Butler's Orchard

A little late in the season but we finally had time for a fall family day at a local farm.  This past weekend we headed to Butler's Orchard in Maryland. The farm offers apple picking, pumpkins, a country market, petting zoo, pony rides, slides, mazes, etc, etc.  We had limited to no interaction with those activities because Mason wanted to spend all the time driving trucks....

Luckily climbing hay bundles was also appealing and we got a cute mom and Mason shot.

We got some pumpkins for the front of the house and I grabbed some honey crisp apples and made a delicious apple crisp that evening.  

Nice ending to our family day!

Being tourists in DC - Union Market and monuments

Last weekend we had friends visiting so we decided to do a DC tourist day with them. For lunch we headed over to Union Market. Mark and I hadn't been there yet ourselves, so we got to play tourist a bit too.  The space was very cool and exceeded our expectations! Tons of artisans have booths within the warehouse space so we walked around and surveyed all the food options. There are tons of tables scattered inside and out for dining.

Mason's favorite part was the very oversized cookies from Panorama Bakery. Yum, yum, yum!

After lunch we walked the monuments. Mark captured a nice panoramic from the Jefferson.

Mason enjoyed FDR's dog and the bench at the Jefferson most....

Probably not the highlights for most people but to each their own!

Rocklands and Bluemont Park

When Mark and I were fist dating all the way back in 2002, we both lived in Glover Park and were frequent customers at Rocklands BBQ.  Lucky for us, 4 months before we bought our house in Arlington, a second location opened here. We recently had a family date here with some friends for lunch. Rocklands is such an easy place to take kids and the outside space makes it a dog friendly location in the warmer months.

After lunch we hit Bluemont Park. The plaground area is great - fenced in, lots of shade, lots of different structures, swings and slides.  Here is Mason having fun with his future wife, Lucy!

Rockwall fun!

This sand and wood mixture looks delicious. They will be great at making dinners together!

Water Tots!

After last spring's success with swimming lessons and our summer full of swimming at various places, I was so excited to start up fall lessons.  No more Water Babies, we now met the criteria for Water Tots! Our first class was a few weeks ago and I showed up seeing lots of moms and tots who were previously in Water Babies with us. I was chatting them up about how well Mason did in the water over the summer and with water wings and blah blah blah.  The instructor arrived indicating we could enter the pool and thus began the worst 15 minutes I've experienced in a public place with a toddler.  Mason screamed, cried, kicked, didn't want me to touch him and every bad thing you could imagine until I was dying of embarrassment and on the verge of tears myself and we left half way through the class.  I'm sure this is just the start of the terrible twos but I was also feeling like this was my punishment for all the bragging about my expert swimmer.

I'm relieved and happy to report that the past two weeks have gone a millions times better.  I think after all the independence of the water wings, Mason didn't want to have to be held anymore. He's such a big boy! He's also back to being a top performer in his class...not bragging, it's a fact!

Redskins

For the past several years we've had Redskins season tickets with some friends.  Sadly, we've decided this is the last year as season ticket holders.  Between the cost of the tickets, tailgating/concessions and now babysitting - it is A LOT.  Not to mention that the team has been doing terribly and ticket prices go down throughout the season so it would actually be less to just buy tickets as needed.

Our distribution of the games for this season rocks - home opener and all the division games!  Last weekend we headed to the home opener against the Dolphins.  It was a perfect day for tailgating and we made the most of it which helped make up for the loss to the Dolphins.  Boo!

Here we are in our annual photo...

Clearly time for me to get a new shirt!

Up next is the Eagles game on Oct 4!  We have a good mix of Eagles and Skins friends so should make for an interesting day!

Ocean Dunes Water Park

Earlier in the summer, I entered to win passes to one of Northern Virginia's water parks and in early August I found out I won - hooray! Thanks Our Kids for offering these great raffles.  After we got back from all our vacation travels, I checked out the passes and was surprised to see that one of the parks was located just a few minutes away from our house; I was also surprised to see that the water parks all close after Labor Day weekend, which was a week away - yikes!

We made plans to head over to Ocean Dunes Water Park on Monday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, the last day of the season. As soon as we got out of the car and Mason saw the water, he went crazy and was having a tantrum while we waited in line.  We need a plan to control this kid around water!

We got into the park and it was packed!  There were three pools - a kiddie wadding pool, a lap pool and a regular pool.  There were also water slides and a large water feature that I don't even know how to explain - picture below.  Mason bee-lined for the the water feature and we spend the afternoon going back and forth between that and the kiddie pool.  We wrapped up the outing with some ice cream.  

Ocean Dunes was a great way to end the summer and now that we know it is here, I'm sure we'll be back multiple times next summer. Hopefully next year, Mason will reach the height requirement for the slides!

National Book Festival

I've been in super catch up mode at work after three weeks of vacation so I have a backlog of blog entries...good problem to have I think!

For the past 7 years I've been volunteering at the National Book Festival with the Junior League of Washington, DC.  The DC chapter of JL focuses on literacy and this is one of our most visible events in the community with 350-600 volunteers annually; its also my favorite volunteer event!  Most years I have been volunteering as a captain in the book signing lines, which is exactly as it sounds - authors sign their fan's book and I manage moving people through the line with a team of other volunteers to support me.  For the popular authors, people will line up hours in advance so you have a lot of time to talk to folks.  My favorite experience at the Book Festival was in 2012 - I had John Green as one of my authors.  He had @ 1400 young adults in his line. I spent hours talking to the kids about why they love John's books and how they relate to themes and characters.  Some of the kids cried when they met him - it was amazing!  We got to a point where John had about 5 minutes left to sign books and there were still 100+ kids in the line.  He asked to have everyone stand sideways in line and open their books to the page they want signed.  He got up and walked down the side of the line, furiously signing the books and he got every single book signed!  Huge cheers and applause broke out when he was done. Since then I've been working my way through his books, and now movies!  I have become a huge fan and I love that day and experience.

This year I had Al Roker of the Today Show fame.  I do not have a good track record of meeting celebrities - I get nervous and tongue tied but I was quite pleased with my Al interaction!  He was kind, quiet, and had awesome style!  

This was a different experience than I've had in the past because of his celeb status people were as excited or in some cases more excited to have a photo op than to have their book signed. Anyway, despite 12 hours of being on my feet, managing 6 author's signings, and running up and down the lines it was a great day.

We just found out next year's festival will be Sept 24 at the Convention Center - save the date and I hope to see you there!