Spring Break in Virginia
March 9th - 13th, 2016
So, I'm not entirely sure how to cross this bridge. Now that I have my new Mom With A Map website, many of our vacation stories and pictures will be posted there. But I still plan to keep this blog going for our day to day life. It feels odd to either skip posting about a vacation on this blog, or to rehash everything I posted on the other website. Hopefully you are all faithfully following Mom With A Map, but in case you missed it- read about our trip to Virginia (here and here.)
Not having decided exactly how I was planning on handling this, I really didn't take a lot of personal pictures on this trip, however I thought I would share the few that I did take and a little "behind the scenes" as I've had several of you ask already!
To set the stage- the whole idea behind Mom With A Map is to eventually travel (more than we already do) and to have most of it sponsored. In return, I will post photographs and reviews on my website. Obviously, for companies to want to host our family they need to see that I have a large following/audience viewing the blog. And, in a nutshell, that is what I'm working hard on right now.
After we decided that we'd visit Virginia for Spring Break, I decided that it couldn't hurt to reach out to a few places. You have to start somewhere, right? So I sent out about 10 emails to various hotels, museums, and tourist destinations and 3 of them responded and offered to host our family!!
Anyway, the first of our hosted stops was The Jefferson Hotel. To say that it was an amazing experience is totally an understatement. I will NEVER forget that this is where we started. Let's just say I set the bar really, really high!
They literally rolled out the red carpet for our family!
We arrived to a gift waiting in our room:
Miller and Mary Grace were SO excited about their new buddies!
With every ounce of sincerity I have to say that I LOVE this hotel! You can read more about our stay at The Jefferson here. If you are ever in the Richmond area, I highly recommend that you stay there!
Another stop on our Virginia trip was The Homestead. I will eventually post more about our experience there on Mom With A Map, but for now I don't want to take anything away from my post on The Jefferson (mostly because The Omni Homestead did not host us.)
It was also a really neat hotel with a lot of history. The Homestead had A TON of activities and I will look forward to returning at a different time of year. Early spring was not the best time to visit as the activities were in transition from winter (skiing, ice skating, tubing) to all of the summer activities (horse back riding, fishing, hiking, etc.)
We loved spending time on The Blue Ridge Parkway!
One of our unplanned stops was at the James Madison Arboretum. The kids had so much fun running around and burning off some energy from so much time in the car.
Skyline Drive
I promise, there was at least 10 feet of level ground on either side of her!
This picture was taken in the basement of Monticello. They asked us not to take any pictures in the house (which I didn't.) But then the tour was over and we went down to the basement. Some lady was going crazy taking pictures so I assumed I could too. After posing for this picture, Brent pointed to like 15 signs that said "no photography." Woops!
I know this isn't a lot of pictures or stories...it seems really bare compared to my typical vacation posts. On future trips I'm going to try to do a better job of taking both "business" pictures and personal pictures!
So proud of you! Looks amazing!
ReplyDelete