DC and Back Again--Day One

Hey there! Here I am, back from a whirlwind week out in Washington DC. We were living large, let me tell you. First the Upper East Side, and now this. Two high-falootin' trips within 6 months, how lucky am I?! This one was courtesy of my amazing daughter, who landed the role of spokesperson for a very important campaign and it involved 3 days of filming for some upcoming commercials. That my friends, is all I can tell you about it...but it could very well be a pretty big-time thing. It's very exciting! Since we really had 5 jam-packed days I won't try to cram it all into one post, but go day by day instead. (knowing how much I can blab I'm sure all of you are wiping your brows and saying, "whew!")

So! Let me start by saying that he flight into DC was uneventful...and that is wonderful news. As many of you know, we tried flying with Sullivan 2 or 3 years ago and it did not go so well. Let's just say we were on the plane maybe 10 minutes and had to convince the flight attendant to open the door back up and let us out. You can imagine that they frown upon that, so in turn you can imagine just how freaked out Sullivan must have been. I swear I could hear a silent cheer from the other passengers as we carried our screaming panicked toddler down the aisle and out the door. The poor guy. But that is all in the past now, as he flew like he'd flown all his little life. No problems at all-- in fact, he had a ball. He got his flight certificate, his wings, even a free bag of trail mix and the pilot's autograph to boot. I also had a great flight. I was a ball of nerves up until I got on the plane. Then upon sitting down I had the weirdest calm just come over me. I don't know what happened, but I'm not going to question it! It was great!!!!! We landed and I was feeling pretty spunky indeed.

We flew with Char, one of the many wonderful Fallon team members that went along on the trip. (Fallon is the advertisting agency) There was a van driver there to meet us and we got our luggage lickety-split. Before I knew it we were at the Madison Hotel, on 15th and M Street. We met up with more Fallon people in the lobby and then went up to check into our room. I have to say our room was quite small, especially for the 4 of us. But no matter, we weren't going to be in the room much anyway! Overall it was a very nice hotel, and the people there were fabulous.

After getting unpacked a bit and taking a peep at the production office, Vivian and I met the studio teacher down in the lobby. Vivian was required to have a certain bit of schooling each day, and the first order of business was to get over to some office building to get Vivian her work permit which I guess is required of any under- aged child about to do some kind of work. Teacher Lorena Bow was fabulous. I knew I liked her right away. A retired school teacher from right there in DC, she had never done anything like this before...but that didn't stop her from taking care of business and being right on top of things. She was amazing. We found our way around the building and it took a while to get the permit. Meanwhile Lorena's hugging just about everyone we passed by, she knew everyone! We got back to the hotel and by that time they only had a little time to get some studying in before Vivian's fitting. They went down to the lobby and got to work while the rest of us just hung out in our room.

We all went up to the 15th floor of the hotel for Vivian's fitting, which was basically in a hallway right outside of a meeting room! Vivian would dart into a nearby bathroom to try on different outfits for Ellen, the wardrobe person, and then she'd take her into the meeting room where everyone from the production was talking about the upcoming shoot. That was the first time I got a glimpse of Barbara Kopple, the acadamy award winning director that was working on the commercials! Very exciting!!! After they decided what would work best we went back up to the room and ordered room service for dinner. Nice! Nothing like sitting on your bed and eating delicious expensive food on silver platters. You gotta love it. We all tried to get to bed early, although sleeping was not easy. Not only were we in a new place, different beds and excited about the days to come, our gassy boy made sure we were all down-wind, so to speak. Never a dull minute in a hotel room with a family of four, that's for sure.

My next post will be Day #2! I will let you go with this revelation...for whatever reason I can honestly say that my Fear of Flying is completely gone. I don't know what happened, but I was not even nervous one bit before the flight home and it was the easiest thing ever. ?? I feel like a new person, FREE! It's the best feeling ever.