our recent big moments:

cossette did NOT want me on the phone. mid call she yanked it out of my hands & chucked it onto the sidewalk before i could blink. shattered. 

it's insane how fast you get used to having certain luxuries. non smart phones suck. hard. :(

this little dear has finally learned how to clearly say her name! she no longer refers to herself as "atcha" but "ella-ree!". unless it's in the possessive then it goes back to good old atcha. my name is ellery but this is atcha's chair. explain the logic there please? big BIG break through nonetheless.

& three pearls whites for cossette!
10 months + 0 teeth (= impossible to feed, bytheby) + miraculous 2 days = 3 new teeth!! yay!

we've been enjoying the spring! my favorites here: 

> the kidlets have been getting out the gigantic box of cookie cutters from the pantry & using them to draw pictures & spell words all over the living room rug. it seriously keeps them occupied for hours. highly recommended. 

> ellers helping me make the chief's lunch in the morning & fighting to shove spinach leaves in her mouth. 

> & let's not miss the bottom middle picture of ellery & coke wrestling in the grass. i wish you could hear them squealing at each other. haha awesome.

150 years

saturday i had plans for us to go check out olde town alexandria & then we found out it was also the sesquicentennial celebration for the civil war in virginia so there was tons to see & do.

to be fair, half the people there called it a celebration since the war. the other half? they called it the commemoration of the occupation of union troops. did you hear that?? the occupation of union troops! yup. that one kind of blew me away haha.

the beans loved the re-enactors. especially the drummer.

my favorite part was walking around the christ church grounds & having the nicest gardener ever walk us over to the parish house to get someone to give us a personal tour. the church was closed to get ready for a meeting later that day but they unlocked it & walked us around the 1773 church to look at george washington's pew & ask as many questions as we wanted. very cool.

we got to stop by some amazing little shops, kiss my mr. lincoln, tour the founder's home, eat lunch looking over the potomac, count the ducks, listen to the fun civil wars-y band stand, walk down the cobblestone alleys, smother the kiddles in sunscreen, & check out the huge old torpedo factory turned art studio/museum.

awesome saturday. check.

just my luck

such a fun weekend cruising around town in our new bikes. i forgot how much i love biking! it helps to have a bright sunny yellow hybrid bike that is gorgamous. i adoooore it!

camel leather seat that feels like a sofa seat & matching stitched handlebars with houndstooth tan detailing on the frame. the guys at the bike shop kept calling it lemon meringue. drool.

austin has a fun new bike too & has already has gotten major use out of it. he's been riding it to work everyday since he got it (going on 3 weeks) & is even known as "that guy that rides his bike to work", which he loathes because he cannot believe they see him as some kind of california hippie freak. so i made sure to order these awesome grocery totes in a fun pattern & pick up our recycling bin this week just to freak him out further.

we spent friday gardening in the morning & then off on our first official family bike ride. we thought we'd just go a couple miles up the rode to a nice little strip mall but we ended up running smack into a random phenomenal farmer's market that was about to open in 2 minutes. there i bought gigantic pieces of meringue & fresh strawberries & asparagus. mmmm. then off to a random gas station opening next door where we jammed with the dj, got free give aways, played in the bouncy house, & austin ate his weight in cotton candy. we kept laughing at our lucky find & perfect timing. 

i have to add that on our way home, i suddenly remembered that i had left our camera precariously sitting in the folds of the bike trailer canopy. we stopped on the side of the trail & started frantically searching through all our stuff. nope. no camera. i felt like such an idiot. between the two of us, i swear we have this problem at least 10 x's more than any average, sane minded individuals. it's a total joke. we are the WORST match in this way. blek.

not 3 minutes pass & along came this jogging couple (probably among the sane minded) & in broken russiany english ask us if by chance it's a camera we are so hysterically searching for. i pretty much fell on my face. they handed us the camera & the battery. insert battery... hold breath... no harm done. i gushed all over them that they had made my day. i mean if we hadn't stopped right then, we wouldn't have been on the same trail as them & if we'd turned & gone back later the camera would have been with the nice russian couple, not where it fell. & as they went galloping off the chief turned to me & said "i know i say this all the time but i am sticking with you. your luck is UNREAL."

we got home, put everything away, & just as we shut the back door... it started pouring. :)

pinning is taking over any free time

because

rocks.

racist?

one of the saddest things for me about leaving the bay area was leaving behind seriously the most phenomenal dr's a person could ask for. i have never understood even caring who delivered, who treated you, whatever until about a year & a half ago.

i loved my OB.
i Loved my dentist.
i LOVED my pediatrician.

2 of them want me to fly back across the country every time appointments come up & as i'm reluctantly looking for replacements, it dawns on me: the baby doctor, the dentist, & the girl's pediatrician? all asian.

yikes. pretty sure i'm racist.

missionaries

i am so proud of our baby brothers. they are both officially called to serve as full time volunteer missionaries for the lds church. it's crazy how young these kids are, i can't believe we do this.

zachy boy to bahia blanca, argentina in august!

& michael michael to sao paulo, brazil in october!

can't believe out of almost anywhere in the entire world they could go they will be neighbors. :) they will learn the language, absorb the culture, & love the people. it's always incredible to hear about who they serve, where they go, what they eat, & how they grow.

& while i do. not. know. how we'll go 2 whole years without them...
that is for another day.

today we are thrilled!

butterflies

we did take a half day off of home making to go into the city & hit the smithsonian.

the beginning of the day was a joke. just one of those things. we got lost going to costco because the exit we wanted was closed & i don't ever know where i am & then completely forgot the prints that were the real reason for going anyway. later when we jumped on the metro we thought we'd try a switch over to a different line to get to our stop rather than stay on the blue line & go around the potomac. what since we're such experts? well it proved to be a really. stupid. move. our adventurous streak was clearly just idiocy.

but chief took a half day of his own so he could come! yay! i adore his flex scheduling.

the natural history museum is directly across the street from the station stop. awesome.

gramvi was very happy to be around these two for a week.

how pretty is that old smithsonian building behind us?

my mom had heard about this live butterfly exhibit that was really worth checking out so that was the first on the agenda. it was RAD.

you go into this rather small, enclosed, humid green house-ish place with glass rooms on each end to ensure the butterflies don't escape. there were hundreds in there!

one in particular took a liking to our babe.

it was there for literally over 10 minutes. i can't explain why but it started making me nervous. haha. everyone was asking if they could photograph my baby. so maybe you've already seen this... i didn't realize how perfect her outfit was for butterfly hunting: a flower on her head & actual purple butterflies on her shoes. classic!

some of the butterflies literally had an 8 inch wing span!! the employees actually have to check your clothes when you leave to make sure a moth or butterfly isn't hiding somewhere. it was magnificent.

aust & i had been excited to show elles the dinosaurs. she is one big dino fan. everything was 'ta-rex! roar!!' i knew quite a few dinosaur species & which time period they belonged to, etc. thank you dinosaur train. :)

this is merely one of my favorite shots of all time:

you are welcome siblings. bahahaha!

austin kept saying how much he would love to take a few days with me to go through each museum & read, see, & learn every little thing. sans kids. :) for now; one more site down, way too many to go.

visitor #2

we had our 2nd visitor come to play!

¡gramvi! i worked her pretty hard actually. we had task after task for helping us move in. i was done with all unpacking & organizing & cleaning but she helped me with multiple hardware store runs, the garden, & shopping. we were very busy.

& since our entire central air & heating systems have to be replaced, we melted a few of the days (hence the lack of pants on the kids) & then just to mix it up froze a day as well. haha.

the beans had a blast gardening, reading, playing, cooking, & going on walks with gramvi. we also had some friends over which was nice. i especially liked watching my mom & elles-a-belle 'cheers-ing' their sandwiches & blueberries at lunch time. & watching cossette pull herself to standing on everything without so much as bending her legs. i dare you to try that! it's HARD!

do you see cocobean in the bottom right? she seriously kills me.

we also got to watch ellery's baby duck hatch from the easter package her grandma née née got her! the duck expands in the egg shell under water until it busts open the egg. it takes a day or 2 & is all very exciting. :)

honored duck owner.

thanks a ton for coming out mamaçita!! hope to see you soonish!

darla

ellery was helping in the yard today (yes, we kind of have a yard) & screeching over & over about 'capapillar!! more capapillar!!' when she got really really excited they turned into 'capapapapillars!' we literally were overrun by dozens of caterpillars. there literally was a herd.

at once point there were nine on the front door. did you hear that?? NINE. 

while weeding in one spot a little long i found one on my ankle & one on my foot. somehow one got in my mom's hair. one is starting a cocoon in the corner of my door frame. we saved cossette from a gaggle trying to crawl up her legs in the bumbo on the grass. for days we've been seeing them & playing with them & torturing ellery with the threat of touching them.

well by the end of today she braved picking not one but two up in each little hand with a huge grin on her face. suuuuuper proud of herself.

& then their guts fell out the bottom of her fists.

little did i know i had a darla on my hands :(

& luckily, just like darla, she was clueless to her homicidal tendencies.