Remember how MSN came to video our road to Washington DC? If you want to see the behind-the-scenes blog post, click here. Below is the final product – I love how they worked in my sweet husband and 2 week old baby.

National Small Business Week was a fantastic opportunity to meet the best and the brightest entrepreneurs from the entire nation. They were an awesome consolation prize when President Obama + all the Congresspeople decided to snub the Small Business Week winners. It was so fun to meet them, learn their stories and be energized by attitudes. Plus, they all loved baby Jamisen so it was fun to have him all loved on by a lot of people! =)

Here we are with SBA Administrator Mills. She spoke at every event and was a constant presence and support for the group.

Jamisen pretty much conked out everywhere we went. I think the constant movement + Daddy holding him everywhere + the drone of the roomful of chatter really helped to make him sleep. This meant that he didn’t sleep at all at night … much but I don’t blame him. After all, we drug him 3 time zones away, made him go to sleep and wake up in a strange place and had tons of people in his face all the time.  The change was bound to show up someplace … and it did, at night.

We stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington DC. It was a top notch hotel. They had a crib and stroller for us and even included a little goody bag of products for Jasmisen. Here we are, admiring our handsome Lil Man while getting ready to go to the black tie gala on the last night. The CEO of Radio One spoke at the event and she was a fantastic speaker with an inspirational story.

At the Library of Congress. You can’t tell but under the swaddling, Jamisen has a different tie onesie on for every event. He was better dressed than I was and certainly had more clothes. I have to hand it to Etsy – if you want adorable baby clothes, these are the sellers that provided all of Jamisen’s wardrobe for the week: Flowertops, We Choose Joy, SnuggleBugKidz and Bella Crawlers

The CEO of the Red Cross spoke to us at the event about the importance of being prepared for any disaster – you can learn more about your disaster preparedness here. She was extremely well spoken and clearly passionate about her organization’s mission. I came away even more firmly committed to supporting the Red Cross with Bramble Berry’s Charitable Giving this year.

This is a photo taken at the Mandarin, in our hotel room. Seriously, how adorable is this little guy when he’s happy? He’s such a cheery little guy (when he’s not spitting up or otherwise miserable from bile) and I can’t wait for his little digestive system to keep improving so we get more and more of these smiles.

When my husband and I went to Small Business Week in Washington DC (miss that post? Check it out here – there are adorable baby photo outfits + scandalous politician snubs), Google really went all out for the Small Business Week winners. They served us free espresso drinks in the morning. They provided free computers for us to use for the entire conference at an awesome Google Cafe. And, they served Gelato in the afternoon. If that wasn’t enough, they invited all the winners to tour the Google offices. Here’s Jamisen with his Android plush toy the Google team gave him.

When we got there, they had a surprise – a Google Chromebook for each and every Small Business Week winner. THANK YOU GOOGLE! Politicians may have snubbed us but Google treated us extremely special and I am thrilled. And, proving that the art of reciprocity exists, I’ve been obsessively using all things Google this week (Chrome, Google Docs, Gmail, Google Places, their new +1 service etc…).

What I love about the Chromebook:

1. Chromebook = Freedom – There are no wires for this machine because it holds a charge for 8 hours, it connects to the internet via 3G or wireless and it is so light and compact that you can take it anywhere. I can have it and Lil Man on my lap. =)

2. Seamless Updates – The Chromebook (which replaced my laptop at home within seconds) updates every day. You never notice it. It doesn’t bother you. And, the updates include all the security fixes etc… so you never have to worry about security breaches.

3. Document Continuity – Because of the way the Chromebook works (it has very little actual harddrive – you save very little to it – it’s all cloud based), you can access your documents from everywhere.

4. Super Fast Opening – It takes 8 seconds to turn on. 8 seconds. I didn’t think I’d care but now, my laptop seems like it takes long enough for me to get a haircut, a manicure and a pedicure in the time it takes to boot up.

What takes getting used to:

1. The Chromebook has a touch pad that is  interesting and different in how it works. There really aren’t right click/left click buttons and it takes some getting used to. I am apparently old school, old dog, no new tricks so I’ve plugged in a mouse and that seems to do the trick for me.

2. No “F” keys; you know those F1, F2 keys? They’re gone and instead there is a row of control keys (sound, page forward, page back, brightness etc…). Since I never used those F keys, it’s an improvement but if you’re an F Key Addict, this might be a tough change for you.

I would 100% buy this machine – it is compact, it’s easy to use and it hooks up to the ‘net without any major trouble or wires. Love love it and adore Google for really making all of us Small Business Winners feel special and appreciated. Thank you Google! =)

It’s been a whirlwind week in Washington, DC for Small Business Week. I won Best Businessperson of the Year for Washington State (click here to see that blog post). If you had told me a year ago that I would have traveled across the country, three weeks postpartum with a newborn, I would have told you that you had clearly taken a train to Crazytown. But life has a funny way of surprising each of us, including me.

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