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! :)

Finding Answers

Yesterday afternoon and evening were pretty slow around our house. Mark is travelling, and the girls and I were planning on going to our community outdoor concert, but the rain came and we got stuck inside. As a consolation, I told the girls we could have movie night. I picked Finding Nemo. Before I get too far into our night, I have to flash back to four years ago when my mom and I were watching Emme down at Hartfield. Shenley had left Finding Nemo for us to let Emme watch, so we put in the movie and all watched it. After the movie was done and Shenley was back, Emme started asking "Who's Coral?" and "What happened to Coral?" If it's been awhile since you've seen the movie, Coral is only in the very first scene of the movie, and it's Nemo's mom that gets eaten by the barracuda. Anyway, Shen then informs us that Emme has never actually seen the true beginning of the movie. She's always skipped over the part where Coral gets eaten and starts the movie with Nemo bouncing around shouting, "First day of school, first day of school!" Whoops...it looked like my mom and I just gave Emme a little education in the world of big fish, little fish.

Now, back to last night. I considered opting out of the first part but then decided to just show the girls the beginning part with Coral. I didn't think I'd spend the rest of the night and into today talking about it. During and since the movie, there have been constant questions about things like...

Nina: What happened to Coral?
Me: The big fish got her
Nina: Why did the big fish eat Coral and all the eggs?
Me: Big fish have to eat too, and sometimes they eat smaller fish or fish eggs
Nina: Why were Coral and Marlin excited to be parents but all their eggs got eaten?
Me: Parents are normally excited to have a baby, and most of the fish eggs did get eaten, but remember the entire rest of the movie? It was all about the little fish that surived!
Nina: Why do sharks like the smell of blood?
Me: It makes them hungry.
Nina: Why do fish bleed?
Me: Sometimes they get cuts and bleed like we do.
Nina: Why did Nemo disobey and touch the boat?
Me: He didn't want his friends to think he was afraid to do what they were doing.
Nina: Why do fish in a tank want to get out?
Me: They'd probably rather be swimming in a big ocean or a lake or something

It keeps going and going and going. So what's the appropriate filter? As evidenced in my post earlier this week, I clearly wasn't honest about the chipmunk. I'm not honest about deer either. Nina sees them dead along side the road and tells me that they're just sleeping also. Once we happened to be driving by just as the road kill crew was hoisting a dead deer into their truck by a cable around it's neck. That provoked some questions which I also tried to deflect with not completely honest answers.

But after my honesty approach with Finding Nemo, I'm starting to feel a little like Pheobe in the Friends episode when she's singing to children about Barnyard Animals, and her song goes like this...
Oh the cow in the meadow goes "moo"
Oh the cow in the meadow goes "moo"
Then the farmer hits him on the head and grinds him up
And that's how we get hamburgers.
(In case you forgot that one, you can listen HERE.)

Who Needs a Dog When You Have a Little Sister?

By the way, if you're thinking ...they're wearing jackets, I thought the DC Metro area was in a record breaking summer for heat... that is true. I just got the girls' fall jackets today from good old Costco, and they haven't wanted to take them off since we've been home.

(Mike and Meg, these commands will look familiar. You'll also be happy to know that before I turned the video camera on, Nina was calling Lyla "Stella")

When Honesty is Not the Best Policy

The girls and I had just walked home from a trip to the pond to feed the turtles, when I heard Nina shrieking with excitement. I went over to the steps at the front of our house to see what all the commotion was about, and I saw this dead chipmunk laying by the steps. Nina was excitedly motioning and whispering for me to come over, all the while telling me to be quiet to not wake up the sleeping chipmunk. She was so excited it was there. She ran into the garage and got her new umbrella and set it next to the chipmunk because she wanted it to be in the shade while it was "napping." She told me that she thought the little chipmunk had picked our house to take a nap at because he might be making this his new home. I didn't have the heart to tell her that our home was actually the little chipmunk's final resting place.

Of course this happens while Mark is at a function for work, so I had to find a way to distract the kids in the house while I ran out with gloves on and bagged the dead chipmunk. Nina asked me about it later, and I told her the chipmunk wasn't there anymore and that he must have woken up from his nap and ran on to his home. This is definitely one of those situations where I determined honesty to not be the best policy.

Fun With Friends

The past couple days have been some fun with friends. Over the weekend, I got to take a little impomptu visit to see my friends, P and Kristin. I drove the girls to RFK for lunch with Mark, then we switched cars and Mark took them back home while I took off from there to drive to NJ for the night. I got to hang out with P, Kristin, and their little ones (Abigail, Jack, and Avery). We had fun talking, hanging out, and walking up the street for pizza. Abby and Jack were born on the same day, so they have a special little connection already.

Abby Sallade
Jack Smyth
I spent the night at P's and we met her parents for breakfast on Saturday morning, then I headed back home to take the girls to Emilia's birthday party while Mark went into DC for the game. The day of the party was one of the hottest we've had (and we've had some hot days), but Emilia's parents were well prepared with lots of cold things to drink, a backyard filled with water activities and plenty of shade to hang out in. Since it was a lollipop party, one of their cool activities was painting wooden lollipops in the front yard.

The kids had a fun time keeping active and cooled off at the same time. Nina played so hard. She was exhausted when we got home, but she had a great time!

They still had plenty of energy to be silly even before getting to dig into the birthday cupcakes.

It was nice having two full days of activities with friends!

Bonjour, Butterfly

Today I took the girls to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens to see the butterflies. One of Nina's favorite books these days is Fancy Nancy's Bonjour, Butterfly. In the book, Nancy goes with her family and grandparents to a butterfly garden, so Nina has been asking me to take her to one also. I wasn't really sure if and where there were butterfly gardens around here, but I knew of the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens and just figured that where there were many varieties of flowers, there would be butterflies. The gamble worked perfectly because when we got there, I discovered that they had an actual butterfly garden there. It was a very hot day, so we only stayed for a couple hours. It would be great to go back on a day and just leisurely walk around and take photos. The garden area is really beautiful. But, for today, butterflies were the business, so here are some of the pictures from our day.

We brought a picnic lunch and sat in the shade of some big, old trees and watched more butterflies and nesting blue birds.

To see the rest of the pictures from the butterfly garden, click HERE.

Today is a big day for Nina. This evening is her date night with Mark, and they're going to Volcano Island Waterpark in Sterling, so I think we'll have one exhausted little girl tonight!

Sparkle Night

Yesterday was Mike's birthday, so we dropped over in the evening to wish him a happy birthday. Since he was previously named Uncle Sparkles (if you missed that post, you can see it here) we felt it only fitting to bring a special sparkle treat with us. Nina and Lyla picked out a picture from a baking magazine that we entitled "Sparkle Pops" and Nina helped me create them that afternoon. The girls were very excited that Uncle Sparkles got some Sparkle Pops on his special day! Thanks Aunt Meg for the super cute pictures!

A Huge Milestone

The past three weeks have been a real turning point for Nina. She has always had a fear of getting her face wet. Even when she was a toddler, she used to scream through her bath time because she didn't want to get her head wet when we washed her hair. It wasn't fun. We'd go to the pool, and she'd love to be in the water, but she would get upset if she got her face spashed, and wouldn't hear of even considering putting her face in the water. We kept working with her but started to think that we'd have to get her swim lessons to have someone else teach her how to swim than us. We figured maybe she'd do for another adult in a class setting what she wouldn't do for us, but we knew she would learn to swim quickly if she just put her face in, so we waited. Anyway, we tried a few more things by just trying to get her to jump in the water to us (if we'd catch her without going under). Even that took a lot of convincing. She would stand on the side of the pool and fret for awhile before finally trusting us enough to catch her.

One day after doing a lot of catching her in the water, we got her to jump in holding one of our hands. She did that and got her face a little wet and realized that she would survive. Then another milestone came when she actually jumped in the pool by herself. She was only jumping into the three feet, but you'd think she was getting ready to jump off the edge of a huge cliff. She did it once and was so proud of herself, but she wouldn't do it again. She wanted to do it, but she could bring herself to do it. Instead of talking someone away from jumping off a ledge, I stood there in the water for like 15 minutes trying to talk her into jumping off the side. She couldn't bring herself to do it again, so when the lifeguards called break and we had to go home, she was so upset with herself that she cried all the way home. I felt really bad for her because I wanted her to be able to do it for her. We both just wanted her to know that she could get over her fear and really enjoy the water.

Anyway, that was three weeks ago, and I took this video today. Needless to say, the fear of getting her face wet has passed. She's "swimming" all over the 3 ft. section of the pool, and she loves to go into the deep part of the pool, jump in all by herself, spring off the bottom to Mark or I, then she swims to the side of the pool. She is very proud of herself, and we're proud of her too!

Pillow Pets and Pedicures

This week I decided to use a gift certificate I have had for awhile to the little nail salon in our neighborhood town center. Mark was off for the day, so while Lyla was taking her nap, I decided to ask Nina if she wanted to come with me. She was SO excited to go. She picked out her own nail polish (electric blue color with glitter), and got to sit in the big chairs next to me and got her finger and toe nails painted while I got a pedicure. She was so talkative to all the ladies in the nail shop which was so cute. She asked them a lot of questions and answered all of theirs. She was really a lot of fun to have along. It was a nice little treat for both of us. She did decide, however, at the end of the day that she wanted the polish off her finger nails, so that ended up being a short lived thing, but the polish on the toes is still there.

Nina and Lyla have been asking for pillow pets for awhile. If you don't know what pillow pets are, don't feel like you're missing anything. I had no idea what they were either until an occasional PBS Kids show or something of the like started popping up in our house. For anyone who doubts that advertisers market to kids, just watch the pillow pets commercial and you'll see that they know exactly how to sell their product. In one of her quite convincing petitions for a pillow pet, Nina practially quotes the commercial, word-for-word, as to why pillow pets are the absolute coolest thing ever. Anyway, Lyla got on the bandwagon, and we finally are the owners of two pillow pets. Nina gets allowance and Lyla doesn't yet, so we didn't think it was completely fair to make Nina pay for all of her pillow pet with allowance while Lyla got her for "free" so Nina covered half of the pillow pet price with her money and we chipped in the rest. Here is Lyla with the two pillow pets (Nina's is the pig and Lyla's is the bunny) who she gave bucket hats to then decided to wear one of her own. I have to admit, the pillow pets really are cute and soft, and the girls do love them.

Dinner Dollars to Make a Difference - Hope International

Yesterday evening we met at the home of our friends, Mary and Simon, for another installment of Dinner Dollars to Make a Difference. In preparation for the dinner, several of us read this book, The Poor Will be Glad, about how microfinance institutions (MFI) and savings and credit associations (SCA) can be practical and very effective ways to alleviate so much of the global poverty we are facing. One of the co-authors of the book is a friend of Mary and Simon's, so they chose an organization he's a part of, Hope International, as the recipient of the evening's dinner dollars. Thanks so much to Mary and Simon for sharing with their friends and neighbors a concept as important as microfinance. I know that reading the book was an eye-opener for me as well as a good education in what's possible, and I think others that attended the dinner also felt inspired to want to learn more.

Carolina Bound

It was bound to happen at some point. I just thought it was going to end up with me in North Carlonia - I certainly tried on two occasions. The first time was when I was a senior in high school. For some reason, I had my heart set on going to NC State. I didn't know much about the school, but I applied, got in, and wanted to go. The "deal" for us and paying for college went like this - my parents would pay for four years of an in-state school. If we took longer than four years or wanted to to go an out of state school, we'd be responsible to pay the difference. Now that we have kids of our own and are looking ahead to the world of college tuition and weddings, I understand that was a great deal. At the time, I felt frustrated to have to attend one of VA's great public universities (of which we have many) or rack up unnecessary school loan debt just to attend a school in a different state. I amost begrudginly went to JMU where I just happened to meet some of the best friends of my life and have some of the best years of my life. I avoided North Carolina for a few years. After graduation from JMU, I got the bug to go back to North Carolina again. This time, I was going to attend UNC Charlotte where they had a Master's program in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I again applied, was accepted, visited the school on a road trip with my mom, secured an apartment, and registered for classes. When the trip had come to a close, something about it just didn't feel right, but I was going nonetheless. Fast forward a little bit, and insert trip out to Colorado for what was going to be two weeks of snowboarding fun. On day four of the trip, I hit a tree, break my back, and wind up spending the rest of my time in Colorado in Vail Valley Medical Center's spine trauma unit. It was a life changer for me in many ways.

One of those things that had to change was my grad school plan. I had to withdrawl from the classes I had registered for at UNC Charlotte and basically just spend a lot of time trying to get better and back on my feet again. Plan B became taking some grad classes at Mason (where they also had my Master's program of choice). Because I was getting a late start and couldn't apply to the program in time, I was able to select an option to take classes first, apply to the program second, and hope to be accepted so that your classes apply towards your degree. Thankfully, that all worked out as planned, I met Mark in that process, fell in love, and planned to finish up school here. North Carolina was averted for a second time.

Today, however, Shenley and the rest of the Williams family become official residents of North Carolina. They went to closing on their new house this afternoon, and all their stuff is in a moving truck on it's way to Asheville now. Although this move is a positive one for them, they will really be missed. It's easy to take for granted always having family in a close proximity. It's fun and easy to get together when we want, family events can be attended by all, the cousins are very close with each other, and we as families are very close with each other. We know moves are just a part of life. We know it doesn't need to change the parts of our relationship that are important, and we know that life in a new place can be a fun and exciting adventure. However, that doesn't mean that it's easy to see this era of close family proximity coming to an end. But, really, that's all that it is. For a time, it's the end of what we've been used to and the start of something new. So, we'll be down to Asheville to visit. Nina has also already asked if her daddy could get a job in North Carolina so that we could live near Emme. Mark would love to coach a university team, and I hear the soccer coach at NC State has been there for decades. Who knows, maybe I'll finally end up making it there afterall...just this time it won't be as a student!

Today is also Shen's birthday - Happy Birthday, Shen! What a day!

A Happy 4th

On Sunday, Mark got in from a road trip in the late afternoon, so that evening we went over to Mike and Meg's house to cookout and hangout. A highlight for Nina was playing with Stella. Mike taught Nina how to use commands and hand signals to get Stella to sit, stay, drop her toy, and retrieve it after Nina threw it. To Stella's credit, she is very well trained and very patient, so she tolerated Nina's over excitement and humored her by performing all the commands over and over only to get her toy bird thrown about four feet. Thanks, Meg, for the pictures.

Dog training and child training can be a little frustrating. Now Nina knows how we feel...

We didn't even have to go anywhere to see good fireworks. The Clarkes came back over to our house (thankfully we live 7 min. from each other) so we could put the girls to bed. Then, the people a few houses down from us put on quite a nice fireworks show, so we sat outside and enjoyed the free show!

Burke Lake

Yesterday was a gorgeous day to be outside, and since DC United had the very rare occasion of playing at George Mason University last night, we decided to head over to Burke Lake for the afternoon and evening then pop over to see the game at Mason. As soon as we got there, the girls wanted to ride the train. Mark only had about 20 min. to spend with us there, so he got on the train and rode with us then left to go to Mason get ready for the game.

After the train ride, the girls and I walked the trail for a bit, and Nina and Lyla liked to stop often to throw sticks into the lake.
We were joined later by one of my friends from the team who brought her daughter also, and we picniced for dinner together, and the girls got lots of energy out on the playground before we all headed over to the game.

**Note: Mark found out that he didn't win the Hall of Tradition but came in second to the guy he said from the beginning really deserves to be there. It was nice to be nominated and, in the end, he feels a very deserving man will get the honor.

Little Teacher

I came into Nina's room to get her out of quiet time, and I found her like this so I had to run down and get my camera. She told me that she was teaching Froggy and Frosty (who she set up on her stool and covered with her blanket). She said she was wearing her "teaching glasses" and was teaching Froggy and Frosty the story of Adam and Eve from her kids' Bible. Very cute.