Annaliese 4D Sonogram

Too tired to write much but wanted to share a few photos from todays sonogram. Annaliese had her hand in front of her face the majority of the time but we still managed to get some good shots of her cute little face. We saw her sucking her thumb too...uh-oh another thumb sucker :-)

Big City and Great Deals

One of the main reasons Chad and I really wanted to transfer to the DC area was to have more resources (shopping, restaurants, recreation, museums, etc) available to us and I have to say our first official week here did not disappoint. We excepted to have much more to do I don't think we expected to be recipients of so many great deals a long the way and it started the second we checked into our hotel. At check-in the lady noticed that Chad was checking us in for 10 days so she upgraded our room to a harbor/river view plus gave us a promo code for free wi-fi (normally $10/day). Having the Harbor view has been amazing, the kids love to look out the window and see the water and all the boats in the harbor plus it gave us a front row viewing of the fireworks show the other night.

Saturday was our major day of bargains. We started off at Pottery Barn Kids (PBK) to order the twins big kid beds. Normally I would never consider buying furniture from PBK as I always thought of it as too expensive. I had a great set picked out that I loved from Rooms-to-Go (RTG) Kids my plan was to just purchase it once we got settled here in MD however, I learned shortly before we left GA that although RTG will ship to MD they do not actually have a store here and shipping would cost a minimum of $250. So on to plan b, I was scouring the internet for furniture stores in MD to see what they had in the way of kids beds and such and couldn't find a thing I liked for the price. I stumbled over to PBK's website and found that they actually have a bed that was the same cost of the ones we were going to purchase from RTG plus they could ship it to the store so we wouldn't have to pay any shipping cost. Because we have to pick it up, we wanted to get our order in ASAP hoping that we can pick it up while we are already renting the moving truck (when we move into the condo) so we headed to PBK on Saturday to put our order in. Since we are ordering 2 beds, 2 night tables, and 2 dressers the sales lady started a 'registry' for me just so she could give me 10% off our purchase. I was pleasantly surprised. So we walked out of PBK spending $500 less than we would have spent if we had ordered the kids bedroom furniture from RTG...YAY!!!!! I love good deals like that, and even better when you don't know they are coming.

After PBK we headed to Burlington Coat Factory/Baby Depot to buy a breast pump. I had got word that I could get a breast pump that retails for $299 for $175...and much to my surprise it was true. I signed up to be on their email list and received a 20% off coupon...their everyday price for their Medela Pump in Style is $219 and 20% off of that scored me this pump for just $175...whooohoooo!!!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Medela-Pump-Style-Advanced-Breast/dp/B004HWXCJS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315326118&sr=8-1

From Burlington we headed to Restoration Hardware where Chad picked out a really cool desk fan that he received a $120 discount on. Totally a guy thing :-)

Next was Carters who was having a 50% off everything sale, plus I had a 20% off coupon so I was able to get some more long sleeved onesies for Annaliese and some cute leggins and tunics for Taryn and a couple shirts for the Eman all for a really great price :-)

We were pretty spent after our full day of shopping and savings so we headed back to National Harbor for the evening.

Sunday, we headed out to Next Day Blinds to buy the window coverings for the condo, our hope was to get them installed prior to move-in day but that may not happen but at least we got them ordered and Chad scored a 15% off discount.

So all in all it was a very productive weekend of shopping and savings. We just might be OK here in the big city :-) terrible traffic and all!!!!!

We've Moved

We have made our final move to the DC Metro area. There was a point in time I thought this day would never come. We have been traveling back and forth from GA to DC since February. I am glad the transition is almost over. The trip to DC went well...the kids did great. The fact that they are newly potty trained did mean we were stopping a bit more often but we made it and I cant blame it all on the kids momma needed a lot of potty breaks too. Evan was really reluctant to go #2 on the big potty but he also refused to go in his pull up so after 3 stops in an hour we finally decided to pull into a rest stop and bring his little potty in to the bathroom w/us...magic he went immediately. So on day 2 we didn't even mess w/stopping at gas stations or restaurants we waited until we came across rest stops and just let the kids use their little potties...worked out much better and allowed us to stop a lot less often.

We were greeted in true DC style w/a major traffic jam just 12 miles from the base...blah...not exactly how we wanted to end a 700+ mile trip. The funny thing is we have made this drive so many times and have never ran into traffic coming into DC, I guess there is a first time for everything. Once we made it through the traffic we got to the base to drop off the 'big yellow truck' for the night and then made our way to National Harbor where our hotel/home for the next 10 days would be. Things have been good here...we feel more like we are on vacation than in the middle of a move. One night this past weekend they had a fireworks show that we were able to view from our room, it was awesome and Evan must have known it was going to happen because he stayed awake long enough to view it with us. It was his first time seeing fireworks in person and he loved them. His reaction was so fun to see and it was the first thing he started talking about when he woke the next morning, after asking to go potty that is :-).

Of course it has been some work and not all play, especially for Chad.

He spent one afternoon emptying the 'big yellow truck' into a storage unit, thankfully he had some help. We also had our final walk through on our condo that we are buying (as long as everything goes good at closing next week), it was fun to see in person for the first time but it sure is small. We will make it work though. I just cant wait to close and move in so we can finally be settled for the next several months at least. More to come in a later post on our house hunting saga.