Washington DC

Tyson had a radiology conference in Washington DC.  I had never been...so decided to join in the fun.  Nana and Aunt Lydia came to watch the girls for the six day trip.  I had never been childless for so long.  I must admit, the "me parties" were pretty awesome (although I did miss my kids).  Tyson had a few days of conferences to go to, so I trekked on alone for a few days.

The weather was AWESOME.  It was either sunny or down pouring rain...which I LOVE.  I'm a rain girl.  Thus, the second picture of me happily smelling the wet cement, listening to the rain hit my umbrella, and enjoying the sites.

I took the subway everywhere.  It was quite an amazing site in and of itself!

Here we are visiting the monuments.  I guess Tyson and I don't take as cool of "selfie" pics as the couple in back of us...

We attended a service and listened to a bagpipe band at the National Cathedral, which was incredible.

The National Zoo was definitely one of the tops on my list.  Then again, I love the zoo in general.

(This HUGE spider was a part of the zoo in an OPEN cage.  There were a few of them with MASSIVE spider webs.  They said that they are good spiders and stay in their webs, but they keep it under control by watching if their webs start to stretch out too far our of their corner, then they'll get rid of those webs right away.  Creepy.

 And this was the final picture we took before we left for home.  It was a wonderful trip!

The Terrible Train Accident

There was a terrible wagon train accident on Platte Purchase Drive several weeks ago.  Able to admit her mistakes, Mom confesses.  "I had my three children and a neighbor child sitting inside the three person wagon.  They asked me to go faster and when a turn came there simply was too much weight in the wagon.  So we tipped over." says Mom.

And who was to receive the worst injuries?  The youngest of the group, 17 month old Molly Finlinson.  When the other children could use their reflexes to stop the blow with their hands, Molly stopped the blow with her face.  She had bleeding on her forehead, nose, mouth, and chin.  It was a tragic day.  The other children also suffered minor injuries that required band aids, ice packs, candy medicine, and love.

Below are pictures of the injured child. The injuries took several weeks to heal.  But there were few complaints from Molly, simply childlike forgiveness.

Molly Meets Molly and Other Silly Stories

Story #1

Molly Meets Molly

Once upon a time, a girl named Molly moved into a new neighborhood. Come to find, there was another girl in the neighborhood named Molly.  THEN to find there is also a dog named Molly in the neighborhood.  That's when Molly realized...she has friends.  The End.

Story #2

"Selfies"

One dark and gloomy night....strange things began to happen.  Mysterious pictures started to appear on my phone.  These mysterious pictures are known as "selfies", pictures that one takes of oneself.  HUNDREDS of these pictures have taken over my phone.  But I keep them around (talking about the pictures, not my children although I'll definitely keep them around too)...because they make me smile.  The End.

 

Story #3

Sisters Need to Be Silly Sometimes

There once were two sisters (actually there were three, but this story is about two of the three) who were silly.  Extremely silly.  They were good friends (most of the time).  They loved their mother to take silly pictures of them.  They loved to perform silly songs and dances for anyone who comes to listen.  They simply loved being silly.  And they had a special bond...called being sisters.  Sister are awesome.  The End.

Story #4

The Other Sister

The third sister, not noted in the above story, was equally loved...and equally silly....if not, MORE silly.  She LOVES hats and shoes...but HATES wearing clothes.  She always seemed shocked an amazed at the world often pronouncing "WOAH!".  Her sisters love her and each have a different kind of bond with her.  Her sister, Eden, likes to play with her and be silly with her.  Her sister, Leila, will often do many things to help out Molly and look after her.  The End.

 

And that concludes this silly post with random pictures of the three most adorable kids in the world.

Easter "EGG"stravaganza!

(I needed to write that title because all Easter long Eden was trying to come up with new "pun"ny ways to use the word "egg" in her everyday language...she LOVES a good pun!)

In the "non-commercialized" side, we did a few fun activities the week before Easter to talk about the week before Christ's resurrection.  We did a play (which those pictures vanished somewhere...) on the triumphal entry of Christ starring Leila (as Jesus Christ), dad (as the donkey), and the rest of us as the people who lay the palm leaves and shout "Hosanna!  Hosanna!  Hosanna!".

We mostly just read the rest of the stories in the days prior and also watched the end of The Testaments.

But as for the commercialized side of Easter...man, my girls made out big-time.

The town homes we live in had an Easter egg hunt with TONS of eggs as well as some children's books.

Before the baskets were filled, they made LOVELY hats.

 

 We got home, the girls got a package from Grandma and Grandpa Sakamoto with goodies, clothes, hair pretties, etc.  The girls instantly had a change of clothes.

 In fact, they changed several times....and probably got a little crazy with the candy overdose...

The Easter Bunny left them baskets, of course, as well.  The girls all got the same thing, except Molly got a stuffed animal bunny and Leila and Eden got a small "girl" LEGO set (that they played with for hours and hours and hours during the next few days).

(Note:  Molly's morning hair...awesome)

 Then we had another older lady in our neighborhood who gave the girls EACH an Easter basket with several candies (including large chocolate bunnies), hair bows, and a few other gifts.

Then we went to play at the park on Easter Sunday (because Tyson had to work...) where we ran into a neighbor friend doing an Easter egg hunt.  They invited (begged) us to come gather eggs.  They seriously had HUNDREDS of eggs for about 10 kids.

Then we walked home to our next door neighbor who said, "Hey!  We tried to knock on your door because we wanted you and your girls to join us in our Easter fun!"  So, we joined in again and got more eggs with more candy and they also had a larger egg filled lots of goodies for each of my children.

Luckily, Luisa, my neighbor also has a nice camera and took several pictures of the event.

 The best part of the party was these hollowed out egg shells (they had collected since Christmas) that they filled with confetti and cracked over each other's heads!  We had a good time and even took some home to crack over dad's head after work.

We have awesome family and awesome neighbors.  It was a great Easter!

Eating and Sleeping..Simultaneously

So, Molly has developed a nap schedule that fights with lunch time.  She's dying to sleep AND eat at the same time...around noon.  I swear she falls asleep eating all the time.  But its so cute.

And, oh, how I wish I had the ACTUAL video of this, cause its a lot cuter.  But my computer is fighting me...so it has the strange partial clips of the video appearing.  But you get the picture.

p.s. Molly's all time favorite food is quesadillas or "dillas" as she calls them.  She's requested it for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, and even once when she woke up in the middle of the night.

Eden and Leila's Aquarium

The girls were upstairs playing when they rushed down to invite me to the GRAND OPENING of their aquarium!  After seeing what they had done, I had to get some pictures!

"Welcome to the grand opening of our aquarium.  Please come inside!" (Yes, they look a little possessed and crazy...Perhaps too much time with sea animals...)

"Here are our sea horses!"

 "Followed by our sea monkeys." 

"Next comes the tanks where you can touch our sea star, small fish, and sea slug."

 "In this tank we have our sea turtle, jellyfish, catfish, and sea glow worm."

 "And here are the sea cows!"

"And we even have a mermaid."

 

"These are few other animals we have, a frog, sea dog, sea duck, and sea chameleon."

"As well as our collection of sea bears."

 

Molly also enjoyed the trip the aquarium with me.  She fell in love with a sea monkey and requested to take it home with her.

And that was the end of the best aquarium I have ever been to.  And I LOVE aquariums....but this one tops them all.