The Butkiewicz's Go To Washington

Well, actually, I guess Virginia! Well we're here and the ride in was a breeze. I hope to make daily updates thanks to our free Wi-Fi.

We hit absolutely no traffic. For dinner we went to The Golden Corral, a local buffet chain. It was very good and very popular! Golden Corral website
Driving down I-95 was interesting because we were constantly seeing cars with Obama stickers. It was obvious they were doing exactly what we were doing because they represented various states.
Our hotel room at the Quality Inn in small but nice. The local news is all about the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. We watched it on HBO, nice show and whoa, lots of people! Guess it shows what we have to look forward too on Tuesday.

Tomorrow we intend to go into DC, check the mall out, check out the capital if possible and visit the Museum of American History.

YAY Bear!

We haven't posted Bear pics in a little while. Doesn't it look like our faces and Bear's seem to match in each pic? HAHA

Mac Book Parody

I came across this today. It cracked me up!

Merry Christmas!

Amish Country

Happy Anniversary to us!!

For our third anniversary Nikki and I visited Amish country, or more specifically Lancaster County PA.
We had a great time! Here's a run down of what we did.
DAY 1
-Toured farmland around Lancaster checking out the Amish and their buggies and such.
-checked into our B&B. (Adamstown Inn) CLICK HERE to go to see our room and B&B we stayed at.
-Went to the Black Horse Restaurant for dinner. It was well reviewed at the B&B and they gave us a coupon. CLICK HERE to see the restaurant's website. YUM. The service was great too!

DAY 2
-Went to the Mennonite Information Center. We picked up a few souvenirs and checked out the informative movie on the Mennonites and Amish. Nice Ten thousand Villages there too! CLICK HERE for the website.
-Went to Issac's for lunch. If your in the area you should go to one. they have great sandwhiches and soups. CLICK HERE for Isaac's website.
-Then we went to The Ephrata Cloister. The Cloister was a radical Christian cult led by Conrad Beissel. CLICK HERE to see the website. I think i can sum up their beliefs like this: live your mortal life about as difficult and uncomfortably as possible and you'll spend eternity with God in paradise. I won't go into all the wierd things they believed but I'll say this, a board about a foot and a half wide and 8 feet long served as their bed. A wooden block was their pillow!
-We had dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord. From the outside it looks like an AMC theater or something. I've never seen such a huge restaurant. Food was pretty good though, we gorged outselves! CLICK HERE to see Smograsbord.

DAY 3
-Did some shopping at the Kitchen Kettle Village. CLICK HERE to see the website.
-Went off to Hersey park to see THE GREAT AMERICAN CHOCOLATE TOUR. It was entertaining. It was like chocolate propaganda...but they didn't get me...i bought Jolly Ranchers HA! Nikki got her favorite. Kit Kat. From there we went to Hersey's "Sweet Lights" which is there christmas light display. The first half was ok but the end was cool, we drove on a tiny road up a small mountain with the lights in the woods. Very pretty.
-For dinner we headed to Ephrata to go to Lilly's on Main. A very nice place with great food and excelent service! CLICK HERE to see Lilly's website.

DAY 4
-Checked out of our B&B.
-Went to see the Amish Experience. It's supposed to be a tour of an Amish house and a movie but the house tour was closed. the move, Jacob's Choice was an entertaining if not fairly cheesy movie about a young Amish man's decision to stay with his Amish faith or venture out in the "Real" world. CLICK HERE to see the website.
-Went back to Issacs for lunch
-Went to Cabelas
-Hit TONS of traffic and finally got home.

We had a great time!!

The Dog Park

Bear had his big introduction to the dog park yesterday. We went to the one in Echo Lake Park. It was his first time dealing with other dogs since he was with his littermates. We were waiting to make sure he was big enough, had his shots and also had anti flea meds on to make sure he didn't pick up anything making nice with the other dogs.

We were a little nervous, wondering how he'd be with the other dogs, especially the smaller ones since he has a history of wanting to tackle just about every dog he meets on walks. It turns out he was just fine with the other dogs and had a great time running around sniffing butts and just doing what packs of dogs do I guess.

There was one dog (a boxer) that Nikki is still fuming about. He was quite a bully and numerous times dominated poor Bear and at one point scared him to the point of crying. At which point the whole "playground" came over as if to say: "FIGHT!, FIGHT!, FIGHT!" but Nikki ran over there, threw the boxer and other dogs to the side (This from a girl afraid of a Chiwawa at one point in her life!) and grabbed Bear.

He promptly shook the dirt off and ran off to play some more but Nikki was full of rage! I guess no one messes with her puppy!

Anyway, Bear had a good time at the dog park and we'll be back soon. Good place for doggy socialization!

Holy cow!!!

Oh my gosh...he did it!! AMAZING!! Nikki and I have already reserved our room for January 20!
It's just great....that's all that needs to said...it's just great.