Travels

For the last several months we have been planning a road trip to Virginia and Maryland. Unfortunately, the best time for my family to visit and travel is the summer, which is, of course, the only time of year that it is impossible for Daniel to travel. This means that if I want to spend time with my family (and I do), then Carver and I have to travel without Daniel. Lucky for us, my parents were around to travel with us.

The first leg of our journey landed us in Baltimore to play with Court and Michael for a bit. (Jules was at camp with Daniel-- we missed them both). Carver was spectacular on the drive, but he did have my mom entertaining him the e.n.t.i.r.e drive while I drove. I think she has more patience (and endurance) with him than I do. She also snapped some cute pictures of him entertaining himself in the car.

(Note: Carver is now the proud owner of this Vera Bradley wallet after we left it at a restaurant full of my driver's license and all credit cards. Now the newly empty wallet is his to enjoy!).

I love Baltimore. It is one of my very favorite places to visit. Largely because Court and Jules live there, but also because I love the city itself. The week went incredibly smoothly with Carver and we did a lot of really fun things while we were there. I have a lot of Baltimore "favorites." Typically I visit several times a year, but due to the pregnancy and then first few crazy months of Carver's life I hadn't been back in a year. I'd missed it. We managed to cram a lot of fun things into just a few days...

First, heading to dinner at the Irish Pub.

Tuesday we spent running around Baltimore while Courtney was at work.


Then dinner at the Melting Pot while Dad and Michael cooked steaks at home. We had to park a little far away from the restaurant so Courtney helped carry the load.
On Wednesday the grandparents kindly babysat so we could go out for sushi!

Thursday was our busiest day. First lunch at Shuckers in Fells Point (downtown Baltimore), then off to Annapolis for the afternoon/evening. It was a beautiful, but incredibly hot day. Perfect for walking around down by the water in both cities. Carver even got his first teeny tiny taste of organic lemon gelato. Which he seriously l.o.v.e.d.

(Notice the cute crab shirt. Maryland and crabs, get it?)

(My favorite Maryland restaurant)

And, a few other random moments from our trip...

(meeting Alex (and Ivan)-- he liked them more than they liked him)

(playing with the guinea pigs)

(drinking water from a straw--sort of)

I am really sad that this trip is already over. It was so nice to get away from home for a few days, to spend time with my family and to let them spend an uninterrupted week with Carver. It was enormously helpful to me to have all of them around to play with him, entertain him, and just love on him. There were a number of mornings when I stumbled out of bed, with Carver still in his pajamas and wet diaper and just handed him off to Courtney (with a clean diaper in hand) and then made my way back to bed. You can only do things like this with family. It was a very full week but Carver and I loved every minute of it. From Baltimore we headed to Williamsburg to play with Lyle and his family. We also celebrated mine and Lyle's 30th birthday a few days early. More to come about the second half of our vacation :)