Best...Week...EVER!!

Hi again, everybody!

Man oh man, not doing so well with my 2014 Resolution of blogging every day, am I?
It's been ten days since my last post!!
"What was I doing all that time?", you ask?
Well, I just so happened to have the best company I could ever ask for: my sister, Kathy-neechan!!

Two beautiful ladies~

That's right, she (and Ella!) arrived last Sunday, and it was a week full of taking walks, organizing, laughing, working, reading, visiting, cooking, drinking, and generally just reveling in the good time that is inevitable when my sis is in town.

She really is the best guest ever.
- Ever generous -- covering grocery bills and treating us to sushi??!!
- Ever attentive to the children -- Ella officially prefers Kathy-neechan over Mama. Surprise, surprise.
- A constructive companion -- she helped further my home decluttering-organizing efforts thanks to her fresh set of eyes.
- FUN -- so many conversations included at least one mega belly laugh, and she loves to propose karaoke sessions.
- A great listener -- so good to have a soundboard like Kathy-neechan to bounce ideas off of, and dissipate anxieties.
- Proactive -- she urged Dash and I to have a good ol' date night while she single-handedly cared for the children for like 6 hours, including the ever-tricky nighttime...and without a single complaint!

Gosh, I could go on forever, but I think you get the idea.
I love, love, love my sister.
And I gotta say, she's a real trooper for having gone 3 weeks straight of caring for/being around/dealing with/catering to children from both sides of the family...when she herself is the most staunch childfree advocate there is! I love that she can live by her philosophy of not having children of her own, but still be the best pal a kid could ask for. I swear, they just flock to her, because she has still retained so much of her childlike curiosity, goofiness, and imagination. Yaaay, Kathy!!

Let me see if I can recount everything that we did with our week. Hmm...
A bit of it was touched upon in my list above, but let me expound on some and list some other ones.

Firstly, walking.
Man oh man, my sister and I love to walk. Pushing strollers, holding hands, Mobying William, running errands, strolling aimlessly, it's all good. We could literally walk for hours and hours and not get tired or bored or sore or anything. It's just the best way we spend time together. It's fun to talk about things we see, weave it into recent experiences, reminisce about old times, ponder our futures, and examine where we are in our lives in various aspects, etc etc. It was nice to get all this walking in this week, especially since I just downloaded a pedometer app for my phone! My goal is 10,000 steps a day which has so far been working out awesome. :)
If you are interested in a good pedometer app for your phone, check out Noom Walk. I don't carry my phone around with me in the house, nor every single time I go out, but it's still effective, me thinks :)

Let's see...what else...
Well, Kathy-neechan really had a hand in a lot of my work this week.
We translated together, and then she even joined me for my out-of-house work!!
I think it was good for her to get away from the madness that can be the Dashiell household and just read quietly in the back of the room for at least a couple nights. She even joined me full-on for my teacher assisting gig on Wednesday! Unforgettable!! Times like this make being a twin all the cooler :D

As far as organizing, she helped me tackle some nagging projects in the kitchen and mudroom...and, oh!! She helped me make my first hula hoop rug!!

Rainboooooows!

 That's right!
It's a rainbow(esque) rug made from old t-shirts!!
I first saw the tutorial for it on Pinterest some time last year (or the year before that??) and had intended to make it for the playroom (to protect the carpet...pfft!), but it turned out a lot smaller and thicker than I'd planned, so now it is in the mudroom. Yaaaaay! :)))
If I do make another t-shirt rug, I think I'll braid it rather than weave.
We'll see~~~

For our date, Dash drove me to some more outside-the-house work, then we went to Salem (!) to catch "Frozen" in the Cinebarre -- a cinema where you can eat while you watch a movie! Totally cool!! It was nice to have one-on-one time and watch such a beautiful film~

We also had a surprise visit from S.G. one evening that resulted in a fun and simple-yet-scrumptious meal, and chatting "late into the night" (11pm?) :D Kathy-neechan and S.G. really have a special friendship that spans the whole year even while she's away because they keep it alive through good old-fashioned letters. Very cool ♡

I think that is just about all the major stuff I wanted to cover on our trip.
The last day was pretty neat too, in that her Sunday evening flight got canceled so I had to go pick her back up to spend the night with us...along with another stranded girl at the airport!
So we took in this random stranger and let her crash on the couch and have breakfast, and then bring her to the airport the next morning for their flight.
It was nice to do something good for a complete stranger, and prove that not all strangers are out to kill/rape/rob you, like TV likes to make us think.
Goooo, renewed faith in humanity!!

Thank you for spending a week with us, Kathy-neechan!! We miss you already!!!!

So that brings me to today.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!
In the spirit of the holiday, the family did some community service in the way of cleaning up trash from the bike path we take to and from Ella's preschool.

Look! A shadow!! That means...suuuuun!!

I was so proud of both Ella and William for being such troopers in picking up the trash or at least pointing it out to me. Granted, we didn't get that far (from Buchanan to the overpass), but what ground we did cover we really combed over, so it looks more beautiful already :)
Thankfully the sun was out and it was warm! Maybe even in the 50's!!

The sun started to make them sleepy and restful...

Two big garbage bags we filled!! Thanks for hauling, trailer!! ♡

So yeah, it felt good to do that today.
Hopefully, we can make it a regular thing with the Dashiells.
Maybe, once a month, especially in the warmer weather months?
I do hope so!!
In the meanwhile, I think this visit from Kathy-neechan, coupled with the organizing bug (I got a dozen books on it from the library) and other factors are pointing to 2014 being a great year.
And this one great week is just a precursor to it all ;)

Before I go, here's a photo of William like I promised you!!

On the beach in L.A. on New Year's Eve

Until next time, take care and Happy Best Week Ever!!