Home again, home again, jiggidy jig

WARNING! YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ A TRAVEL LOG. If you have high blood pressure, low sodium, or a very short attention span, this entry might not be for you.

Well we are finally home and somewhat settled. We got back Saturday afternoon from our week stay in Baltimore. Once again we managed to find ourselves dealing with a cold. It started with Carson, then moved on to me, then Andrew, and now my mom. But aside from being sick, we had a great week! Here's a little recap of our weekly events.

Saturday and Sunday we lounged around. This is when Carson was at his sickest. Sunday he had a temperature and was achy from coughing, so we had to do a run to the store to get some baby Tylenol and nose medicine. Lauren and Evan came up on Sunday as well.

The highlight of that night was watching the Elmo Christmas special on tv. Carson was good to sit with grandma and watch. Meanwhile my sisters are in the background on the computer planning a massive family trip to Bermuda.

On Christmas Eve I took Andrew out to go shopping for his Anniversary present. I took my walking research with me (aka my dad) and we headed off to Best Buy. I had talked to my dad prior about wanting to get Andrew a receiver and needed help picking out a good one. When my dad started to help me look, he decided that he wanted to get himself a new receiver. So he offered us their old one. So that meant that Andrew could pick out some new speakers instead. This is what he picked out.

The Bose 201 Series V Direct Bookshelf Speakers (in black, not the fake wood). He was so excited to put them together once we got home. He even started to look at center speakers for fun. I hope I didn't put some bad ideas into his head. I just figured it was time to upgrade from using my High School stereo to a real manly sound system. Christmas Eve night we were surprised by Santa Claus driving around my parents neighborhood on the back of a firetruck. We weren't fast enough to get our cameras out for it, but Carson and Landon loved it! They had the lights and sirens going and Santa stopped to wave to them.

Christmas Day was great! Carson got spoiled, as usual. I got my very fabulous red trench coat from Ann Taylor that I have been coveting and Andrew surprised me with a stay at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington DC. I've always wanted to stay there and Andrew entered into a raffle at work and won a free stay. Here's a little vid of Andrew opening one of his manly presents. I needed to film something to post.

Here's Carson playing with his Little People farm.

Although he preferred Landon's Geo Trax train set. Here

Wednesday we went to the mall and Andrew got himself a new suit. That night the two of us went out to dinner to celebrate our Anniversary (a day early-it's really on the 27th of December). Happy 4 years hunny!

Back to the log: Thursday we all took a day trip up to Hershey, PA. I love going to Hershey! It's the land of Chocolate!!! If you haven't been, I highly recommend. Only downside to the trip was that I was sick that day, but I couldn't stay home. We started off outlet shopping and I spent WAY too much on our baby girl. Then we drove over to Hershey Park and visited the Chocolate World. They have a free tour of how they make chocolate. It's a little ride.

Yikes! Here's a freaky shot of some of us on the ride. We really didn't take very many pictures on our trip, so I don't have much to work with. After the tour it was off to Candy Lane! They opened around 30 of the rides at Hershey Park and had the place decked out with lights and everything. It was really neat! Most of the rides were geared towards younger kids, so Landon and Carson had a blast. After riding rides and watching the ever-so-spectacular Christmas Tree show, we guzzled down some hot chocolate and drove home. We're thinking that we want to go back in the spring or summer and stay in the Hotel Hershey and take advantage of the spa.

Carson likes to sit by the mirrors so he can watch himself going up and down on the carousel. Andrew is standing to the left of him.

We waited FOREVER for this train ride. I don't know why it took so long, but it was at least a 15-20 minute wait. At least the boys liked it. Carson loved all the lit up cars in the bushes.

Friday we pretty much lounged and helped my mom clean her house. Saturday we came home. That was our trip to Baltimore/Hershey for Christmas. If any of you died of travel log overdose, I apologize!