Traveling

The Michael family has been traveling a whole heck of a lot this past month! The month of May has completely slipped by and I am having a hard time even getting anything written down. Addison keeps me so busy during the day that by the time the evening comes I am too tired to blog. I am going to try to recap the highlights...

*Mother's Day- My first official one! We decided to take a week and go to Washington D.C. to celebrate while Dave had time off between semesters. We drove on the actual Mother's Day...all 9 hours to D.C. Addison did great in the car, but it was just a long drive for all of us. My dreams came true as we found a Jersey Mikes on the way! I was on cloud nine and I even shared a little with Addison. Our luck with technology lately has been jinxed. Our webcam broke as well as our desktop crashing. Since skype is a must in this family something had to be done. Dave surprised me with a sony tablet! It is really nice and I still have no idea what I am doing on it. Dave knows more than I do and will most likely have to teach me everything, but I love it! It also was a life saver on the almost 4 hour airplane ride that we just took to Dallas.

*Washington D.C.- This was a historical sight-seeing overload. We didn't even get to see a fourth of D.C. and I feel like we power walked to a million places! To keep with tradition I got sick on the first night in the hotel and tried to only complain to Dave every 15 minutes. We were able to stay at the Navy lodging hotel on base for an awesome price.Addison wasn't allowed to crawl on the floor so she got to roll around in her stroller and watch Mickey Mouse Club house for far too long. If our hotel hadn't been surrounded with an armed guard and barb wire I wouldn't have slept at night. We were on the wrong side of town to say the least. We rode the bus in and then caught the subway into the city. It was an adventure! We only got lost a handful of times riding an hour in the wrong direction late at night. Lucky for us it was National Police Week so there were buff police officers all over town. We braved a street hot dog vendor before getting started walking the Smithsonian the first day.We started off by going to the Air and Space Museum and then the Museum of Natural History. The Museum of Natural History was by far both of our favorites. It rained on and off the whole time we were there so we sported our raincoats and poor Addi had to have a rain flap over her stroller. She was a little confused why we kept her trapped inside a bubble for the majority of the trip. We had some good Chinese take out, chili cheese hot dogs and fries, pizza and Dave's favorite mac & cheese. I had a moment of fame at a place called Ben's Chili Bowl. We ran into Sarah Jessica Parker! I was a little star struck and Dave wanted nothing to do with it. I had to ask the dish boy to take the picture for me. I wasn't feeling very good the next morning so we made the drive to the temple and visitor's center. It is a beautiful temple and it was a perfect day to walk around. After the temple we went and toured Arlington National Cemetery. This was a really neat experience. We got to see where JFK was buried then Dave made his way up to the tomb of the unknown solider. Our last day we walked around to all the monuments and memorials. The WWII memorial was awesome. Addi got to eat(more like devour) her first popsicle by the fountain.We let her dip her toes in the water and she was pretty mad that she wasn't allowed to completely sit down in the water. Our last event was to hit up Georgetown Cupcakes from the tv show D.C. cupcakes. It was the longest bus ride considering we hopped on going the wrong direction. After almost two hours we made it to the shop. Dave feel in love with the cookies and cream cupcake. It literally tasted like a milkshake! If the line hadn't been half a mile I think we would have gotten 6 more. It was worth the trek to get there. We had a really good trip and Addison made a million friends waving "hi" and "bye, bye" to everyone she saw.   

* BU Graduation- We then got in our car and drove another 9 hours to Boston for Jonathan's BU MBA graduation. Addison is truly a good road tripper. She reaches her limits just about the same time that I do, but does a pretty good job holding down the back seat. We were glad to see family after such a long drive. Addi loved seeing her cousins and Aunt Eliza and Uncle Jonathan. Papa Fajen worked VERY hard to teach Addi to say Papa. She now calls every white/grey older man PAPA! I am not exaggerating in the least bit. Walking through grocery stores, airports, restaurants, target...you name it she yells it. He now needs to teach her to only call him that. We enjoyed the graduation festivities of Chuck E Cheese and pizza. Dave got a little more into it I think that anyone thought he would. He scored 80 tickets on one game and got really excited and then his face turned red. He was proud of his 300+ tickets that won Addison a blow up crayon that I am pretty sure we already lost. We were really proud of Jonathan and felt very special to be able to be  there to see him walk across the stage with honors. Sadly my camera got lost during the ceremony along with 600 pictures! This has been really devastating for me. I had backed up a good majority of the pictures, but all of our D.C. pictures were on there. I was mostly sad about the SJP celebrity picture. After getting over the loss of my camera we went on with the celebration. Grammie and Papa took the kids and we all went out to a really good Thai restaurant. We ended the weekend with honoring Jonathan at a Greek restaurant. It was a great way to end our touring vacation.