Grandma Carol Comes to Town

We are now parents of two.  Look how tough we are!

Heroic Parenting:
Stoic, brave Sterling rescuing a helpless Cora from, uh.... something, I'm sure...
 (Notice the American flag in the background.  I love it.  Hello, America.)

This is just one of the many photos that my mother-in-law took last week during her visit to Arlington to see us. Fortunately, for us, she takes a ton of photos.  After being here 7 days, she took 800+ photos!  About 95% of them were of Cora, but this blog can only represent a very small sampling.  If you want to see ALL of the photos, contact me directly... 

While we are on the topic of America and heroes, our ward playgroup took a little field trip to the fire station.  

Field trip to the local fire station with our ward playgroup

We recently started doing FHE with Cora.  We've learned that if we set the crayons out on the table at the beginning of the lesson, she won't be able to think about anything else the whole time.  She'll just say, "Color?  Color?"  Then we skip the lesson and just color :)  It's all about family time, right?

FHE activity about prayer

In effort to start eating healthier and shedding those pregnancy pounds, I've been making a lot more smoothies lately. ("Shredding" is hardly an accurate term for anyone who has tired to get back into shape after having a baby!  Am I right?)  Anyway, Cora loves a good smoothie.  And we love OxyClean :)

Smoothie explosion!

Smoothie explosion clean-up

Brushing teeth with Grandma Carol

We are lucky to have some family in the area and we try to get together whenever we can.  Whenever Sherrie isn't in Ethiopia or Ukraine, we love to have Sunday dinner together.  Chris and Janelle live in Herndon (about 40 minutes) away and we are so grateful to them for making the trek to our house with their two little boys.

Sterling's cousins Sherrie and Janell (and her husband Chris and their kidsAiden and Alexander)
came over for Sunday dinner.

I'm really going to miss having Sterling around when he has to go back to work after four weeks of paternity leave!  I know Cora is going to really miss him, too.  I just don't read books as well as him...

Stories with dad

Because I've been home with Mabel the last few weeks, Sterling has been taking Cora to church on his own.  Fortunately, Cora has lots of girls in the ward who want to watch her and play with her.  One of the girls gave Cora her old Cabbage Patch doll from when she was little for Christmas and brought by a Valentine a few weeks ago.  Such love.

Cora's church fan club.  These girls just follow her around!

Dress:  Courtesy of Great-aunt Shana.  Thanks :)

Cleaning the sick before church.  She's very thorough.

PHOTOS OF MABEL
Sadly, we live farther away from many of you than we would like.  Don't worry.  We won't let you escape us showing-off Mabel via photos. It's the best next thing to showing her off to you in person.

Cora and Mabel

Kisses!

Chillin' with Grandma Carol.  Thanks Great-aunt Shana for the cute little outfit!

Cora attacked Mabel with stuffed animals.  So glad babies are made to survive their siblings!

The best thing about this baby swing is that it is called the "Snugabunny."  Really.  But it also is just a great swing, for anyone in the baby swing market.

Cuddling with dad.

My friend Elliot Wise, now living in NY, came to DC to present at a symposium at the National Gallery of Art.  Sterling and I (and Mabel), went downtown to attend his wonderful presentation.  It was so refreshing to be part of an intellectual, cultured event.  We felt so fancy listening to smart people talk about Early Christian mosaics, iconography, and Dutch mystics.  Thanks for enlightening us, Elliot.  The next day, Sterling made a delicious breakfast and Elliot joined us and Sterling's mom for a delightful morning.

THE WEEK IN PHOTOS

Cora takes her crocheting very seriously.

And her stickers.

Not sure what is going on here.

Or here.

Cora loves changing her baby's diaper.
I wish I loved changing diapers as much as she does!  Thanks for the baby, Grandma Nikki!

And thank you, Grandma Carol for the baby's car seat.  Cora is becoming quiet the big sister.

Reading with Grandma Carol.

Playing with the trains at Barnes and Noble.

Sterling and I were feeling crafty one night so we made some fabric envelopes, per instructions from my Martha Stewart magazine (photos to come).  The natural thing to do after making fabric envelopes, is to make s'mores, so that is exactly what we did.  We had homemade marshmallows on some homemade graham crackers I whipped up.  So delish!  

Homemade marshmallows roasted on the stove using  a skewer.

We really should tell our landlord that we did some remodeling:  Sterling turned the back "sunroom" of our house into a little playroom for Cora.  This so-called "sunroom" had a peeling, painted concrete floor and we used it to store all of our junk.  And recycling stuff.  I liked to call it the "garbage room."  After a good cleaning, some tiles, and a fresh coat of paint, it is now a beautiful place of learning and discovery for our daughters :)  And I'm glad to have Cora's toys out of our living room!

The new playroom

For date night (plus Mabel), we went to a great Japanese ramen noodle place in Adams-Morgan called Taan Noodles.  If anyone reading this knows anything about Japanese pickles, I need to talk to you and figure out what the name of these purple kind of pickles are.  They were in my soup and tasted a little bit soapy or flowery, but in the best way possible!  Thanks Michael and Allie Merrell for the restaurant recommendation!

At Taan Noodles

At Taan Noodles

This was totally a crazy smattering of unrelated photos this week, but we figure it is better than nothing.  We love and miss you all!