Epic European Tour, Part I: Washington, D.C. Prelude

I must blog about the cruise before it gets too far past!  So here we go.

First things first, we knew that since we were flying out of JFK we should take advantage of being back east, so we planned a day or two on either end of our vacation to see some of the sights, and finally visit Emily at her house!  Where I have never been!  We had a pretty okay flight (besides that whole rush-to-the-airport-and-make-it-just-in-time-to-catch-our-flight thing that we're making way too regular an occurrence...), and we were so glad to make it to Emily and Elise's house at last!  After all these years I finally have seen their place!  It was so very very wonderful to spend time with Penny and the triplets and get reacquainted (it's kind of a fear of mine that my nieces and nephews elsewhere from where I live will grown up not knowing me).  We had a nice evening visiting with Emily and KC and Alex and Bennett and Ruby (I would probably jump off a cliff for that girl's face) and Jeff and Elise and Penny (she acted shy of me, but it only took reading her one book for her to warm up to me).  Emily was a great hostess and provided a very comfortable private room for us, and dinner and everything.

Little ones love jumping on me for whatever reason.

Ruby was helping Julie brush her teeth.

The next morning we jumped on the very nice metro with Elise and Penny and Grandma Ribeira and headed to D.C.!  Julie had never been, and it's been several years for me too, so it was really great to see everything.

We saw the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial (which would have been nice to have realized that it was right next to the Lincoln Memorial before walking all the way back to the mall) and then spent many lovely hours in museums galore!  We went to the Museum of American History (Kermit!  Dumbo!  The Star-Spangled Banner!) and the Museum of Natural History (where we met Jeff for lunch in the cafe and saw the Hope Diamond), and then spent a good couple of hours in the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, then swung by the National Archives to see the very old Documents in the rotunda (where I was called Captain America by a security guard, who certainly earned the salute he received in return), and THEN hurried our way through the National Gallery of Art (which was a bummer because it closed so early and without so much as a warning or a chance to go through the gift shop, not to mention a very unfriendly staff).  We also walked by the Library of Congress and the Capitol Building and saw the White House and it was so crazy that all of these things are all so big and real and close by each other!  It's really cool to see things that are not only such famous sites in movies and American culture, but also, well, American history of course.  It would have been great to have had more time to soak it all in.

It's so tall.

There it is!  I don't much care for the current tenants, so we didn't bother taking a tour.

WM 4eva.

Who has two thumbs and comes from MO?  This girl!

It's like a family picture!  Penneh is the best.

Not too crowded!

Top pop!

These Chinese schoolkids were just enthralled by Penny!  Their teacher came to shoo them along, but then she was likewise enthralled and whipped out her camera too.  She is pretty cute and stylish.

       

Julie really liked the local wildlife.

A huge dollhouse!  It even had toilets.  I am standing there for scale.

Dumboooo.

They had blank walls for people to create their own superheroes.  Elise came prepared.

Supes' costumes used to be a little less fancy.

HARRY.

The lovely kitchen of the one and only Julia Child!

I love this frog.

They even had a little display about those wacky Mormons.

She likes the T-Rex.

          

'Twas closed, but it was nice to see it.

A librarian!  At a (closed) library.

Shh.

We were a little bummed that we ran out of time, but for one day we thought we did pretty darn good.  Next time we'll hopefully spend a little more time and a couple more days seeing things before they close up.  By the end of the day our feet and eyes and faces were pretty worn out, so we headed home, where we visited some more and had a delicious dinner and Survivor of course and those kids are hilarious and then we went to bed so we could wake up nice and early to catch our bus to New York City.

So the next morning we woke up nice and early to catch our bus to New York City!  It was incredibly bumpy and the WiFi did NOT work as advertised, but we were glad to make it the city in just a few hours, and we had a nice long afternoon before we had to catch our flight across the ocean, so we walked through Central Park and had lunch Bethesda Terrace (walking around NYC isn't quite as exciting when you're lugging suitcases, especially when they keep breaking and stuff).  Julie had also never been to New York, so although we didn't have a lot of time there, it was nice to get a taste of the bigness and the tallness and the coolness and everything.

It was very early, did I mention?

A timely pit stop!

The city!  We made it!  (Bleargh, bus ride.)

Central Park is big.

Thanks for the great sandwiches, Elise!

For love.

Sassy!  We had to fit in with the New Yorkers.

Um.

Elise just loves to be the center of attention.

A trio of jet-setters.  So cosmopolitan!

And then we made it to the airport in plenty of time to sit around for a few hours (much better than hurrying to barely get there in time, though a happy medium would still be preferable), and then we caught our flight and we were on our way!

Let's try this one again...  We're a little punchy at this point.

That's a little more like it.

We sat all in a row and watched movies (Moonrise Kingdom... um) and read books and ate so-so food and tried to sleep and then finally we landed in Barcelona!  Spain!!!  To be continued...

Three Babies Redux

Last week younger sister Emily and her husband KC came back to visit from Maryland, with three babies in tow!  They are so much bigger and fatter and more responsive and happier than last time, when they were preemie newborns!  See for yourself!

!!!!!  Those faces!  Ruby's is the best in the picture.  They'll be here for a few weeks and we're so excited to see them all again so soon!

Then we decided to take a picture of all the nieces and nephews who were born in the last year:

L-R:  Penny, Brady, Alex, Bennett (tell me if I mixed those two up, Emily!), Ruby, Gabe

There were a couple other pictures later, but immediately after this was taken, Gabe started freaking out and everyone starting putting their hands over their faces, so this is the best one we took.  I'm sure someone else of the many of us who were taking pictures has some to share too.

And Cami had one just a year before that!  I think we're good on babies in this family for a while.

Three Babies

Here is what Julie and I have been spending one or two nights a week doing for the last little while:

Helping my sister Emily visiting from Maryland with her newborn triplets, Alex, Ruby and Bennett! I know that a lot of nights they're pretty fussy, but we've somehow been lucky enough to be there on the nights when they mostly just sleep and eat and coo and cuddle. Still, while I may have grown up with younger twin sisters, adding one baby really makes a big difference. Emily has her hands full with these little ones, but I know she has been praying for children for years, and her prayers have been answered manifold! She and KC are awesome parents, and while I know they're really looking forward to the time when the kids sleep through the night and can play with and entertain each other, they wouldn't give them up for the world.

Twin Mommies

I promise a roadtrip update is on the way, but on this lovely Sabbath morning, I had to post this while it's still fresh news.

I have two younger sisters who are twins. They are best friends. Melody has been married for about four years, and Emily about three. They both have big, exciting news this year.

Melody and Jonny welcomed Gabriel Jonathan Rejholec into the world yesterday at just after 7 am. He was a big boy at 8 lbs. 12 oz. and 19.5 inches. I wasn't around for Melody's last pregnancy (Julia was already almost a year old when I came home from Wisconsin), so it was fun to be here for this one and see her quite large baby belly and look forward to the Little Bother's imminent arrival. Melody was really looking forward to the baby coming already, so she was really excited when he came on his own and didn't need to be induced. Both mommy and baby are healthy and happy, and I look forward to seeing them when they're up for visitors at home, hopefully later this afternoon. This evens up the nephews/nieces count to an even 5/5.


Next on the horizon, and what will surely tip the scales in the nephew/niece ratio:

Emily!!! Pregnant! Showing a tummy! This is really big news also, for reasons most of you probably already know. (Interestingly, I almost gave this news away over a month ago when I didn't realize it wasn't quite public knowledge yet.) Emily and KC have been trying for months and years to have a baby and later decided they had to try other options, including IVF or adoption. They were having so much trouble with the fertilization techniques that they were trying for adoption, which turns out to be quite expensive and also rather involved a process. So after being approved for the adoption agency, and yet again playing the waiting game, they decided to give IVF a fourth and final try, and Emily finally received the news that she was expecting. And not only that, but expecting three. That's right, triplets! When it rains, it pours, I guess! The ridiculous doctors are suggesting some hideous idea of selective reduction (read: abortion), but Emily is dead-set against that. These three are definitely the work of God, and she's determined to let them enter the world. She and KC are going to have their hands full with three all at once, but they have certainly waited long enough for them! Miracles happen! Emily, I always knew this would happen for you, I just had this feeling, I can even remember when and where it came to me, it felt so real.

My little sisters are mommies! Woot!