January 4 - 5, 2013: Washington D.C.

This is going to be a little out of order because I still need to blog about:

• December 7-9 - Washington DC visit with Team ABC and Ice Skating 
• Christmas cookie painting
• Christmas!
• Sledding and post Christmas snowfall

However, I wanted to get this written down before I forget.  AND - the pictures are ready.  I don't have to edit or download them or anything.  January 2013 is caught up for now!  :)

Friday, January 4th, we made a mad dash after Brian's work to watch the game in D.C. with Team ABC and their friends, Austin/Kate.

We made it right after the Aggies scored their first touchdown.  Pretty excited to see the Aggies play and win the cotton bowl, romping all over OU.  I only heard about it in the background since I had to be a mom and play Munchkin and then put Michael to bed.

Do you hear that sad violin playing for me in the background? :)

Saturday, Michael chose me to wake up at 7:30am!  :)  He was so sweet though so it's hard to ever be really upset.  

We hung out for a while and Brian started to stir.  So I convinced Brian to watch Michael so I could pop over to Whole Foods to get eggs, fruit, and a baguette to go with the bacon we brought.

It is so refreshing for me to be back in the city.  I am a city girl at heart.   I loved being awake and walking to the grocery store.  Part of me needs to remember though that I'm a "grass is greener on the other side."  When I was lugging my groceries home to my apt in Paris, I was cursing it the entire way!

Bringing home OJ, a dozen eggs, berries, and a baguette wasn't difficult at all!  I was just sad that I didn't think I could have brought Starbucks too!

We made breakfast and relaxed.  The night before, we all looked at each other and were all, "What are we gonna do tomorrow?"

Better than have an answer, we decided to go to sleep.

I think Brian had the genius idea to hike Great Falls:

AWESOME.

I love hiking.  Especially when the trail is all paved like it is!  :)

AND I love hiking when there's actually something to look at it.  When we hike around here, we are rewarded with a view of a field.  Or maybe a covered bridge.  Not terribly exciting.  If you're lucky, you might get a Lyme infested tick on you during your hike.

Waterfalls, I love.

Michael did too!  Don't be wooed by that railing there.  It was as rickety as they come:

 Carson has a mini obsession with running water so the falls were especially fascinating:

He ended up smiling but then covered his mom's face:

No matter, his dad more than makes up for anything:

 Happy to have a family picture:

 The end of the trail began with a big rock:

Michael was pretty excited about it.

Family pictures followed:

This is probably not my finest hour as a children's photographer.  :)

A little better.  I am going to say it's because I'm shooting with the sun right in my subjects' faces:

Family picture!  

Brother picture!

Sister-in-law picture!

We saw some crazy kayakers:

They ended up getting out and walking.  They weren't as crazy as we thought.

After this, we drove over to eat Vietnamese food at Four Sisters - delicious! :)  And fancy!  

We couldn't believe all the AWESOME shopping that is by Team ABC's old place.  Anthropologie and up!  We then went to Target to pick up things like deodorant and headed back to Arlington, VA.  

We rested a bit and then headed back to PA.  Team ABC assured us we could have stayed, and we would have liked to.  However, I felt that we have been on vacation too long and I just had no idea what was going on at home for the month of January.  Brian had work to do as well. So we decided to leave town to take care of home and let both families have a day of rest.  

I'm sure we'll be back.  

I have had some water leaking from what I thought was under my heater/furnace.  Any time water leaks from UNDER any of our home systems, I see $$$$ in my future.  We had the heating guy come out today and luckily it was just a leaky vinyl tube so he isolated the leak and fixed it.

He also reminded me that my particular make and model of furnace was poorly designed and has killed 2 of Lennox's CEO's due to cracks in the heat exchanger leaking CO.  

He was really nice though and checked the CO levels coming from my flue.  He said that the levels were just fine and were nothing that indicated that the heat exchanger was compromised.  He verified that our current CO monitoring system would be adequate in alerting us to any possible problems.

WHEW - Now I can seriously go about socking away money for a future furnace.  Or go and purchase that American Home Shield already!  And then do my maintenace so it's on the record for them!

Grown up stuff.  AAK.