Home again

We're back. You didn't know we left? Well, we did. We snuck off to Washington, D.C., for a little family vacation.

What did we do? We went to museums, and kicked some snow around, and ate Trader Joe's macaroni and cheese, and watched Monsters, Inc.... and what? What's that, you say?

You say our vacation sounds EXACTLY like stuff we can do here at home in little ol' New York City? Hmmmm. OK, busted. You're right.

But there, you see, someone came in every single day and tidied up after us. They made our beds, gave us new clean towels, ran the dishwasher....yes, dish washer.....and OMG SQUEEEEEE there was a washer and a dryer IN THE APARTMENT we rented. I though I'd died and gone to heaven. I came home with MORE clean clothes than I left with! (so my jeans were dirty...sue me, I was on vacation and everyone has a cold so if I stunk they wouldn't have even noticed! so there, ha!). Yes, I know. It was nirvana.....a constantly cleaned environment with cleaning appliances at my fingertips.....an anal-retentive's nirvana, but nirvana none the less!

We went to the Smithsonian and saw Dorothy's ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Man, that Judy Garland had tiny feet - size 5! Monkey's face was priceless when she figured out what we were standing in line for all that time.

We went to the Museum of Natural History, saw the White House, the Capital, Washington Monument, the reflecting pool (minus the Octopus from Night of the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonium, a movie Nana just gave us for Christmas), kicked around on the Mall, and generally just farted around. It was nice.

The girls really bonded. They wrestled, battled over toys, tickled each other, and had a lot of fun. Monkey told us, in a heart-breakingly precious moment, that she couldn't wait for Jellybean to get older so they could walk and hold hands together. I know! Seriously sweet. I'm going to bottle that feeling and try to break it out when they're 15 & 13 and scratching each other's eyes out.

As we rolled into town today, after a seriously hassle-free trip back (in comparison to our death march on the way there - ugh), M asked Monkey what her favorite part of the vacation was.

"Playing in her closet" was the answer. Of course it was.