Weekend with Daddy... (Guest Post)

Well, for those of you who didn't know, my sweet and beautiful wife decided that her business needed a boost that could only be provided by a "Shreveport party." Thanks to her friends there, she was able to have a painting party this weekend...the one catch was that Daddy had to watch both girls for the weekend.

As much as I love spending time with them, I also know my limitations and my skill set...let's just say it is less than house-wife material. However, like the good business partner that I am, I told her ok. Last week, she was very stressed over getting everything ready for the party and I told her that I would do anything she wanted in order to lessen her stress...and somehow she thought I was being serious. She asked me to do some deep cleaning of our house (i.e. bathrooms, mopping, throwing out junk, etc.) and even left me a list. I thought about posting some pictures of the house, but I knew Meredith would kill me. Seriously, it looked like someone broke into our house, started to burglarize it and then decided it was too dirty to finish the job. wow...it has been some work!

In the meantime, the girls and I found some fun things to do in between all of the cleaning. It was freezing cold up here (literally, the high was 32), but I read about an old school dairy farm that still delivers door-to-door in glass bottles up in rural Maryland, so we decided to brave the cold and give it a go. They allow you to come tour the farm and watch the whole milking process. Talk about a hoot...

Maddie loved the calves, until I put her down to get a closer look.

Ella thought the calf shed stunk (which it did, and she held her nose the whole time)

Ella was actually intrigued by the milking process and actually touched the cow's "boob" (her word, not mine).

She also gave each cow a name, while Maddie just wanted to stay close to me (I asked her which one was Ella, and she pointed her out).

Maddie loved the fresh yogurt and Ella loved the ice cream. We took home some raw milk cheese, a thick glass bottle of 2% milk and a bottle of whole chocolate milk.

They also had a large hay stack with tunnels and a slide...the kids spent a while out there and even convinced me to crawl through with them (do you know how bad hay itches when it gets in your pants...no? well, I do.)

Today, we woke up to a light dusting of snow so we just stayed in and did lots of cleaning in the morning (except for the obligatory snow angel in our pajamas) and then I packed up lunches for all of us and we took the subway into DC. We were planning on having lunch at the air and space museum and then taking in a 3-D IMAX movie, but the girls got hungry early, so half of our lunch was eaten while waiting on our train.

Ella loved the glasses, but wasn't too sure about the stuff coming out of the screen at her (it was a movie on the Sun...actually, quite interesting from my perspective).

Maddie just wanted to get down and wander around the museum...which we did.

It was actually a great weekend to be with my girls...I hope they will have memories of all of the special times that we spend together...I know I will. I really can't imagine a world without my two princesses...they make my heart complete!

Even though we had lots of fun this weekend, I think we all miss mommy and can't wait to have her back home....and she even gets to enjoy not having to think about dirty toilets and messy floors...for about one day, at least!!!

Jeff