Shaken Not Stirred

Get excited Blog readers, it is math time.  


(8 adults + 2 babies + 2 dogs) x (1 trip to the E.R. + 1 stomach flu/food poisoning) x (1 broken air conditioner + 4 days of 100 degree weather) / (a 2 bedroom apartment) = Awesome Family Vacation Fun! 

Fourth of July week brought the family into town.  Mom, Dad, Abbey, Steve and the twins started the drive in the morning and arrived late Tuesday night. The van looked like a clown car. People and stuff kept coming out. 4 adults, 2 babies and 198 bags of baby related items. The babies had grown so much in the past two months it was wonderful to see them again. 

The next morning the fam walked Kelly to work. It was fun to show them the route to work. After work, we headed up to Baltimore to see the Cardinals play the Orioles. It was a blast. We had perfect weather, good/cheap seats and the Cardinals won!

Katie and Grandma flew in that night completing the posse. 

Thursday was not great. Dad woke up with a tooth infection and had to go to the E.R. for antibiotics and pain medicine. Kelly woke up with stomach issues and all that is involved with the flu. Ben woke up, assessed the situation and ran out the door to work ASAP.  Kelly made it through the work day only because she was giving a tour of the Capitol to the fam that afternoon. The tour went well and everyone seemed to enjoy it, especially getting to go on the floor of the House of Representatives.

That evening, we had Mexican for dinner at La Loma on Capitol Hill.  

Friday the fam started the day on a hop-on hop-off bus tour.  Kelly was still recovering and Ben went to work.  In the afternoon, Kelly and fam went to the Kennedy Center.  

After work, Ben came home and got to have a series of absurd conversations with Sprint about his new phone that apparently will not work with his plan.  Stay tuned for another potential blog post ranting about Sprint.  Only time will tell if such an exciting post gets written. 

After the Sprint experience, Ben knew that there was only one option for dinner - Armand's.  A few deep dish pizzas later, everyone was stuffed and there was some left over for breakfast.

If you have never had an over-easy egg on top of a leftover piece of pizza for breakfast, it is time to seriously consider it.  Ben started his Saturday with just that and knew it was going to be a great day.  Our first stop was Eastern Market to check out the scene.  While we were there, we tried some fruit samples from the farmers market section and picked up a few treats from the bakery.

After walking back from the Eastern Market, we got ready to head out for the rest of the day.  The first stop was lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl.  

From there, we headed to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.  The rest of the fam arrived via metro, so Ben and Kelly went to get the other car at the house.  The next stop was the American History Museum, which was packed.  Apparently, 4th of July weekend is a popular time to visit DC and the Smithsonian -- live and learn.

From the Museum, we all headed to Georgetown for an early dinner at Paolo's.

It was a nice dinner before we went for a wander through the neighborhood.  We tracked down the house where Jackie and JFK lived.

From there, we made a little time for shopping before picking some cupcakes for a b-day dessert for Mom/G-Ma/Janet.

Apparently cupcakes are the new cake.  Georgetown Cupcake has gained a fair amount of fame as it is apparently featured on some TV show.  Unfortunately, they had a line going down the street.

Fortunately, we had heard that Baked & Wired down the street was actually better and as it is less famous, there was not a line.  

With our cupcakes in hand, we decided to visit the Georgetown University campus for a nice picnic spot.

What happened after that?  Did it involve following a man in a gold tuxedo?  You will just have to read the next post to find out.  To be continued....