I Do Whatever My Rice Krispies Tell Me To Do

That was my favorite bumper sticker from our visit to Asheville, NC!

Nina, Lyla, my mom, and I just got back from a weekend visiting the Williams family at their new home in Asheville. We had a lot of fun in what felt like a short visit. Next time we'll have to plan to stay for longer. We arrived on Friday late afternoon and had to come home on Sunday, but the time we were there was really great. Nina was SO SO excited to see her cousins. I felt really bad when we had to put her in the car to come home as she had been having such a great time with Emme and Ryleigh.

Shen and G have a beautiful home in an awesome neighborhood, so I was so happy to see them settled down in such great surroundings. My impression of Asheville was that it's the kind of place that prides itself on being a unique city set in the mountains of NC with it's own brand of restaurants, shops, etc. We've heard from Shen and G that southern hospitality as well as good BBQ are alive and well in Asheville, and it's proving to be a great new home for the Williams family.

I didn't take as many of the type of pictures of Asheville that I wanted, but click on this link for a little slideshow of our fun weekend.

Teaching Them Young

Date Night, Roller Style

Last night was Nina and I's turn for a date night. She has been interested in roller skating lately. She came across this picture of me learning how to roller skate and started asking if she could learn to roller skate. Part of me wondered if anyone out there even roller skates anymore. When we were kids, roller skating was the thing to do. Shen and I would roller skate in our unfinished basement and put on "routines" for our parents. I fully remember going to the roller skating rink, doing the limbo, the shoot-the-duck, watching the couples skate dreamily... Now that I'm writing this, I'm wondering if we were just really un-cool kids. Anyway, back to last night.

So, since Nina had her cool roller skating t-shirt, and we'd been talking about it, I thought I'd take her roller skating for our date night. Suprisingly (but probably for good reason), it's hard to find somewhere to roller skate in the DC metro area. The only place I could find was Skate 'N Fun in Manassas. So that's where we decided to go. I figured that we'd probably be the only people there on a Tuesday evening. I couldn't have been more wrong.

After a quality dining experience at the Manassas McDonalds, Nina and I made our way to the skating rink. We got there and rented our skates and got ready for fun. Within five minutes of our being there, the lights went off, the strobe light came on, the black lights were fired up, and the jamms started pumping. I took this little video right before we started skating. As soon as I put the camera in the locker, the skating floor was practically filled with people. I wish I could have just sat there all night with a video camera. It was hysterical. I had NO IDEA that people still take skating so seriously. Let me set the scene - you've got the idea with the lights and the music, guys in tank tops and jean shorts, girls wearing flashing necklaces and air brush painted t-shirts, and it's dark in there and some guys are still skating with their sunglasses on. People were seriously getting their skate on to the tune of all the latest jamms. There was an occasional "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" but, other than that, I felt my age (which I didn't think was that old). We managed to survive our skating experience by staying to the very outermost part of the rink, taking it very slow and trying not to get clobbered by the die-hard quad-skaters (I also had to learn the new lingo for roller skates). I think it was all a little overwhelming for Nina, so after a valient effort to learn to skate, we took a seat on a bench, took off our quads, and took in some seriously good people watching. We exited our Manassas date night with a drive-thru visit to Checkers for a milk shake. It was quite a night!

Video Tuesday

These are just two videos of the girls having fun (for anyone interested). The first one is Nina working on her golf swing, and the second one is of them dancing to the video of the chipettes singing the Single Ladies. Watch out, Beyonce, Lyla's chicken wing moves might start popping up on all the latest dance videos!

The Right Path

We have a pretty set routine in the morning. After the girls finish breakfast, I get everyone dressed, teeth brushed, beds made, etc. then we head down to the basement where they play in the toy room while I do my exercise on our elliptical machine down there. Yesterday must have been a pretty rough day for the workout as I was so focused on the fact that the "time elapsed" part of the elliptical's display screen seemed to be defying the laws of time by moving so slow, that I didn't realize what was developing right next to me. Nina and Lyla had taken every single book out of the toy room bookshelf and were making a path that stretched from one room in the basement to the next. They seemed to be playing so well together and happily chattering to each other as I saw them running back and forth that I didn't think to actually notice why that was happening. (FYI - in the Simpson household when things seem to be "too good to be true" generally there is a reason for that and one goes looking to see what kind of mischief is being performed instead.)

After I finished my workout, I was informed that they were making an important path, and every action Nina performed, Lyla would copy. If Nina ran into the toy room to get more books while making silly noises, Lyla did the exact same thing. When Nina bumped her head into the bottom of the trapeeze and said, "Ummph", Lyla would run to the trapeeze, stand under it on her tippy toes and try to make it bump her head, and she would say, "ummph". Anything that Nina did, Lyla would copy. We see this a lot actually. Anyway, as they're walking on the books, Nina turns to me and says, "Mom, we're on the right path," and it later got me thinking - I hope so.

Right now, there is a very clearly defined leader and follower. Nina is always the leader and Lyla the follower. Obviously that has a lot more to do with age right now than a prediction of personality, but it does make you think ahead to the future a bit. If one does turn out to be more of a follower by nature, you hope she follows someone headed in the right direction. However, if one does turn out to be more of a leader than a follower, you hope that she's the type of girl that leads herself and her friends down the right path. You hope she's confident and caring and uses her leadership to actually do things to make a difference for the better around her. I just finished a book entitled Half the Sky, and it's so clear that girls who are raised in a culture that values them and who have opportunities to pursue their dreams can do amazing things, but so many girls and women all over the world are never even given the opportunity to be seen as valuable or worthy of investment. That doesn't mean that a girl who is a leader has to change the world, but it makes you hope your girls use their opportunity and influence for good things.

But since they're 4 and 2, I'll just settle for them leading each other down the path of less whining and more good listening. That would be the world of change the Simpson household would be happy to see!

Visitors

The past few days we've had two fun visits. P and Jeff were here briefly over the weekend for a wedding, so we got to see baby Abigail again. Nina got to hold her again, so that was a pretty cool experience for her, and it was awesome to see our great friends again.

This week we also got a visit from Uncle Bo who came over to have dinner with us. The girls were very excited to have him over, and they used the opportunity to show him their pillow pets then pillow fight him with the pillow pets. After the pillow fight, they gave a little performance of their dancing to the Chipettes singing Single Ladies. It was a lot of fun to have some good visitors this week!

Cupcake Social

Last night was a little impromptu cupcake social for some of Nina's friends on our street. She has been asking me lately if we could have her friends over for a party, so we downsized the party request into a cupcake social. Cupcakes were slated to be served at 7:00, and it started pouring down rain at about 6:15 and literally stopped pouring at 6:55. We had lots of cupcakes and kids that wanted to eat them, so we went ahead and had it.

The kids had fun eating and decorating cupcakes. This was part of the five minutes that they actually sat at the table, then for the next hour and a half, they were running and screaming up and down the sidewalks and through the yards of our four houses. They even had two of the family dogs running with them for a time. They came in when it got dark and were sweaty, wet, and covered in bug spray and wet grass, so it was a quick shower and off to bed, but they had a great time. Mark and I enjoyed just hanging out and chatting with the parents of the kids and our other neighbor with teenage kids (who got cupcakes also but didn't have to sit at the kid table) who are all awesome neighbors.

Paper Making

Yesterday was a planned paper making day. During one of our last visits to Haymarket, Nina really wanted to do some exploring down in the woods, so my mom told her that we could come back on a day to go exploring in the woods for neat berries and flowers that we could use to make paper with. So, yesterday was our day to do that. The girls had a great time collecting neat things in the woods that we'd use to put in our paper.

After exploring in the woods, we headed back up to the house to start grinding up our berries and making the paper. We didn't forsee the trouble ahead...
We spread out the berries, and, using rocks they'd found in the stream, they mashed the berries, then we put the mashed berries into a blender with torn pieces of paper (As my Dad pointed out, we were making paper with paper? Yes, because we're working with toddlers), water, and some other things.
As we're putting the blended concauction onto the screen, things started to take a downward turn. I had felt a burning sensation on my hands but didn't really pay much attention to it. I had an itch on my neck that I scratched, then my whole neck was itching and burning. Lyla started crying and scratching and rubbing her arms, my mom's hands and part of her legs were itching and burning, and Nina (surprisingly) had no issues except little red blotches on her cheeks. Evidentally, we'd picked, crushed, and blended something we shouldn't have. It was quickly up to the bath to get all their clothes off and washed and their skin soapy and washed. After the bath, they felt much better.
Being the well-prepared mother that I am (as evidenced in other posts), I don't come with a back-up outfit, so while their clothes washed and dried, Lyla wore a make-shift tank top, and this is what Nina picked out to wear.

After our toxic paper experience, we decided to finish up our paper making with some good old berries from the grocery store. While it wasn't as "natural" as our other paper, it didn't leave us all itching and burning.

Here are our finished products - the natural, toxic paper that we didn't take home.

Our other paper made with berries from the store and flower petals from my mom's deck. Last night when I brought them in after completely drying, they look really neat. It was a fun experience for the girls (aside from the itching and burning skin), and a creative way to spend the morning.

Easy Rider? Not Exactly.

Today, the girls and I tackeled something a bit ambitious. Mark is on the road again, and we were looking to do something fun outdoors, so I decided to give Nina her first try on the W&OD trail on a beautiful Saturday morning. The idea was good, and she was very excited, but the high volume of serious racing bikers on the trail was a bit nerve wracking for her. She's a good bike rider, and she rides a large bike for her size so she gets going pretty fast, but she still rides with training wheels and is a little nervous with fast riders and big hills. I jogged with Lyla in the stroller, and I was actually surprised that Nina was able to bike as far as she did. We went several miles.

We only stopped once for a water and granola bar break. I was actually prepared to have to stop a lot more, but I was proud of Nina for wanting to keep riding even when she was a little nervous.

After we dropped the bike and the stroller back off at the car, I took them over to get some of the best bread on earth, the Star Spangled Swirl from Great Harvest Bread Co., then the girls played on the train car for a little while before heading home.

Perspective

When life (or your neighbor's yard) looks like a big mess of weeds...

...look at it in a different way, take a litte time, mix it up a bit...
...and make something fantastic!

Princess Party

One of Nina's little friends from the neighborhood had a princess birthday party over the weekend, so all the little princesses were invited to come dressed up. After getting ready at our house, they were driven over to the party by their own personal footman (me) in a carriage (the buggy behind the bike) for a royal party. Nina came up with this pose thing all on her own. I just wanted to take their picture before they left, and she started posing - don't know where she gets that from! :)