We got back from our Christmas vacation by way of Jasper, Georgia. That trip took us about 6 hours or so. We took a little while to recover. We run in the new year in part with our friends Kelly and Will Goley and their son Alex and a couple of his friends. I say partially b/c we were back home by 11:30 and watched Ryan Seacrest, Kelly Pickler, Taylor Swift, and the Jonas Brothers hug one another (we won't even talk about Dick Clark...)

On Friday the 2nd we packed up Pat the PT and headed to Washington DC to help our good friend Jason Berrus get married. I love Jason as a brother and have known him since my days at BBC. He stood up with me when I married Emily and now after several years I was given the honor to join him. Regular Grandma and Julie were kind enough to come up here to look after Sophia and Piper for us back at the homestead - so it quickly became a very good time of reconnection for Em and I.

Our trip to the Nation's Capital went well and we soon arrived at the Capital Hilton (thanks to hotwire who got us a deal for literally half the price - if you have never used it - I highly recommend it. The only "problem" was that parking was 40 bucks a night! Ah...the city)



After checking in and freshening up - we headed to the rehearsal at Capital Hill Baptist Church. This was a great time of not only rehearing the wedding, but getting caught up with good friends like Ryan and Jess Roberts, Matt and Alicia Deweaver, and Ben and Suzanna Smith. We were also able to meet Jason's bride-to-be Bev during this time. After making sure that we knew what the heck we were doing we headed out for our rehearsal dinner at a great thai restaurant called Old Siam. The food was fantastic as was the company.

After dropping off the wives at their respective hotels, Ryan and I headed back to spend some time with Jason at his new apartment. We spent the majority of this evening in some intense Wii action.
The next day was great. We took pictures at the Capital building and inside the National Library, which is absolutetly AMAZING inside. You can see the pictures here. The wedding photogapher did a GREAT job. Check them out, here is a taste to temp you to head her way:
After a great ceremony and reception we headed back and headed out into the city with the Dewevers. We had great conversation and had some of the worst service at a Starbucks I have ever had (consequently - I wrote Starbucks and they were great in response).
After some time in the city we headed to Clyde's of Galleria place and had a fabulous dinner with all of the out of town guest. Jason and Bev's families really took good care of us. After dinner we said goodbye to the Dewevers and headed to the Washington Monument with Ryan and Jess. It was a nice night (a little cold) but it yielded a great walk and some good conversation.

The next day we slept in...(which was amazing) and then headed back to Charlotte. But not before stopping at our first ever IKEA!! We just found out that we are going to have our IKEA here in town on Feburary 18th, but we enjoyed thoroughly our first ever walk through the amazing halls of this Swedish Giant.

There is lots more to update - but this is the end of my ramblings for the evening.