Delightful.

My idea of a dream weekend? 

Take Jeff and me and put us on a train super early on a Saturday morning headed to New York City.  See three (yes, 3!!!) shows, have lunch with a seriously cool lady who just happens to be a writer for General Hospital (No way! Way!!), find an awesome NY deli for breakfast that offers gluten-free bagels, all while walking everywhere!  Not to mention we managed to fit drinks in with a friend from high school, dinner with Jeff's uncle, and made it to Juniors for the yummiest slice of cheesecake.  End the weekend with a train back to D.C. departing Penn Station at 9:00pm Sunday evening, being in NYC for every possible minute we can before having to resume our regular lives on Monday morning.

I love NY!  I realize it will never be practical to live there, but it sure is nice to visit.  I love the energy, I love the people, I love the skyscrapers, I love the skyline.  I love it all! 

How wonderful Jeff and I could make this weekend a reality while the kids were at camp.

On the train!

As heard in the  "Hamilton" soundtrack, "It's the greatest city in the world."

Jeff and I have been to New York just frequently enough over the past several years that we seem to end up at the same exact restaurants completely by coincidence.  It's not until we are inside and seated at the same table that we realize we've been there before, and sometimes twice before.  Out of the tens of thousands of restaurants we could eat at, we've managed to randomly pick the same Chinese restaurant, Italian restaurant and diner.   It's pretty funny when it happened again this past visit to New York.  We've agreed to give up trying to find anything new and just keep visiting what seems to be our favorite places.  Hey, if it works, why mess with it?

Nora Ephron sums up my feelings perfectly:  "I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance."

One very sweet weekend

Team Toppall had unusually great weekend this past Saturday and Sunday.  This is one for the record books!

Jeff was given the PenFed skybox tickets at the Verizon Center for "Disney on Ice".  I had never experienced sitting in a skybox before.  Oh-la-la!  This is the life!!  I am now forever spoiled having to sit in regular seats with the riff-raff.   What a great way to see a show.

We went to Occoquan for their annual chocolate walk.   40 shops were participating, handing out samples of chocolate. Really.  One gallery even had a chocolate fountain set up!  Of course it was 10 degrees outside (and felt like 0), but what a cool thing to do.  The family lasted all of 20 minutes in the insanely cold day.  I guess we have something build upon next year. 

Saturday evening had us seeing "The Lion King" at Robinson Middle School.  Wow!  These kids did such a great job.  It was very well done.  Ian and Sam very much enjoyed it and seeing the smile on Sam's face through much of the performance was priceless.  She had a great seat for all the action.

But wait, there's more....Jeff made 3 different reservations for us to do dinner on Sunday evening, which was Valentine's day.  Jeff let me decide where we would end up (all excellent choices!) and then cancelled the other 2 reservations.  How awesome was that?   It was a wonderful surprise.  I ended up choosing "Jackson's" at the Reston Town Center.  I hadn't been before and it was nice to try something new.  After dinner, we took a stroll to Teavana and I purchased 3 amazing teas, which I currently can't stop drinking. 

Throw in Jeff getting the chance to see the movie "Deadpool" earlier in the day and there you have it.  What a fun 48 hours.  

Going old school...very old school.

We spent last weekend visiting Colonial Williamsburg.  The kids and I had gone during Spring Break and we were eager to return with Jeff.  I have to say this was by far the easiest weekend away we've ever had.  It was low key, low maintenance and no fighting/whining or screaming.  The kids packed themselves for our overnight trip.  This alone made it a pleasure to wake-up on Saturday morning and take us a total 5 minutes to pull our stuff together.  No diapers, pull-ups, crib, baby food, or stroller was needed.  We've come a long way!

We stayed at a Hampton Inn and Suites very close to the visitor's center and just 2 miles from where we would be going for dinner.  You couldn't beat the location and the room was a good size.  We each had own space to sleep (Jeff/me in the king size bed, Ian on the pull-out sofa and Sam on a rollaway bed) and we all easily slept anywhere from 9 to 11 hours.  That's pretty awesome considering we were all in the same room. 

We enjoyed our time in Williamsburg and got to eat at The Cheese Shop for lunch.  Jeff and Sam couldn't fully appreciate the madness/chaos/crowds the Cheese Shop offered.  Every hour thereafter during our weekend was a constant comparison to what we experienced at The Cheese Shop.  Fortunately the rest of our time was much more easygoing.  While Jeff and Sam didn't find the wait at The Cheese Shop worth it (for the record, Ian and I did), everyone unanimously agreed that the wait for a table at dinner more than made up for it.  Team Toppall has a new favorite restaurant that makes us all happy:  Food for Thought.  I believe if we were there another night, we'd go back and eat at the same place.  It was that good!  

For it being a holiday weekend, the town was not that crowded, which made it nice for walking around and checking out all the demonstrations/little shops.  Maybe that's because everyone was in line at The Cheese Shop. :)

In Front of the Governor's Palace

One heckuva cutie patootie

We had another stellar weekend at Casa de Toppall.  My sister, her husband and their 18 month old daughter came for a visit.  They landed on Friday morning and didn't go back home to Florida until Tuesday morning.  From Saturday morning to Monday evening they left Rachel with us and went to NYC.

Rachel has never been left overnight without one of her parents EVER!  Well, there is one exception to this -- it was one overnight stay at my mom's house.  But everyone knows that Mom-Mom is Rachel's favorite.  She'd prefer to be with my mom over her own parents.  I'm not kidding when I say this.  They have this crazy tight bond.  It's very cute and a little creepy. :)

This long weekend consisting of 3 full days and two nights could've gone bad, very bad.  I think we all had visions of Rachel crying non-stop wanting her mommy and daddy.  Or, Rachel refusing to go to sleep for her naps and at night.  We are happy to report it wasn't like that at all.  Rachel was a dream.  She was an angel the whole entire time.  She does a phenomenal job going down for her nap each day from 12:45pm to 3:30pm.  And come 7:30pm, she is back down sleeping thru the night until 6:45am in the morning. Honestly, you can't ask for a better sleeper.  Or a better behaved little girl for that matter. 

Ian and Sam had something new to bicker about.  It was all about Rachel this weekend.  Who got to sit next to her, who got to help feed her, who got to play with her, who got to push her stroller, who pushed her on the swings, and more. If it involved Rachel, my duo were quick to be by her side.

You forget how far your kids have come until you are thrown back in to the baby stage. It's been a long, long time since we've had to help the kids bathe, or use a stroller, or change diapers, or give sippy cups of milk, or help get dressed.  We are far from the days when everything comes to complete standstill because we need to be home for naps, or we worry about getting snacks and feeding them.  Even strapping in a car seat and getting in and out of the car is a thing of the past.  With Rachel, we dove in the deep end of the pool and picked up where Lori & Ben left off.  I'd like to think we did more than ok.  Rachel went with the flow, had a great time with her cousins and was up for all our regularly scheduled activities (flag football, religious school end-of-the-year program).   I think it can be best summed up as we are in the stage where we require less luggage to travel and my sister requires A LOT of luggage. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm exhausted.  But it helped that there was 4 of us and only one of her.

Here are some great pictures from our time together:

Magical, Part 3

Wrapping it up with Sunday.

I got our grocery shopping done at Wegman’s while the kids went to religious school and Jeff had a religious school committee meeting.  We sprung the kids free after 1.5 hours and went to Choices by Shawn for brunch.  Boy, do I love this place.  They had an incredibly tasty Mother’s day brunch buffet, where 95% of the food was gluten-free.  Woo-hoo!!  We all enjoyed brunch very much and left there feeling content.  

The 3 people responsible for making me a mom.  :)

On the way home, Sam and I stopped at my local nail shop and we got our annual Mother/daughter pedicures.  The women all know Sam and even commented how cute it is we come in together each Mother’s day.  

We went home, changed our clothes and acquired one of Ian’s friends to hang with us.  We made our way to Great Falls for some hiking and rock climbing.  I was sure this was going to be the experience that had me push my luck.  Everything was going too well and attempting a return visit to Great Falls could easily bring us to not speaking to each other.  To my delight, the kids loved being there.  Even Jeff was doing a good job of tolerating it.  We hung out for 1.5 hours before heading back home.  

For dinner we invited the rest of our friend’s family to come over for pizza.  They had a party at their house the night before and still had a ton of food left over.  It was a yummy offering of caprese salad, green salad, fruit salad, tiramisu, and chocolate pie.  We got pizzas from Coal Fire.  Yum-O!

What a great ending to a GREAT day and an overall fantastic weekend.  There was no fighting, no meltdowns/temper tantrums, and no whining.  Everything fell into place.  We had a great mix of being social with family, friends, being productive (grass got cut, grocery shopping done, sneakers bought, haircut) and lots of fun mixed in.  I loved everything about our weekend.

Like I said, I am sure these 3 days were a fluke and it's all downhill from here.  Even optimistic me is admitting this streak can't continue.

Magical, Part 2

Moving on to SATURDAY!

The day got started at 6:30am.  I have this wonderful group of women who I do the Race for the Cure 5k Breast Cancer walk each year.  We had shirts made with our team name (Committed.), we've added a breast cancer bracelet, necklace, earrings and a boa.  Each year, our list of bling gets a little longer.  Bright and early Saturday morning we came together to do the walk.  Gosh, I love these women.  I can't quite put into words what it means to have them in my life.  But its pretty wonderful.  After the walk was over, we had lunch at Busboy and Poets in Shirlington.  Everyone loved the restaurant choice.

A most lovely group of women.  Team Committed.

While I was busy doing the walk, Jeff was juggling the kids' activities.  He was in charge of Ian's flag football practice and two games which started at 8:15am and Sam's swim lesson which was at 11:00am.  There was a bit of an overlap with the kids having to be in two different places at the same time, but Jeff handled it like an expert.  The kids were in good hands and everyone got to where they needed to be.

By 12:30pm, we were all back at home.  Sam wanted to get her hair cut and she needed a new pair of sneakers.  I was back up at bat being a mom and took her for both.  When we walked into Kohls for Sam's sneakers, we immediately run into Heather and her entire family (including her mom/stepdad).  I think if I ever feel lonely, I will just walk into Kohls and wait until I see someone I know.  Crazy, right?


Sam got a very cool pair of sneakers and I scored a cute pair of shoes too.  In fact my shoe purchase has a crazy story to go with it, which I will share in another blog.

We had about an hour of downtime and got in the car to meet Jeff’s family at Café Deluxe.  We found rockstar parking (of course, right?) and had what I think was one of the best dining experiences in a restaurant ever with Jeff’s family.  We were there for 2 hours!!  And it didn’t feel like 2 hours.  The service was great, the food was tasty and it was just a fun evening hanging with Jeff’s parents, sister and nephew.  What a wonderful time we had.  It’s so funny to think back to the days when we’d have 40 minutes we could count on the kids being well behaved in a restaurant.  We would literally have to be seated, order, eat, and pay for the meal all within 40 minutes.  If any part of the process got delayed, you can forget about salvaging the meal.  I’m not thinking that we are out of the woods yet (who would normally be ok sitting still for 2 hours to eat one meal?), but this past Saturday evening it worked for us.  It was a lovely evening and a great time being with family.  

Saturday rocked!  And wait until you hear about Sunday….My dream Mother’s day.  Stay tuned….