A Much Needed Family Visit!

I have been so anxious to visit my family for a long time! I booked a trip awhile back to visit my family in Maryland in January, and the plan was for me to take Blake by himself so I could get a little vacation from Jacob and he could spend the weekend with his dad at home. In the end though I felt bad about not bringing Jacob since I knew my family would love to see him again since he's at a fun age, and I knew he'd love to see all them, especially all my sisters. Sooo, even though it ruined my idea of actually getting a nice break, I knew my family would gladly volunteer to help with the kids, so I worked it out to get standby flights instead and brought both the boys with me. So really, everybody wins! Except Luke, who got left at home alone. Sorry! But I'm so glad I brought them both! It was well worth it and we all had a great visit!

We flew in on a Thursday afternoon, and the boys did fairly well on the flight, sleeping majority of the time- minus the 10 minutes towards the end where Blake loudly fussed before eating for the third time and falling asleep a second time. But from the moment we got to the house, these boys were suffocated by their aunts- in a good way :)

Here's Blake with Andrea. And Jacob associated Andrea with dancing since she always had her itouch with her and so he had a good time dancing with her a lot, and using her itouch to watch Tangled.
And conveniently Andrea got this awesome playhouse for Christmas so Jacob had a blast playing in it with everyone. I'll even admit, that house was pretty cool. I can see why a 14 year old would specifically ask for that for Christmas haha.

Erika especially loved to be with her nephews spending every waking second playing with them and taking off two days of work so that she could spend the whole long weekend with us. Jacob adored Erika as well and they had so much fun playing together! Their favorite game was to play 'bedtime' and Erika would be the baby and Jacob would play the mom, and put her to sleep in his bed, haha it was too cute. I loved how they could spend hours playing together and I was able to hand over the kids and get a small break!
Friday I decided I wanted to go to Fuddruckers for lunch since all the ones in Denver already shut down. Tyler, Erika, and Julia came along, and while they weren't as impressed with their food, I love the burgers there and miss having one near us! And Jacob had himself a good time running around the restaurant looking at the arcade games, he would hardly sit and eat. As everyone often tells me, I guess I obviously have my hands full... Needless to say, after our lunch excursion, all three of them shook their heads and said they didn't know how I do it every day with both those kids. Haha, me neither.
Anyway, Friday night we all stayed home, ate pizza, played games and sat by the fire. Love it. Saturday for lunch I had my best girl friends from home over for lunch- Amy and Katie! I literally can't make a visit home without seeing them, it's great to always catch up and see them!
After my friends left, I put my tired boys to bed and went shopping for a bit with Erika and Andrea. That night we sat around watching a movie and then had a thorough discussion of it afterwards, haha. Then Sunday we went to church and snapped a couple pictures real quick beforehand.


After church, I took the boys straight down to Luke's grandma's house in McLean, VA since all Luke's family out there was getting together for dinner. I was really happy that I could see a lot of extended family that I hadn't seen in awhile, meet a new cousin just married in, and visit with everyone else all together. Jacob even had some new cousins to play with and were great in sharing all their fun toys with him. It's funny to see other kids with the exact same obsessions as Jacob: Buzz Lightyear, Lightening McQueen, and Thomas the Tank Engine. That pretty much sums it up.
Monday was Martin Luther King Day so I was lucky that everyone either already had the day off or were able to easily take the holiday off so that we could spend the day all together and go down to DC.
We decided to drive down instead of taking the metro so we could limit walking around in the cold, and it was actually a fun drive. Erika taught us a Martin Luther King song that she heard the kids singing at one of her elementary schools in Baltimore. It wasn't even really a song since the only line she knew was, "Martin Luther King was a great, great man!" But the way Erika sang it so reverently was hilarious and we ended up singing it all weekend since we couldn't get the tune out of our heads! Then we tried to think of any other patriotic song we knew that we could sing for the holiday and as we were driving slowly along the sights downtown, my mom tried to be sneaky and roll down the window of our 12-seater van so everyone could hear us obnoxiously singing "50 Nifty United States" while we bumbled down the street. It was actually pretty fun, haha.

We walked around the river for a little bit and then let Jacob play on the playground there for a few minutes, until he tripped and split his lip open for the second time in two days. Ah, poor guy.

Then we went over to the Jefferson Memorial, and I'm embarrassed to say I don't think I've ever been over to it before, at least not that I remember. It's pretty right there on the water though, and has lots of nice views.



From the Jefferson Memorial we could see the new Martin Luther King Memorial and it was packed for the holiday, so we didn't head over but it was good enough seeing it across the river and as we drove by.
Then we all went over the Musuem of Natural History, which I thought would be a lot of fun for Jacob.

I was glad Jacob did like seeing all the dinosaur bones and animals. Here I think he was saying the dinosaur was sad and tired and was taking a nap, haha.

And little Blake got a view of everything too since he insisted on being carried instead of staying in the stroller.
Here we took a "family" picture since it said that we all descended from this original animal that looked like a rat... haha, whatever.

Yup, it was a fun little day trip, but after checking out nearly the whole musuem we were ready to go home. That night we picked up some Jerry's pizza (another place Luke and I desperately miss in Denver!) and then I stayed up with my sisters to watch an eventful episode of the Bachelor! By Tuesday I decided we should probably get home, so after spending the whole morning packing, it quickly came time to say goodbye to everyone...

Goodbye Grandpa!

Goodbye Erika and Julia! We had such a fun time seeing everyone and can't wait to come back and see the whole family in August!