A week full of goodness!

What a great week! Last weekend Michael's parents came up for Easter! On Saturday we went down to Occoquan and had dinner on the river at Matigans. 

 They enjoyed stuffed mushrooms, crab and asparagus stuffed chicken, lobster mac n' cheese, and I had dirty chicken. It was beyond good :) We walked around and ended up at "Mom's Apple Pie Bakery" where we picked out a Raspberry Peach Pie and headed home!

 

 Michael played at all 3 services and closed with the youth group. Love being married to that man! We came home and I made Feta Stuffed Lamb Burgers (poor lamb) with red wine and rosemary. So yummy!

My parents and little brother came up on Monday. Danny has officially past me in height and at 5'11" I am now the shortest of the siblings. They went in to DC on Tuesday and I stayed home and got some stuff done around the house. Wednesday was spent at IKEA, Home Depot and in the yard.

and then this happened....

  

Yesterday we spent HOURS at Mt.Vernon.

 I had previously been when I was in 9th grade but we didn't spend much time there. We were able to see everything yesterday! In addition to general admittance, we did the "Behind the Scenes: The National Treasure Tour" which was based on the movie. We were able to go down into the basement and a few doors were unlocked for us to peek into. I was beyond fascinated with plantation.  The mansion (which isn't really that big by todays standards, but still pretty big) had 10 bedrooms, parlor, informal and formal dining room, and the Presidents office. The kitchen was detached from the house (which was common standard for that time). The formal dining room, which was very large, was the size of a standard house. Can you imagine eating dinner in a dining room bigger than your whole house?! The plantation had many separate buildings on it to keep the property running.

 Slave quarters (87 slaves worked on the mansion property), a washing room, overseers quarters, green house, smoke house, store house, coach house, blacksmiths shop, shoe making shop, necessaries (outhouses), spinning house, salt house, just to name a few.  It was practically a small village. They also have a special "Cooking with the Washingtons" exhibit where they had a few of Martha Washington's recipes. One cake recipe called for 40 egg whites and 4 lbs of butter!! Whoa. I had two favorite parts: the view from the mansion (overlooking the Potomac) and guess what?! Spring= baby animals!! Lots of baby lambs and piggies! 

Way too cute! It was such a good week :)

Oh Yea--

First Strawberry of the season!