We have been so busy traveling the past couple weeks, I haven't had any time to write about all of the fun we've been having! Hopefully I'll get caught up in the next couple days because we're back to traveling next week.
The past two weekends I felt so incredibly blessed! Blessed to have two weekends away with great girl friends, blessed to have a loving husband who supported my decision to get away before baby 2 comes, and blessed to have parents who live close by and could help Ben while he was a single parent. The last weekend in July I went up to Chicago for a "Kappa Reunion". Every year in the past we have had a wedding or baby to celebrate in our group of friends, but this year their was a bit of a lull in the action, so we decided to get together just to catch up! It was a perfect weekend of talking, laughing, and relaxing. We hung out at the beach for a little bit, ate at two cute breakfast places, and went to Second City to see a hilarious comedy show. And fortunately for me, Erin was not feeling up to sleeping on someone's couch since she was 30+ weeks pregnant, so she let me share a hotel room with her and David. We pregnant ladies have to stick together.
A few highlights from the weekend (no great photos of the group, and these are all just from iPhones... but oh well!)
At Adobo Grill before the show...
Second City...
The following weekend I flew out to Washington D.C. to meet Katy. She was there presenting for a conference and was then going to be driving all the way back to West Lafayette (their new home) by herself so I went to explore the city and keep her company on the drive back. I left Indy on Friday morning and it ended up taking me 9+ hours to get to out hotel in D.C. - I flew to Atlanta, then to Baltimore, took a train into downtown D.C., walked to find a bus stop, caught the bus out to Georgetown and finally laid down to relax! Fortunately I caught up on some reading, so the day didn't seem too long.
The long travel day was definitely all worth it though, Katy and I had a great time catching up and exploring the city. I don't think we've had a girls weekend away since before I was pregnant with Lucy and I forgot how nice it is to have an entire weekend just to hang out and have no agenda in mind.
Of course we did do a lot of exploring as well, we were in Washington D.C. after all! Here are a few highlights from our trip - all with my iPhone again.
The first night we ate at a Thai restaurant and then tried to get cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcakes (from the TLC reality show, DC Cupcakes) on the way home. Unfortunately, they close at 9 and we had showed up at 9:05pm... snagged a quick picture though... and then went to get some delicious frozen yogurt from Ice Berry.
No to fear though, we woke up the next morning, determined to get cupcakes! So we went around 11am and waited in line for about 30 minutes to snag these beautiful masterpieces...
And let me tell you, it was worth the wait! From top to bottom, left to right: Banana Split, Red Velvet (for Ben), Blueberry Cheesecake, Salted Carmel, Peanut Butter Fudge and Vanilla.
After exploring Georgetown, we decided to spend the rest of the day in the city so we took a bus (Katy was my inspiration for all of the public transportation on this trip!) to Dupont Circle to get some burgers and fries from the Shack Shake and then walked over to the White House...
And stopped by the American History Museum because we had heard there was an exhibit featuring the First Ladies' Dresses. Katy with Michelle Obama's Dress
We also checked out Julia Child's Kitchen while we were there...
After the museum I needed to rest (I did pretty well for being 24 weeks pregnant, but I do have my limits!) so we sat at a cafe and got some water... only to get caught in a rain storm! We waited the rain out and then walked by the Washington Memorial and got pretty close to the Lincoln Memorial, but got too tired and too hungry to walk all the way there. We took the subway to Adams Morgan to get dinner at a place called The Diner. Then took a bus, walked and another bus to finally get home! I was exhausted! But so glad we saw everything we did in the short amount of time we had.
The next morning we got in the car and headed home. We had planned to stop at an outlet mall, but after 3 stops to pee and eat, we ran out of time to get to the outlet mall before it closed... oh well! We spent about 6 hours of the drive talking so it seemed to fly by!
After two weekends away I was so excited to see Ben and Lucy and am looking forward to spending most of this upcoming weekend with just them, I missed our family a lot! Not that I don't love spending every day with Lucy, but distance really does make the heart grow fonder, and two weekends away was just what I needed to get re energized to care for Lucy, Ben and our home. My spirit is so lifted!
Oh and for those of you worried about Ben, he's had his time "off" too! Earlier this summer he went to visit his friend Sean in California. I asked for some pictures from him, but when I flipped through the camera I realized there was not one picture that included Sean or Ben - they were all just of the scenery and stuff Ben saw while he was there! So here's a picture from Ben's trip...
Weird... I know... that's why I hadn't originally posted any pictures in the first place :) By the way, this is from Ripley's Believe or Not Museum... so I guess it's not that weird! He also spent a Saturday at Kings Island with his brothers and another Saturday golfing in Northern Indiana with some friends. We both have had some great weekends away from Lucy together and by ourselves, and I think our marriage is so much stronger and we are such better parents because of it!
