Pahhk!!!

I guess I'll post this entry I uploaded photos to on March 31st and never published. Still working on Easter, grandparents moving, a John girls' weekend, and a few more.

We have been loving the early spring and we go the park almost every day.

Funny kids

Sadie asleep in the hall- she has realized that with a big-girl bed comes the freedom to sleep wherever you want.

A conversation I had with Sadie today:

Me: You need to take a nap today because we are going to have a fun night. Do you remember where we are going?
Sadie: Uh-huh
Me: Where?
Sadie: Uh, I dunno.
Me: Are we going to a party?
Sadie: Yeah! {gasp} My birthday party!
Me: Nope, it's a wedding party. Do you remember who is going to be there?
Sadie: Yeah! Who?
Me: Will.
Sadie: Ohhh, Will's birthday party!
Me: No, it's a wedding party.
Sadie: Ohhh, a wedding birthday party!
Me: Ok, whatever

In Sadie's mind it is not possible to have a party without a birthday somewhere in there. 

And here are more random cute photos that I meant to blog about over the past month but I just didn't. 

 Napping in mom and dad's bed after playing for an hour instead of napping

 I really think Elise wonders sometimes how she got stuck that nut Sadie as a sister

Playing with chalk

Sisters

 Ecstatic about climbing on the stairs

 "Hugs" from Sadie

 How Elise entertained herself during Relief Society last week.

Empty boxes make the best toys

  And the grand finale

'leven

 In Sadie's words, Elise is now " 'leven " months. This girl is her father's daughter. She is just usually happy. With the exception of one bad week this month when she was sick and teething, Elise sleeps well. Goes to bed by 7:30 PM and sleeps until 7:30 or 8 AM. Can you tell sleep is important to me? I fail to mention important things like Elise crawling like a normal child (finally! after 3 1/2 months of the army crawl), but I make sure to talk about her sleep patterns. 

Louie is always on the go. The picture at the top is the only picture I got of her laying on the blanket. She goes and goes, still wreaking havoc everywhere, mostly content to play alone.

Demonstrating her enthusiastic wave.  Elise will give most people a big wave and a smile. Just don't try to pick her up while I am around. That will not happen. Mom is the only acceptable pair of arms if I am within eyesight. 

Also developed this month: climbing stairs and somehow getting around all barricades we put in her away. She nuzzled her way between the diaper boxes on this day. Later on she climbed right over the diaper boxes. I don't bother with the barricades anymore, but Daniel thinks it's a fun game.

She is always happy to play on the stairs. Sadie was the same way at this age. These stairs are awesome for kids because the middle ones are so wide if she does fall she only goes down one step. There are only 2 narrow ones at the bottom so she has a short fall there too.

Elise is only 3 1/2 weeks from turning 1. Time has flown. The other day I opened the drawer with receiving blankets that we haven't used in 6 months and actually felt a wave of nostalgia. It only lasted for a second because then I remembered the challenge of those first months of Elise's life, but I felt it for a second. 

I am very aware of how lucky I am that I get to feel that nostalgia and move on to the present with Louie.  

Sadie has been hard to handle this week and it got me thinking today that I am so grateful for the feeling Elise brings to our family. If we had waited longer to have Elise we may have been too weary of crazy toddlers because Sadie got tough just a few months after I got pregnant. Elise brings balance and hopefully she helps Sadie realize the universe doesn't revolve around her. I love Sades, but man, she is a handful. (For example: it is literally a cat fight every time I get her in her car seat. She screams, slaps and kicks me, rips my hair out, etc). 

Back to Elise, she's my sweet girl who loves on me all day and will always obey me. :) 

I am so excited to get her walking soon!

Washington DC

I thought we should really celebrate Daniel's last year in his twenties so for his birthday I gave him (and myself) a trip to DC. We have been talking about going for years because a) Daniel had never been, b)I hadn't been in 15 years, and c) Washington DC is awesome. Reason number 217 I love grandparents nearby- Mimi and Paco were actually excited to stay at our house with our girls while we were gone. We did not worry one single second about our girls while we were gone, although I did worry about how their grandparents would fare. 

I have been working on this for 2 weeks and I just have no witty or extra-interesting way of describing the details. Feel free to peruse the pictures.

President Obama landing on the back side of the White House

Day 1- we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and immediately went out exploring. We got that first shot of the White House within 5 minutes of leaving the hotel. We were 2 blocks from the WH, by the way. My cousin Anne suggested we stay right in the city if we could, and thanks to the Marriott Residence Inn accepting my ridiculously low priceline bid, we were able to be right there. Half the time we just walked where we needed to go. It was always a question of- do we want to walk 5 blocks or take the metro? The first few days, it was walk, by the third day we were taking the metro 3/4 of a mile down the street. 

After we went around the WH we spotted the Washington Monument and headed down to see it since it was just a few blocks away. As we were walking up to it President Obama flew over us and landed behind the White House. A lot of people stopped to watch the helicopters fly over us and land, but there was one group of enthusiastic tourists who sprinted by us, all with neon DC tourist gear and cameras in tow. As one of the tourists was running by with a gait akin to Phoebe on Friends his hat went flying off behind him. The combination of the weird run and the hat flying off made me laugh for a long time. 

Moving on...we just walked around for a while and then we were off in search of a dinner that would cost less than $50 a person. It took about 30 minutes, but we finally found a cafe with live music (really talented, actually) and ate dinner as the sun set. I insisted that we go see the monuments at night. So we headed back out, past the Washington Monument (above) and toward the Jefferson Memorial (below).

It was a gorgeous night, like 70 degrees with a little wind. We walked about halfway there and decided we'd come back in the morning so we could see the cherry blossoms in daylight. Next stop: the Lincoln Memorial., but on the way we checked out the World War II Monument and took a picture in front of the fountains. 

This turned out to be the only photo of the two of us from the whole trip. We both hate asking people to take pictures for us. 

The sheer size of the monuments is amazing. I did not remember them being so large. Unfortunately, our experience at the Lincoln Memorial wasn't too relaxing since it was packed with groups of middle schoolers on school trips. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. It was a sobering experience to stand in front of the wall and see thousands of names that represent real American lives lost. 

Day 2- We got up and ate breakfast provided at the hotel. Meals are always great when they are free, right?  Since I am my mother's daughter I did not allow Daniel to sleep in. I had a list of 50+ things I wanted to see on our trip so time could not be wasted sleeping. After breakfast, we donned some exercise gear and walked down to the Tidal Basin to see the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. The MLK Memorial is relatively new and we were excited to see it. Various quotes around the memorial from Dr. King were actually quite inspiring and moving. We really liked it.

We could not have asked for a better day. It was 80 degrees and our bodies just wanted to feel the sun! So did thousands of other people's bodies and we struggled to walk at a brisk pace around the water. I tried to keep my annoyance at a minimum and enjoy the view.

Daniel says this picture should be framed on the wall at the library

We spent some time enjoying the Jefferson Memorial up close and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for the day. At this point our bodies were starting to feel the sting of walking over 12 miles in less than 15 hours so we took the metro over to see the Capitol Building and the Library of Congress. 

We ultimately decided against taking a tour of the Capitol because of the super long lines, but again, we marveled at the gargantuan-ness of the building. 

The architecture of the LOC was just amazing.  

It was incredibly ornate and there were some really cool museum-like exhibits that we spent time in. It was funny to watch people (through a glass panel) in the reading room of the Library. We had planned on taking a tour, but the next one was starting in 20 minutes and I was getting mean with hunger-- I often get very very angry when I am hungry-- so Daniel convinced me to just go get food. 

At the suggestion of the Waddells we ate at Good Stuff Eatery. It was all delicious, although I probably would have loved any food by that point. Following lunch we decided we could walk the 3/4 mile to the National Archives to the various important founding documents of our nation. In a stroke of luck, we managed to slip in at a time with no line. The actual room was very crowded, but we got good looks at all the documents and headed out in time to see a huge line that we were very grateful we didn't have to wait in. A side note, some people literally took like 20 minutes observing each document, as if they were trying to read every word. That bugged me. 

When we left the Archives Daniel made his biggest navigational error ever. And it was costly because I was exhausted. For some reason the metro stop next to the Archives didn't come up on his phone so he had us walk another 3/4 mile to a stop. I trusted Daniel and tried not to whine, but when I discovered his mistake later I would not let him live it down. Still won't. 

That night we ate dinner at Anne and Peter's apartment with some of my favorite second cousins. (What? Doesn't everyone get together with their second cousins regularly?) It was so fun to see them. We had some rousing discussions and then Anne and Peter treated us to some of the best ice cream we've ever had in Georgetown.

Day 3- We planned on this day being a museum day because it was supposed to rain all day.

Daniel made me take a picture at this exhibit on money

First up we hit the National Museum of American History. It had some great exhibits, including one of the First Ladies of the US. Michelle Obama's inaugural ball dress was there and I liked it even better in person. It's crazy to see things like actual Red Coat uniforms. A real Red Coat? Crazy. Next up we went to the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. 

What a great mix of portraits from President Lincoln, to Joseph Smith, to LL Cool J (one of our favorite portraits). 

I enjoyed this random piece of modern art. I generally just do not connect to modern art. Don't get it. The museum had a really entertaining and nostalgic (for Daniel) exhibit on the history of video games. They had every game system ever and you could play them. There were long lines or you better believe I would have been playing Super Mario Brother's 3. Loved that game. For lunch we ate at the most crowded Chipotle ever. I promise I didn't spend most of the trip annoyed, but when it comes to being hungry I get mad easily. After lunch we tried to go to Ford's Theatre, but there were no tours that day due to a show going on. We opted to browse a souvenir shop and bought a cheap DC shirt for Sadie. We got back to the hotel and ordered pizza in for dinner.

Day 4- We slept in a little and then got tickets for the Holocaust Museum. 

We headed back to Ford's Theatre and missed the guided tour, but walked around the museum downstairs (mostly about Lincoln's presidency and the Civil War) and then up to the Theatre. There is the presidential box right there. Really crazy. Can't you totally imagine John Wilkes Boothe shouting about tyranny as he jumped from the balcony and broke his leg below. The distance from the box to the stage wasn't as far as I imagined. By that time it was our entry time for the Holocaust Museum so we headed over.

The Holocaust Museum was one of our favorite things. It is set up in such a way that it keeps you engrossed and I felt like I learned new information. I was completely captivated for 2 hours. We came out somber and bewildered at the human race's capacity both for evil and for holding out hope in spite of terrible situations.

Went to late lunch/early dinner at Gordon Biersch. That's the restaurant we ate at in KC with the John's and when we saw it in DC we had to go. It was delicious, but packed with DC Capitols fans. 

The crossing of Pennsylvania Ave and Executive Park on our way back to the hotel

That night Anne and Peter came and picked us up again. We went and saw an old, beautiful public park  with what would have been gorgeous views (if it weren't for an ugly 1970's-looking apartment building in the middle). We stopped by the National Cathedral, which was closed for a concert, but the outside was great. I really wasn't expecting much since I heard mixed reviews, but I really wish we could have gone inside. We went back to Anne and Peter's for another Bennett gathering with David and Emily. We love the Bennett siblings. Thanks for hanging out with us, Bennetts!

Day 5- We packed up all our stuff and took the metro out to borrow David's car so we could drive out to Mt. Vernon. It was a super windy day, but still nice out. I kinda wish we could have done the National Treasure tour, but we didn't have time, so maybe next time. I hadn't realized that this land had been in the Washington family for generations before George Washington lived there. 

I have vivid memories of playing on this back lawn when I came as a child, but unfortunately, the columns were under construction so we couldn't go directly behind. We didn't get to spend time in the Mt Vernon museum because we were anxious about making our flight back home. 

Who looks better in front of George Washington's house- me or Daniel? 

We drove Dave's car back and then took the metro to the airport where we flew back to our adoring kids who missed us every second of every day. Ha. Yeah, right. Sadie was a little disappointed we were back, but she was excited to show us all the presents she got in our absence.

One of the best things about the trip was the picture updates we got from Mimi and Paco each day. Here are two of my favorites: 

The End. 

Award Winning

Before I accept the terrible blogger award that's headed my way, let me accept a terrible mother award.

Last night Sadie and I were playing catch with her new velcro glove/tennis ball set from the Easter bunny. You know those sweet neon sets, like this:

Except ours is the $3 set from Target and the ball is smaller and really hard.

Anyway, Sadie doesn't really catch the ball as much as she just keeps the velcro glove on her hand and the thrower has to hope they aim well and hit the velcro. Well, last night I got a little over-confident with Sadie and wanted to see how far she could throw so I made her take a few steps back. This is the result of my first throw:

A nice little goose egg in the middle of her forehead.

As soon as I let the ball go, I realized it was a terrible idea. 

And yes, right now Sadie does also have a black eye from falling down the stairs.

Crafting Itch

I am not artistic so crafts for me have to require pretty much no artistic ability. I made a bunch of bows recently. This mostly involved buying the bows in bulk online and gluing them onto alligator clips. I also made some flower ones that for some reason I did not include in the picture. Those little bows on the bottom right are my favorite and all I did was hot glue some scrap-booking flower sticker things onto the ends of clips. That's about all the artistic ability I have.

I also made this bulletin board. It was even more intense. I had to go to Savers and pick out an old ugly picture with a cool frame around it. I spray painted the frame and then hot glued cork board to foam board the size of the frame. Finally, I glued some fabric over the cork board and stuck it into the frame. Finally-- are you still following this? It's very complicated, I know-- I printed out a ton of pictures. I was a little overzealous in my picture printing and could only fit about 2/3 of the pictures I had hoped to get on there. 

(To give you an idea of the size, each of the pictures is 4 x 6)

Comparison

This blog has been missing something lately- sibling comparisons. 

How will they ever develop a healthy sense of self without being compared to one another? 

The photos above are each of our girls first times eating lollipops. Not sure why I took care to document it both times, but as I was scrolling through pictures from March I noticed the picture of Elise and was reminded I took an eerily similar photo of Sadie. Sadie is about a month older than Elise in the picture.

Below you have the girls at the exact same age playing under the kitchen table. Sadie was better at walking along furniture, but maybe that's because all that extra chub helped keep her balanced. I will say Elise is much better at getting herself down from whatever she stands against without falling on her face. Louie probably had to figure that out much quicker because we aren't always around to help her like we were with Sadie. 

There you have it. Enough sibling comparison to last for a few weeks.