didn’t get tired because she was surrounded by such beauty.
DSCF6059
Sometimes Princess Ava Lou was afraid she was going the wrong direction.
DSCF6058
But she would stop and look around and realized that in a place like this one could never feel lost.
DSCF6061
She was, however, starting to get a little disappointed that she wasn’t finding ANY friends. And as we all know, life as a princess can be a little lonely.
DSCF6067
So she thought REAL hard as to where a friend might be found…
DSCF6073
..and she got an idea…
DSCF6068
…with a twinkle in her eye she set off to find the friend she knew was waiting.
DSCF6074
DSCF6060
To be continued…

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Our Trip

Okay, so for those of you patiently waiting for pictures from our trip, here you go. :) We had a wonderful time together! It was so nice to be able to do what we wanted, when we wanted. Not to say we didn't miss our little angels...it was just nice to get away for a few days and do something we'd  probably never have a chance to do again.

I have to give a little plug for priceline. I booked the entire trip from there and stayed within our budget doing so. Originally the plan was to go out to PA to go to Jerem's cousins wedding reception. After looking at tickets and noticing it would be significantly less expensive to fly into D.C. and drive the 2 hrs there we decided to do that. Once that decision was made Jerem suggested he take an additional day off work so we could see some of the sites of D.C. Great idea!

The first hotel I tried to get as close to the National Mall where all the monuments are, as possible. Hotels right around there are OUTRAGIOUS in cost. I ended up getting this gem (Marriot) for $112 for the night. We had to drive through some nasty traffic to get there. I used to think setting up a tent tested ones marriage, I have now concluded that driving through DC is a much better test. And that was with us HAVING a Garmin.  So anyhoo...this hotel was in Dupont Circle area. It was set up on a little hill and surrounded by beautiful flowers and trees. The room was obviously super old, not in a bad way, but like they didn't try and modernize it. It was really charming and just perfect. We were surrounded by all these little ethnic resteraunts so we had fun eating there too. :) Once we got there and parked the Jeep, (another priceline deal that we LOVED) we vowed to not drive it again until we were headed to PA. Dan and Kathy  Holen were kind enough to give us their Metro cards from when they lived there and since there was a station right outside the hotel it was perfect to hop on and take wherever we wanted to go.


Friday morning after a leasurily breakfast we made our way down to the Mall and walked through all the memorials and monuments. A lot of them have a buzz of conversation from people milling around, or fountains going, but the Vietnam Memorial was completely silent. There were at least 100 people streaming by, yet no one was talking.

 The Lincoln Memorial always catches my breath with how big it really is. This was my third time seeing it, but I had forgotten how enormous the statue was.
  We took this picture standing on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial. Unfortunatly the reflecting pool was under construction so it wasn't quite the view you see in pictures.
 The Korean War memorial was the most lifelike. These guys were huge, but still seemed like they were just frozen in time with the expressions on their faces. We realized we didn't know much about the Korean War, especially compared to the other memorials there.

 While there we also went to the Museum of Natural History. That was about it for site seeing. We enjoyed a nice lunch back by our hotel then took off for PA. Once again traffic was crazy. Jerem didn't go above 50 the whole way there even though we were on a 4 lane Interstate.

Once there we enjoyed reconnecting with his aunt and uncle (on his dad's side) and cousins. We stayed at an Inn his cousin is the manager for. It was out in the country, and so peaceful. Lancaster is the heart of Amish country so we got to experience sharing the road with horse and buggies. Riviting stuff folks. :)
 The Inn was surrounded by orchards that were in bloom. Jerem's allergies had a field day with that.
 The front of the Inn.
 And, well, that's about it. We headed back to DC Sunday and enjoyed another great night at another awesome Priceline hotel. A Marriott again, but this one the other extreme and totally modern in every aspect. Our room was on the 6th floor and had floor to ceiling window taking up the entire wall. That one was $90/night. It was in Crystal City which has a lot of shops, but they were all closed so we just enjoyed walking around and talking. We decided we like living in our little "bubble" up north and were very ready to come home and see the kids. It was a great experience though and we are so glad we did it!