Garanimals might be called for

 

Lily always picks out striking ensembles. The above outfit features tiered layers on her shirt and skirt, as she pointed out to me. But I particularly enjoyed Amalia's concoction the other day. Can you count how many patterns there are?

Why am I reminded of Chico and the Man?

 

A portrait of Andy, taken by Lily.

Random anecdote: 

The other day Andy asked Lily what Stanford is (since the girls are often covered in branded apparel). 

Her reply: It's a place where people get married and where they play football. 

There aren't many years where the second part of her sentence is true; happily this happens to be one of them. (Beat Cal!)

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

Plumply, dumply pumpkins

Today was a beautiful day to go pumpkin picking.

 

Lily's  artwork -- before we carved it all up. 

 Not to be left out, Amalia also drew her own stem hole. 

The goop scoop.

 

Lily tried to do it without coming into any actual contact with the seeds. 

 

From left to right: mine, Lily's, Andy's. Amalia's didn't end up getting carved.

 

What with the porch pumpkins and all, I suppose we'll have to go get some candy to hand out to the neighborhood kids this year. Usually we turn off the lights and hide upstairs. :-)

Water, flowers, and chocolate

While killing time downtown with Amalia yesterday during Lily's art class, we discovered a hidden fountain on the GW campus. Andy would want me to make sure I pointed out that it was an environmentally friendly state-of-the-art stormwater reclamation system. Amalia just thought it was fun.

 Amalia serves as a good reminder that the reward is not always in the destination. It takes a long time to get anywhere when the 2-year-old decides she wants to push her own stroller.

Heard repeatedly: "I don't need help!" (usually declared when I was trying to keep her from running over hapless GW students or anyone else on the sidewalk)

Back home, we did some flower planting. Lily of course wore her chic, black gardening dress. 

Bonus video: Amalia deciding that she does indeed like chocolate and imploring Jake Bird not to eat her.

Workin' on the railroad

There's nothing terribly entertaining about the following video--just a little snippet of our lives. Amalia's been very into trains lately so we've pulled out all of Lily's old Thomas stuff.

Under her breath, Amalia is saying, "Lily take apart." The "no" is much more pronounced -- as it is wont to be.

They Might Be Busy

Last Saturday was a busy one. We dropped Lily off at her new art class at the Corcoran, took Amalia to Children's for a blood draw (allergy testing), made a much-needed shopping trip to Target, checked out a free They Might Be Giants show at The Kennedy Center (Andy and Lily), and then settled down for the evening to watch Stanford lose to Oregon. Despite being a bit overscheduled, everything turned out pretty well -- aside from the game, of course.

Back at Lily's stomping grounds.

Palatable kids music + Kennedy Center + free = lots o' people

Lily behind the camera.

Tough girl.

I guess it stands to reason that when you're in the equivalent of the nosebleeds, a 5 year old is going to start creating her own entertainment.

Cabin fever

This weekend the Pierce family headed out to Luray, VA, to reacquaint ourselves with Nature.

First stop: giant jumping pillow. Kids (and adults) would jump on this thing all hours of the day. Crazily popular.

The inside of our cabin. What, you don't think I'm crazy enough to attempt sleeping in a tent with Amalia, do you?

Not sure why Andy felt the need to capture me brushing my teeth. We told Lily we were staying in a log cabin just like Abraham Lincoln was born in.

Lily loved sleeping in the top bunk. In fact, when we got back home today she asked me how many days until our cruise (in February). I thought she was excited about seeing Guster. No, she remembered that the ship rooms have bunk beds.

On Saturday, we visited the world-famous Luray Caverns.

The live tour guides that were there the last time I went with Andy (about 10 years ago) have been replaced with audio devices. Now they just have high schoolers posted at various points around the caverns to make sure we don't do something nefarious.

The girls holding hands; the slopes are quite slippery.

This is me glaring at Andy, wondering why the heck he's taking a picture as Amalia decides she's done halfway through the tour. On a brighter note, her favorite part was The Great Stalacpipe Organ, which really is pretty cool.

Of course the tour dumps you out into a giant gift shop. Amalia spent a long, long time at this rock table, filling, emptying, and refilling her bag with rocks.

Still there. I think this is me telling her, "Two minutes."

Back at the cabin, Lily sat down to do her homework and get in some coloring time.

Have you ever seen a more pulchritudinous sun?

And here's what Amalia was doing during this time.

See Lily there in the background? As one of my mother's co-workers says, they're as different as chalk and cheese.

Preparing for the great s'more-a-thon.

Lily and Amalia had theirs sans Hershey bars.

After leaving the campground today, we stopped by the not-so-world-famous Luray Zoo. They are a rescue zoo and they had A LOT of snakes.

Amalemur.

Wallalily.

Here are a few videos from the weekend:



The campground had a Yogi Bear mascot that made a few appearances throughout the weekend. Amalia desperately wanted to go say hi, but swiftly changed her mind when we got close.



Have you ever seen those videos of cats chasing a laser pointer? Apparently Lily decided to try it out with Amalia. To great success.



And then Amalia wanted a turn.