Lakehouse work weekend

The entire extended West gang met up at the lake for a spring-clean work weekend, and work certainly got done, but there's always time for taking pictures, especially when there is a field of wildflowers right next door!  The girls were REALLY not interested in doing this, and I'm pretty sure none of the adults were, either, but I muscled a bit of compliance out of everyone. 

OK, truly, I bribed the girls with Nilla Wafers.  Watch for the before-Nilla-Wafer-bribe and after-Nilla-Wafer-bribe. Total turn-around!

"Girls, look at me.  Look.  Here, look.  At me.  Smile...LOOK!  Smile! Come on..."

 



 

"Wait, what? Nilla Wafers?  Ok, mom, we'll smile and be happy!"

 

(Ok, I couldn't photoshop these two together to get both beauties with their eyes open, so I figured I'd at least put a good one up of each girl.)

And, because you can't have too many pictures of a handsome baby boy:

This one still makes me giggle.  That's Paige's "cheese" face.  So funny to me! She was trying to earn her cookie, sweet girl.

 

Collin's birthday

The little boy next door had his 2nd birthday party, and although the girls missed it, he had fun stuff to give them.  It looks like we're doing a rendition of "YMCA" if you ask me!

 

 

Also, unrelated, but I thought I'd throw in this picture of Jacob enjoying some markers.

 

April

Mid-April, Mimi, Papa, Gigi, and D all came down for Ryan and Pam's wedding shower.  I was preoccupied for a lot of the weekend and didn't end up getting many pictures, but here are a few.

 

 

Elsa is still alive and well

Just in case you were wondering, the Elsas are still alive and singing loudly at our house.  Anything that remotely resembles a cape is obviously the cape from her ice dress!

Jacob not a fan of food...

 

Ay, Jacob.  This little boy is not a fan of food. As roly-poly as he is, you'd think he would gobble it up.  But mostly he avoids it as best he can.  We've been at it for a month now, so he's not even a newbie at it.  He is just not impressed.  He straight-up rejects my homemade food.  He sometimes will tolerate jarred baby food, to the tune of 5 or 6 bites that you sneak in around a toy he's gnawing on.  Go figure!

Homemade pizza party

Our neighbor next door got a new pizza oven grill for his birthday and has been whipping out amazing thin-crust pizzas for the entire neighborhood.  Problem is, you never know when one is headed your way.  So we decided to try our hand at it.  The girls thought it was really fun to roll out the dough and sprinkle cheese.

 

 

Verdict: it's goooood!

Baby in the mirror

 

I sat Jacob down to play in front of the mirror for the first time.  What a great progression to watch - figuring out there's a new friend to talk to, I guess.  He jabbered and talked at himself for the 20 minutes, no exaggeration!

Easter

We spent Easter in Midland this year and got lots of great visiting done. On the second-to-last day there, we went to an Easter luncheon where the kids got a picture with the (totally creepy) Easter bunny and had their faces painted.  The girls thought that was really cool.  (I'll be honest - even I thought it was cool watching how she did it in a matter of 60 seconds.)

 

We stuffed ourselves with kid-friendly food, then left the party early to hunt Easter eggs at Tyler and Bonnie's.  (We learned the hunt at the party was much later than anticipated.  We decided to skip the no-naptime-meltdown-in-public for a hasty, last-minute hunt instead.)

 

 The kids loved it, even though it was pretty chilly outside.  The babies hung out inside with the womenfolk.  All in all, a great visit!