Washington DC part 2

On Sunday Danny, Lucy and I drove to DC to check out the monuments. It was another rainy day, but this time it was seriously rainy and windy. We held out umbrellas out in front of us and walked along the mall, fighting off the wind, getting soaked anyway, determined to see some monuments!!

We were lucky to get an amazing parking spot on the street near the Vietnam War memorial. Danny and I both had studied the memorial in school and were surprised how moved we were by it.  It made quite an impact.

We walked down to the Lincoln memorial.  After seeing tons of pictures and reading about it I was still surprised at His size.  Lucy is so fun to have around. She is a great little sight seer and I had fun talking to her about Lincoln and the Civil War.

We walked by the Korean War memorial and down the mall to the WW2 memorial. By this time we were pretty soaked through and truly freezing. This was the first day I was really cold at walking down to WW2 I realized I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. Poor Lucy was starting shake, so we made only a cursory tour of the WW2 memorial.  Its too bad too because it was really beautiful and I wish we could have read all the great quotes etc.

 We started walking back to the car (Lucy was really slow...) and Danny got impatient. He put down his useless umbrella, threw Lucy on his back and started running.  This is how we looked when we got back in the car.

We drove to several different places for lunch, not knowing that lots of food places close on Sunday there. We ended up at a little pub near the Library of Congress and got to thaw out a bit.

After lunch we went to the Botanical Gardens right in front of the Capital.  We loved that it was warm and dry:) It was a beautiful and we had fun exploring.

It started snowing as we made the hour drive home so we were glad we left when we did. We had a leisurely afternoon at home, again, glad to be dry at last.

On Monday we were blessed with gorgeous, warm weather. We took the opportunity to drive to Mount Vernon.  This was my favorite day.  The grounds are huge! We toured the house and then wandered around the grounds learning more about life in Washington's time.  It was the perfect day and the lids had so much fun running around outside and learning new things.

There were newborn lambs in these pens!

The kids got to meet and talk to Mrs. Washington! I only got weird pictures of it but the kids stood up there with her for ten minutes:)

We had so much fun! The next morning we were up and at the airport for our early flight. Lucy had an even better second flight and was surprised how fast 6 hours flew by:) We were so happy to see you babies again!

Washington DC part 1

At the end of March Danny, Lucy and I flew to Virginia to visit Luke, Emily and fam. We left the little girls with Grandma Marilyn and Lindsay for the first few days and then Grandma Karen and Katy took over for a few days. We were leaving early in the morning from SFO so we slept over at the Leiningers so the little girls could stay asleep while we were driven off. We didn't even say goodbye! I missed them like crazy, but I hear they were fine and didn't miss me at all:)

Lucy couldn't remember being on a plane before-so this trip was sort of a first! She sat by the window and had a fun flight. She played games on Danny's ipad, colored and listened to her first audiobook-Addy an American Girl.

When we arrived Emily picked us up and drove us down the street to a Air and Space museum. We had a really fun time wandering around with all the kids.

I thought the space section was the most interesting. Here we are in front of the Discovery shuttle!

We picked up Luke from work and had a fun family dinner at a cute place in Reston. 

The next day Lucy stayed at home with her cousins and played and Danny and I took the metro into DC. We had so much fun sight seeing just the two of us!

We found our way into town easily and got started at the National History Museum.  I loved all the pop culture stuff the best-Miss Piggy! Ruby slippers! It had been raining lightly when we got off the metro but by the time we got out of the musuem it was nice and actually really warm. There isn't a ton of food choices close by so we ended up walking half an hour down the mall past the Capital to Spike (from Top Chef!)'s fast casual burger place. The rosemary fries and Milky Way shake were AMAZING.

We were close to the Library of Congress so we went on in. It was my favorite visit of the trip. Its a beautiful building and they had a cool interactive display that really told you about the architectural elements of the interior.  We were fascinated:)

The Library is just behind the state capital. We didn't get tickets for a tour (you're supposed to do it online through your congressman yada yada yada and we just forgot. ) and we'd heard the stand by lines could be awful but we decided to go in and just check out the store and little museum thats always open. When we got in and walked around someone handed us tickets for the tour that was starting that very minute so we hopped on! We were very excited by our luck:)

Danny in the Rotunda listening to our guide. Danny is so cool he doesn't even look that nerdy in those headphones:)

That evening we met Luke and Emily at a Metro stop and went to Georgetown for dinner. We had so much fun exploring the incredibly cute downtown and chatting over Indian food.

During our down time at home Danny played with kids and I read my book:) Here is Danny trying to do a pushup with five kids on him.

The next day the whole family drove out to DC to explore.  It was a rainy day so we huddled together under umbrellas and it made for a short day:) It was a Saturday so the museums were also super busy. We braved the Natural History Museum for an hour and finally couldn't handle the squeeze anymore.

Then we went to the Art museum. I had a lot of fun holding the girls' hands, showing them famous pieces of art and telling them how cool it was they were seeing them. My favorite were the sculptures-the kids were very interested in how the artist could sculpt different textures out of stone-and the nudity.  With five young kids the guards all looked at us nervously but the kids were great and had fun there. 

That evening Emily made us a delicious cake and we celebrated Danny's birthday. Everyone was happy to be home and dry.

Part 2 coming!

I don't want to forget

My girls are so fun right now and there are so many things I don't want to forget.  So this is for the blog book:

*My little girls play together so well. As a mom, having twins was very hard for the first two years. This last year has been a breeze.  Two years of exhaustion has finally paid off.  Joyce and Lydia love each other to death and play together all day. Having a constant play mate is so much fun.

*Lucy plays Princess with the little girls. Lucy is the Queen, Lydia is the big sister princess and Joyce is the baby princess. Lucy teaches Lydia in school and the baby princess follows them around on her hands and knees. This has resulted in Joyce developing a "baby" voice. She is NEVER out of character. She has been speaking in her baby voice for weeks now. It is driving us all crazy but she must have forgotten how to speak in her real voice because even as we beg her to talk like a big girl, she can't get her real voice out. The funny thing is that she is so much nicer when in  her baby character! She gives her grandma (me) kisses and tell me she loves me every time she sees me.

*Due to this never ending princess game, there are two moms in our house. The little girls have started calling me "Momma Christy" and they call Lucy "Momma Lucy".  I'm getting a little sick of this too. Lucy likes it because they do what she wants when she is in the mom role.

*We are still obsessed with Frozen (like everyone else:) We can't drive anywhere without listening to the songs. Lydia always tells me she is Elsa and instantly freezes my heart (Joyce kindly uses her own powers to thaw me).  For the first couple weeks after its release we watched Frozen every day. After almost a month we have limited that to every three days. The girls are having Frozen themed birthdays this year-can't wait.

watching Frozen

*I always forget how early spring starts around here. We have had a beautiful March and April looks even nicer. The little girls and I go to the park almost every day. Lately they'd rather just lay with me on my blanket then play very much. Guess we take the park and beautiful weather for granted now.

 *The girls favorite treat and my favorite bribery reward is frozen yogurt. We love to walk down to the yogurt station close by. Lucy has to finish her chore chart each week to earn it. The babies are very good at encouraging her to practice the piano so they get the reward at the end of the week:)

 * We celebrated Danny's 31st birthday! The Leinfam adults went and did sealings all together and then had a fun dinner out. On his actual birthday Danny and I saw Divergent and had brownie sundaes with Marilyn, Steve, Lindsay and Jason.

 

 

 *The girls are obsessed with playing Go Fish, Uno and Hello Kitty Bingo. When we play Uno Lucy and I each take a baby on our teams. They like to hold two cards each. When Lydia plays a card she does so very slowly while saying, "I'm doing it!"

 * Danny has been prepping his parents' backyard for Bryce and Ariel's spring open house. He recently put in a pathway of stumps and large boulders for the kids to run around on. They love it and just run around in circles back there.