Conversations.

To say that we are ready for spring and summer would be an understatement. We are so ready. This has been a long winter with too much snow and too many sick days for everyone. A few mornings ago, I opened my bedroom window and I heard the birds chirping.

It gave me hope.

I can't wait for t-shirt, shorts and sandals kind of weather.

In the meantime, Scott and I have been enjoying our conversations with Brielle and Braden. They are both growing up so much and I don't have the little babies I used to have any more.

We have been having the most interesting conversations with Brielle lately. She is very concerned with God and Jesus. One night she asked:

Brielle: Mom, why did they kill Jesus?

Me: Because they didn't understand that He was the son of God. But did you know that Jesus is alive? He came back to life after he died, he resurrected!

Brielle: He came back to normal!

Denisse: Yup!

Brielle: What happened to his blood?

Me: He has special blood.

On another occasion on the way to drop her off to preschool she asked:

Brielle: Mom, does God and Jesus have a body?

Me: Yes, they do, they have bodies like you and me.

Brielle: But where are they? I can't see them!

This little girl's brain is always going at 100 miles an hour...I hope I'm doing okay at answering sooooooo many questions that she's been asking lately!

Inspired by my dear friend Timber, who has school with her children every day, I have started to work with my kids at home, too. (I love Timber because she inspires me so much, she always gives me such good ideas and encouragement.) Even though, Brielle goes to preschool twice a week, we still work at home. I think she enjoys it. It gives us all something to do during these winter days.

Brielle is beginning to trace her name and I think if I continue to work with her she'll be writing it soon. She can also read the words: cat, pig, dog, rat, sun and God.

Braden has been into it too and has been tracing shapes, he's getting pretty good at holding the pen.

This specific day, Braden started coloring with a white crayon. He was a little confused when he didn't see any color, he said:

"Mom! It doesn't work!"

I had to explain to him that you can't really see the color white.

We have also been enjoying our conversations with Mr. Braden. On one occasion he was banging his foot against the chair while we were having dinner. I asked him to please stop, he said:

"I'm being like a drum, mom!"

ha ha ha! How do I keep a straight face?!

Yesterday, I watched our friends' little girl Lillie, Anna (her mom) just had a baby boy. So Lillie came to play with us for the day while her daddy went to be with Anna and the baby. My kids loved her and we had such a fun time with her.

We made this fun activity I saw on Family Fun a while ago with jello and food coloring. We made the jello and then put some in bags for them to squeeze it. They enjoyed it, but I think they enjoyed eating the remaining jello more than the actual activity!

Blue tongue.

Cinderella, Woody and Snow White came to visit me yesterday, so we had a party! We played music and danced!

Woody was making the move on Cinderella.

They danced for a good while together, holding hands!

After they were done dancing he came to me and said:

"Mom, I love Lillie."

I wanted to remind him of what he told me a while ago when I was putting him to bed. He grabbed my face, very softly and gently and said:

"Mom, you my favorite gwirl eva."

{Don't forget that Braden!} :)

This morning, Scott was helping Braden put his shoes on to go drop Scott at the metro. This is the conversation they had:

Scott: Braden, come here. Let's put on your army shoes.

Braden: Those no my army shoes dad, those are my running shoes.

They no for my arms, they for my feet!

Scott and I couldn't stop laughing!

{These are his "army" shoes}

One of my favorite things is to hear Brielle and Braden having conversations. The other day this was their conversation:

Braden: I have powers!

Brielle: I have powers too! We are powerful! We are super heroes!!!

I think it's true, they are MY super heroes!

I learn so much from them every day.

Valentine's Day Weekend

After the big storm, I was so ready to get out of the house...On Saturday, Scott and I had a little Valentine's date planned. We got a babysitter, which we very seldom do and went out downtown to the Newseum, a museum about news. Not the most romantic place to go on Valentine's but it's so Scott and I. Deep down inside, I've always wanted to be a journalist...but somehow life took a different turn and I became a Spanish teacher instead. But I still carry my interest of the world, people, and politics...and Scott and I ALWAYS have good conversations about articles I read or things I hear about on the news.

Most museums in D.C. are free but the Newseum is one the few that you have to pay to get in...and it was worth EVERY penny. We both LOVED it and we were reminded of so many stories we had heard about.

In front of the newseum...and Scott is sticking his tongue out at me...he loves me.

We started with the Berlin Wall Gallery...

This is one of the statues of a communist leader from East Germany that was taken down.

West Germany's side.

The most interesting part to me was seeing the contrast on each side of the wall...

East Germany's side.

The Berlin Wall was one of my favorite parts of the museum. I still remember, as 9 year old in Perú watching the news with my parents and seeing all the people cheering and happy that the wall had been taken down. I remember asking my mom about it and she explained it to me. She talked about East and West Germany and the conflicts there and I remember wondering in my 9 year old mind, why would people divide each other...watching it on television made a huge impact on me.

I loved this gallery of photos by a famous Sports Illustrated photographer.

That Michael Jordan photo is amazing.

The 9/11 Gallery was very sobering. Neither Scott nor I could smile for the picture. We both talked about what we were doing on 9/11 and we remembered those moments.

This is a wall of newspaper front pages from around the world on September 11, 2001.

They also have a gallery of Today's front pages (they change them every day) from most states in the U.S. and quite a few from around the world.

I love this quote...because that is what I look for when I read a newspaper article or watch the news...I want the facts, not some lunatic's opinions about things...

The famous Watergate door...so interesting to read about.

The Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery was MY personal favorite. Some of the pictures were very graphic but I'm amazed what a good photographer can capture, I'm a fan of photojournalism...and it was interesting to read the stories behind each picture...

I'm supposed to be pointing at The Miami Herald not The Washington Post...I am fond of The Miami Herald because I was an intern reporter for The Neighbors section every Thursday, when I was a senior in high school. I had the best time reporting for them and going out into my community and meeting extraordinary, amazing people...and still have ALL of my published articles. What a fun time of my life...

We spent 3 hours there on Saturday and we could have been there for another 3...we were starving so we headed to our new favorite restaurant Brio's!!! Our waiter did take a picture of us but I don't like it, so I won't post it. But we had the best lunch ever...and we enjoyed each other's company...with no children...just us...it was lovely.

On Sunday, the actual Valentine's day...we got little valentine's for the kids and my sweet husband gave me a bouquet of BEAUTIFUL flowers and my favorite chocolates.

We only had an hour of Church. So we packed up our lunches and headed for a drive to D.C. and since our Newseum tickets were good for 2 days, we went again to watch a 4-D 13-minute movie that we didn't have time to watch the day before. (not the ideal Sunday activity but hey, we had to get our money's worth).

We enjoyed our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the museum's food court. The kids enjoyed running around the museum.

We had heard that 4-D movie was a little scary for little kids, so Scott went first, while the kids and waited. But then Scott came out and said it wasn't bad so we decided to take the kids...I think I should have gone in first because there were, indeed, some scary parts...Brielle was scared so Scott took her out and Braden sat on my lap. He wasn't scared at all! He just kept wanting to pop the bubbles that were coming toward us, he kept saying, "pop, pop, pop" and kept trying to pop them with his finger...I had never seen a movie in 4-D, it was only 13 minutes long but it was awesome and it really did seem like the bubbles were right in front of us!

We didn't stay long because most of the museum is just not for little kids...so we enjoyed a drive along Constitution Avenue...

{Archives Building}

Every time I drive through Constitution Avenue I am in awe at the architecture here.

{Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium}

I couldn't stop taking pictures.

Valentine's Day was a gorgeous winter day in D.C...

There was some tree damage from the snow storms.

...with all the bad weather, I was almost starting to forget what blue skies looked like...

The beautiful White House.

Not a cloud in the sky.

We had such an enjoyable Valentine's Day Weekend.

Snowmaggedon

This is old news, but we are still recovering. By now I'm sure you've seen this in the news. Washington D.C. Metro Area had one of its worst storms of all time and we were here to experience it. I've been around snow before (9 years of living in Rexburg, ID), snow there is just part of life in the winter time and even part of spring and autumn. So when they announced that D.C. would have a bad snow storm, it didn't really register how bad it was going to be...

It was bad.

It snowed lightly on Tuesday, February 2nd. Schools were cancelled on Wednesday...Then Thursday was a normal day but everyone was freaking out about this huge storm that was to start on Friday...Friday, February 5th around noon it all began They cancelled schools even before it started snowing. It snowed from noon on Friday until the evening of Saturday, February 6th.

We ventured outside on Saturday, to throw away some garbage and this is what it looked like outside:

We couldn't even open the door. It took quite a few pushes to open it.

That car in the middle completely covered in snow is ours. You can't even see it.

We don't have a good sled, so Scott, being the ingenious man that he is came up with what you see on the picture on the left.

On Saturday, February 6th (Braden's birthday), we were literally snowed in...we didn't go anywhere for the next 3 days...

On Sunday, Church was cancelled.

I have seen snow in my 9 years in Idaho, lots of it...but NEVER have I seen 3 feet of snow fall within a 24-hour period. NEVER.

Should I say that again?

NEVER EVER.

Snowed in.

Like my friend Erika, put it, pictures just don't do justice to what it really looked like...what my human eye saw, my Nikon just couldn't capture...I tried to capture it...from every angle possible...what you see is bad...but what my human eye saw was worse.

I felt so overwhelmed, and I wasn't even shoveling.

My kids, on the other hand had the time of their lives playing with the snow...

and eating it.

While the kids played and ate snow and I took pictures...

...this man...

...worked. He shoveled for 3 hours.

He is my hero.

The most overwhelming part of it all was trying to figure out where the heck to put all of that snow...this is one of the many piles of snow around our parking lot.

On Monday, February 8th, our good friend Justin was in D.C., Scott and I headed to D.C. to have dinner with him (it was so fun to see you Justin!) :) and Stace, I'm glad you didn't end up coming, it was for the best, (even though I was dying to see you and the boys).

This is what D.C. looked like:

There was so much snow and the roads were horrible.

On Tuesday, February 9th (Brielle's birthday), it started snowing again. We got almost a foot of snow over night.

Scott didn't have school for a whole week. Brielle missed 4 sessions of preschool and we all watched way too many movies and ate way too many sweets. All of the school districts were closed for a week, the federal government was closed, people missed work, in other words...

...the world stopped.

Things started to get back to normal on Friday. Scott had classes and had to be there at 9am. The metro wasn't running all the way where we live so we decided to drive him to school. It took almost 2 and a half hours to drop him off and an hour and a half to drive back home.

It was insane.

{photo courtesy of The Washington Post}

Things are somewhat back to normal today, Wednesday, February 17th.

Two weeks later.