The Warren Family: July 31, 2011

First bit of news is that we FINALLY received an answer on the house we made an offer on in April and the answer was YES!!! We closed this past week and we are absolutely thrilled. We can't wait to move in so we can get Jake settled in his own home again. I'll update and share some pics after the move.

Grandma retired at the end of last year and she and Grandpa are going to move from Rockville, Maryland to their retirement home in Southwest Virginia in a few months so we decided to go up for one more visit before their big move. We could only take a long weekend so we decided that flying was our best option for travel. Jake was super excited to fly on a real plane and he did great in the airport and in flight. We flew into BWI and Grandma picked us up which was great. We were all starving when we landed and thankfully Grandma was prepared with sandwiches and grapes. My wonderful Mother-In-Law is just good like that! We ended up visiting on the hottest weekend of the year. We had a chance to visit a little on the way home and then Jake and I took a nice nap before our sushi dinner. Grandma introduced Jake to raw Salmon after an edamame appetizer and he LOVED it. As a matter of fact when we went for pizza two nights later Jake was disappointed because he wanted sushi again.

It was 109 degrees when our flight landed and it didn't cool off until the day we left so we had to change our plan to spend a day outside at the National Zoo and instead went to the community pool in Grandma's neighborhood. Jake loves to "swim" so he was thrilled to go play in the water for the afternoon.

Trip and I love live music and we're big Hayes Carll fans and he happened to be playing at the Rock & Roll Hotel in DC while we were there so we bought tickets and Grandma & Grandma entertained Jake for the evening. Hayes Carll wrote and recorded our song. We got there for the opening act and were in the very back trying to figure out how we could get closer to the stage for Hayes when I realized that he was standing right next to me... actually shoulder to shoulder. We had the amazing experience of meeting him and actually thanking him for our song. He autographed our tickets too and then he went backstage to prepare for his show. We managed to work our way down to the front of the stage for the show and then got the actual set list when it was over. It was a great "date" night for us and Jake had a blast going to the park and doing arts & crafts with Grandma & Grandpa.

The next morning we decided to get Jake on the metro and down to DC to see the big trains. He was too tired for that little adventure and by the time we got down to DC he was in serious need of a nap so we didn't stay very long but at least he enjoyed the metro ride. That night (after a nice long nap) we went to one of our favorite restaurants in the whole DC area which is a pizza place. They have THE best white pie I've ever eaten! I have loved to eat there since the first time Trip and I visited DC 20 years ago. I'm going to miss that pizza when Grandma & Grandpa move!

We had a really nice, relaxing visit and flying was so much better than spending two full 8 hour+ days on the road. It seems hard to believe that we won't visit that house again because we've been going there for over 20 years and we even lived there for a couple of years after college. But... it's time for the next chapter and we're looking forward to spending time at Grandma & Grandpa's new house which is only about 3 hours away so hopefully that will mean that our visits will be much more frequent.

Jake continues to enjoy golf and loves to go to the driving range with his Daddy. Sometimes they go on Saturday morning while I clean and do laundry but I played hooky from my responsibilities and went with them one time this month so I have some good golf pix to share below along with our vacation photos.

I like to practice bunker shots.