DC Trip: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Oh where to begin? A few months back there was a crazy sale on plane tickets to DC from Denver so when Wendy forwarded me the info I couldn't pass up the chance to fly out there and spend time with my dear friend. Plus, it was high time our kids (each being just 2 weeks apart in age) got to know each other. So the second week of January I packed everyone up (but Jeff who had to stay home to work) and boarded a plane to DC. The flight there was not so bad. The flight wasn't full so we each had our own seat on our own row and the kids were pretty well behaved. Jack watched movies the whole time and Addie went back and forth from movie watching to wanting me to entertain her, but we made it and hopefully didn't bother too many surrounding passengers in the process. (I can't say the same for the flight home, but I'll get to that later.) 

Flight to DC = GOOD

Upon arrival our kids immediately became friends and we even overheard Wendy's cute boy, Anderson, saying to Jack in the car, "Lets talk about our Christmases." So something Wendy would say. I love it!

The first few nights we let the boys have a sleep over in Anderson's bunk beds.

But by night three of Anderson going into his parents room hours after they'd been put to bed saying, "Jack won't let me sleep" we decided we'd better separate them. Of course our kid would rather stay up late playing with his friend than sleeping. It's what us Linds do best! :) Unfortunately though they were still waking up at a normal time and not sleeping in, so something had to give. Jack got moved to the Aero bed in the basement with me. I was afraid this would make for a horrible sleeping situation for me (Jeff and I do not let our kids sleep with us past 4 months old and even then they are in a co-sleeper, not our bed) but to my surprise he wasn't a bother. In fact most nights when I'd come to bed long after he'd fallen asleep he'd roll over and cuddle me. It was pretty cute.

Jack Sleeping In My Bed = GOOD

Wendy's dear husband, Harley, was kind enough to watch the kids not one, not two, but THREE different nights so we could enjoy time out. Isn't he amazing? Yup. 

We enjoyed things like a late birthday celebration for Wendy at Cafe Rio with a bunch of her DC area girlfriends. It was so fun for me to finally meet all of these girls I've heard her talk so much about.

Happy Birthday Wendy!

Of course we had to take matching belly shots. Oh right...for those of you who don't know...Wendy's pregnant too! Surprise! Or not so surprise since this will now be our third pregnancy we've gone through together. None of which have been planned...I'm just sayin'. This time our bellies aren't so matching though, as you can see I'm quite a bit larger. Wendy is just 15 weeks pregnant in this pic and I'm 26 weeks.

We went shopping at Home Goods and I helped Wendy find a centerpiece for her new dining room table. We buckled it into the car seat to get it home safely.

It worked!

We ate at American Tap Room and it was DELICIOUS! We shared the crab cakes and lobster mac 'n cheese. Both were amazing! My mouth is salivating just remembering it.

We got Georgetown Cupcakes to go. Wendy's fave is the Red Velvet, which was good, but my favorite was the salted caramel cupcake. Wow, so good.

Another night (which I forgot to take a pic of) I got to have dinner with one of my good friends from high school, Travis. It was fun to catch up on his life and reminisce a bit about friends from high school. We had him over for Sunday dinner too and we have one random pic from that night. Here is Harley and Trav at dinner.

Girls Nights Out = GOOD

The kids had SO much fun constantly making up games and playing like little animals all week long.

(the lone rose among the thorns)

Kids ALL Getting Along = GOOD

One day we drove up to the ribbon factory (somewhere in podunk Maryland) where you can get ribbon bolts the size of your head for two dollars! It's crazy how cheap this ribbon is. I may or may not have left with fifty dollars worth of ribbon. Whoops!

Ribbon Factory = GOOD

One morning we attempted a photo shoot of the kids, but we didn't have good light in the house and it was just too darn cold outside, so I didn't get any great shots. And all the ones I did get Addie has a red nose from the cold.

I feel your pain Laides. :)

Photo shoot = BAD 

One day we attempted to go on a tour of the Pentagon. Wendy got our tour booked a month in advance and I was looking forward to seeing the inside of the Pentagon, but it was not meant to be people. It just wasn't our day. Here is a list of all that went wrong that day:

- Harley driving to work with our double strollers in his trunk

- hitting horrible traffic on the way downtown due to a road block and detour

- having to take said detour

- missing our tour time by a long shot, but hoping they'd take pity on us once we arrived with 4 kids

- finally making it to the mall parking lot, but choosing the opposite side of the mall to the Pentagon tunnel entrance (this mall is HUGE people)

- asking a Nordstrom employee for directions to the Pentagon tunnel entrance (rather than sending us through the nice warm mall and out the Macy's entrance, which leads you straight to the tunnel, she sent us outside into the FREEZING cold wind to walk around the entire mall...again, it's huge!)

- asking a random cop on the street for directions to the Pentagon tunnel (okay, this could've been us and not him, but we COMPLETELY missed the tunnel entrance and before you know it were walking under the freeway overpasses and heading off to who knows where, but no where near the Pentagon that's for sure!)

All of those events led me to finally say, "Forget the Pentagon tour. It's NOT worth it!" By now I'd walked, I don't know a LONG way, pushing a toddler, carrying an almost 4 year old on my shoulders (it was better than listening to him whine for one more second), and a baby in my stomach in the freezing cold wind and I'd had it. No tour was worth a minute more of this torture. Especially since we STILL had no clue where the stupid Pentagon tunnel entrance was. So we turned around (I made Wendy snap a picture so that hopefully I'd laugh about this later...don't worry I am) and headed back towards the warm mall. Oh, and guess what we passed on our way back? Yep, the Pentagon tunnel entrance. We must've been too distracted by the wind and whiny 3 year olds the first time past. We still decided to bail though because it was a good 3 football field lengths to the entrance of the Pentagon from the tunnel entrance and then the tour itself is over a mile of walking. The Pentagon is ginormous. Without our double strollers this just wasn't going to work out. 

So we did all of that just to eat at the McDonald's in the mall food court. 

Once the boys thawed out from our walk they were full of these kinds of shenanigans in the mall.

Did I mention the babies in all of this? I don't think I did. They were amazing. No complaining and lots of hand holding. Thank goodness they were so good!

Just because this was not our day on our way out of the mall parking lot the parking machine ate our parking ticket and wouldn't let us out. Of course there wasn't an attendee at our station so we had to yell across to a neighboring attendee and she, not being able to leave her post, radioed for help. A good 15 minutes later a man showed up to fix the machine and informed us that he'd never seen this happen before. Of course you haven't sir. Of course you haven't.

By the time we got back to Wendy's house we ALL needed a good nap. 

 Attempted Pentagon Tour = BAD

The second to last day I was in DC Anderson threw up. I knew right then that it was only a matter of time until the next person threw up...it was anybody's guess as to who it would be...and poor Laides was the next to fall. That night she threw up several times. By the time we were set to leave DC she'd gone over 24 hours without throwing up so I assumed we were safe to fly home. My only worry was that maybe Jack would catch it, but I figured he was old enough to warn me. Well, never assume when it comes to kids and the barfs. On the way home we were on a completely booked flight, so Addie had to sit on my 27 week pregnant belly the whole way home and we had a stranger sitting next to us on the end of our row. The first 3 hours of the flight weren't horrible, but the last hour was another story. We hit terrible turbulence due to a storm and Addie was demanding constant attention and distractions to keep her from crying (no nap + feeling sick) so I was pulling out everything I could think of to keep her from losing it and everyone on the flight from hating the mom with the screaming child. We finally started our dissent into Denver so all electronics had been tucked away (thank goodness) and seat belts had been buckled when out of nowhere Addie barfs ALL OVER Jack and me. We are all (Addie too) covered in barf and our seats are full of it too. She literally emptied her stomach. (Do you feel like barfing yet?) I've never been so horrified in my entire life. Immediately the plane fills with the smell of puke and I pushed my attendant button for help. The lady sitting next to me also jumped up and ran to the back of the plane to get a flight attendant (who was already buckled in prepared to land). The attendant brought a grip of paper towels and a garbage sack and I immediately began trying to clean up the giant mess. I was barely making a dent though. I finally decided to just strip my kids and put their clothes into a plastic bag. I stripped Addie down to her onesie and tennis shoes, I removed my top sweater, and I took Jack's shirt off leaving him bare chested. Can you picture it? We were quite the sight to behold walking through the Denver airport. After I cleaned up all that I could (the attendant informed me that they'd have technicians completely remove the seats and put in new ones so not to worry about cleaning the seats) the attendant took her seat once again as we were literally landing at this point and I just braced my children since our seat belts were covered in barf and I wasn't about to put them back on. Only we were still experiencing terrible turbulence through all of this which I think attributed to Addie puking THREE more times during the course of landing. Luckily they were small and I was able to catch them in my wet wipes since she'd gotten most of it out in her initial puke. But after the second one I finally yelled out in utter frustration, "Where are the dang barf bags?!" The lady sitting next to me quickly scrambled to find one in her seat back pocket for me. I of course thanked her and apologized profusely for everything. Luckily no barf had gotten on her, but still she had to see/smell it. I felt terrible. After we landed the flight attendant got on the speaker and said, "I bet you've all never been SO happy to land in Denver!" Everyone cheered. I cried. (Okay, I didn't cry, not yet, but I wanted to. I was biting my lip so I wouldn't) As passengers exited the plane they were covering their noses with scarves. I just sat starring out the window for fear of making eye contact with anyone and losing it. I know it stunk. Believe ME I know. But still I know that's not fun for anyone on the flight. As much as it sucked to have throw up all over me it was MY kids throw up. To the passengers it was a strangers throw up, a stranger who they didn't love unconditionally, so I'm sure they were just annoyed. I'm also quite certain I was the subject of many a passengers Facebook status updates that night. 

John Doe

Some kid threw up on my flight from DC tonight! The smell was unbearable. Stupid mom bringing her sick kid on a plane. 

Or at least that's how I heard it in my head. Ugh! As if the barf wasn't enough as we were exiting the plane I was busy getting Addie into her stroller so I told Jack to wait right there on the jet-way for me. He didn't. I figured he'd be at the end of the jet-way so I didn't worry too much, until I got to the end and he still wasn't there. I couldn't see him anywhere. I started to panic and began asking around if anyone had seen a little boy with no shirt and a frog back pack on run past them. All adults I asked said no, but finally a little 8 year old girl said, "I did. He's over there!" Sure enough Jack was where she pointed out standing by the moving escalator. I thanked her and ran over to him. When I asked him why he'd run off he just said he wanted to go on the moving thing. UGH! I grabbed his hand and marched us all straight for the bathroom where I attempted to wash the stink off of us. Then I called Jeff and that's when I finally lost it. I broke down in tears and told him he needed to park in short term parking and come inside to rescue us. I. Was. Spent.

As we were riding on the train towards baggage claim I felt the need to announce to everyone that we were the reason it smelled so badly. I explained that my daughter had thrown up on us on our flight and some man said to me, "Were you coming from San Diego?" I said, "No, DC" and he said, "Well you aren't the only one then." I guess someone had thrown up on his flight too. For some reason this made me feel a tiny bit better. That is until he said, "Don't worry you won't have to deal with this kind of thing for much longer. Kids grow up and then they don't do stuff like that anymore." I nodded politely and then turned my head towards the window so he wouldn't see my crying. He obviously didn't notice I was very pregnant and was no where near being beyond the stage where this kind of thing can happen. To say I felt overwhelmed is a major understatement.

As I turned the corner to baggage claim I spotted my knight in shinning armor. I'd NEVER been SO happy to see Jeff's smiling face. He helped us with our bags and got us into the family restroom where we all changed into new clothes from our suitcase. Finally there was a little relief from the smell. 

We made it home and everyone had a good bath and was sent to bed. I don't remember ever being so happy to crawl into a clean warm bed. 

Puking Kid On An Airplane = UGLY!

So there you have it...the good, the bad and the ugly. Thankfully there was definitely more good than bad or ugly. It really was wonderful spending time with Wendy and getting to know her darling little boys. Our kids had so much fun together and I hope their friendships will also be lifelong, because their mom's definitely is. 

Thanks for hosting us Wendaline! 

We LOVE You!!!

PS Jack still asks me almost everyday if we can get back on the airplane and go to Anderson's house.