Washington DC

I have seriously neglected getting this post up because no sooner had we gotten home from our family getaway then I came down with an awful chest cold. Which turned into walking pneumonia. So I've pretty much been managing the household on borrowed energy (thankfully, Mike got off a little early for me yesterday to cover a lot of the parenting duties) and just haven't sat down to get all the pictures up. But, here they are!

Our first stop on the trip was at the American Girl Place in Tyson's Corner. Logan's been asking to see more of her bitty baby things so we thought it'd be fun to eat some lunch at the bistro and let her see and pick out some things she might like for Christmas, afterwards.

Lunch was fabulous. You pay one price and get an appetizer and an entree each. The food was really good and the atmosphere was so fun.

Logan's baby, Lucy, got her own special seat!

AND they brought Lucy her own cup of "chocolate milk" for Logan to give her.

This is what Brody thought of the whole affair:

I think we heard "there's so much pink!" about 10,000 times.

This was such a special experience for me to have, having grown up on American Girl Dolls. I think I still have all 4 of mine at home in Miami. Logan got to play with them while we were there last summer! I can't wait until one day we can go back with my mom and Carolyn!

The boys were huge troopers. It's not easy stuck in a room of wall to wall pink when all you want to do is be out running around or watching sports.

My favorite part of the room? The overhanging flower chandelier. If I had all the money in the world, I'd outfit Logan's room with one of these. It was beautiful!

After lunch we headed downstairs to look at the bitty baby stuff.

Then she wanted to go see the big girl dolls. She LOVED the Molly display--but only because that's the first one I got. She kept saying things like, "Mommy! There's your Mowy Doll! Can you ebeeve (believe) they have it? I want Kit or Juwie (Julie), but there's your Mowy!"

And here we are in front of the Kit display. I think it's funny that she tended to gravitate toward the dolls that looked more like her.

She did NOT want to leave the store without this carseat. She kept telling me how unsafe it is that she has to hold "Lucy girl" in her lap without a buckle. Sigh. She really is becoming a little mommy with this doll. We also let her pick an outfit there to take Lucy home in and that was a real treat, though, it took us about 30 minutes and 3 or 4 loops around the area for her to actually make up her mind.

Daddy and his girl:

It was raining and nasty that day so any plans to go walking were squashed. We decided to just go hang out at our hotel. Now, we pricelined this hotel and up until we got there had spent right at $40 on it. Then there was the $18 parking fee...but that's not here nor there. It was FABULOUS. We knew there'd be a kitchen so we had brought some mac and cheese to make for dinner but found that there was no need because the hotel PROVIDED dinner free to it's guests Mon-Thurs. I guess when you usually charge $239 a night you can afford to keep your guests comfy like that, can't you? I will say that Logan was entirely too disappointed that there'd be no macaroni and cheese. Until she found the unlimited bounty of cookies they had at dinner. Of which she only had one. Though she would have loved a million more.

The next morning the sun was shining so we took the opportunity to head out early. But not without a stop at Georgetown Cupcake for some treats!

For those of you that have no idea what the significance is, Georgetown Cupcake is where they film TLC's DC Cupcakes. Logan and I watch it together on occasion so it was fun to actually go and see what all the hype was about.

Then we headed to the Washington Monument. We thought we'd just walk around the National Mall until lunch time but we took half a loop around the monument and it was like 45 degrees with a windchill making it closer to 30 and the kids were having nothing of it. So we took some pictures and headed out.

And the kids have several layers on and had tons of blankets in the stroller, so it looks like Brody only has a light jacket on but he really has much more under it!

Really wanted to catch one of the two of them together but Brody was not ok with that.

So we headed home and enjoyed our Georgetown cupcakes after dinner. And yes, they are worth all the hype. Every. last. bite.

Here are a couple of random shots taken either right after we got home or the next day. Brody enjoyed playing outside when the weather warmed up a bit:

And this is our FAVORITE feature of Mike's new store! The outdoor fireplace!! I can take the kids and sit near the fireplace, keep warm, drink my coffee and Logan can be free to be a little louder than when she's inside without getting dirty looks. It's bliss.