A Blossoming Friendship...

...until Lily can start taking toys.

Lily Bean

It's hard to post pictures of Lily. She's just not really photogenic (unless you're my friend Erin who is an amazing photographer). Every time I get the camera out to capture whatever cuteness she's up to, she immediately stops the smiling, sweet face and stares at the camera like a deer in headlights. But she's so stinkin' cute, I had to at least get in a few of the sweet faces she makes even if they don't fully capture how adorable she is.

The stretchy face...



Almost got her sweet smile face...



And the paci face...



She's pretty sweet. We like her. I guess we'll keep her.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry

I'm glad he feels the same way about them that I do.

Gone Fishin'

Fairly frequently during the week we head out bright and early to Noni and Papa's house and don't come home until bedtime. I love their company and the kiddos do too. It's always a great day.

Our daily activities vary, but usually involve at least one Mickey Mouse show with Papa and for sure a yummy lunch with plenty of cookies. I had to give my mom a hard time last week when she posed this question to Weston, "Would you like strawberries or a cookie?" C'mon Noni...that's a no brainer!

Last week, Weston was in for a special treat. It started with Papa turning a branch into a "fishing pole" for Weston by tearing off all the little branches so he wouldn't maul all of us on the porch. But then I saw the glimmer in Papa's eyes. "Weston, I bet if we could find some worms, we could go catch some fish!"

And so it began. First digging up the worms...







Then off to the neighborhood lake to catch some fish. Dad said Weston was more for catching and not so much for having anything to do with touching worms or fish. (I sent him with the camera so I could stay back with Lily)







I skipped the fileting process to spare you the guts, but here's Noni cookin' 'em up...



And Whala! You have a tasty fried fish appetizer!



Thank you Papa...you're the sweetest!

For Lunch...

Christmas was fairly easy to explain to Weston. I was pregnant, Christmas celebrated Baby Jesus' birth, etc. Not that his 20 month old mind comprehended the magnitude of it, but it was at least somewhat explainable. Easter is a whole nother ballgame and I contemplated even trying to explain it to him. At last I settled on the "Jesus went back home to heaven, so we could be in heaven too" approach...

W: "Jesus go home?"
M: "Yes, Jesus went back home to be with the Father"
W: "For lunch?"
M: "Well....not so much just for lunch"

Gotta love it.

Speaking of lunch, we had lots of lunch and treats Easter weekend. It's always great to have a reason to be with friends and family.

Often times I find myself getting more excited about things than Weston does. For example, I get REALLY excited to read our new library books each week. I want to read all of them as soon as we get home. That's how I felt this year about Weston's first Easter Egg Hunt. Last year he wasn't walking, or crawling for that matter, so there was no hunting. I was sad. So this year I was scoping out egg hunts a month prior. We settled on going out to my old stomping ground (my sister still lives there) and having brunch with my family afterwards.

You can imagine my panic when, after getting our car all packed up with 2 kiddos stuff, kiddos in car seats and...the car keys were left in the ignition the entire night. I won't mention any names, but there are two drivers in our family and it was not my responsible husband. After 3 attempts to jump, we unloaded kiddos back into the house and Super Kurt went to work. I was pacing inside thinking about how we could walk to the local Easter Egg Hunt at a park near our house. You would think that this was the last year of the egg hunting tradition by my crazed nature. Luckily Super Kurt got everything going just in the knick of time and we arrived with even a few minutes to spare. And he didn't even make me feel bad about it. What a guy.

So enough rambling, here are our sweet kids and sweet family...(P.S. I couldn't get two of them to rotate vertical...sorry for the neck craning)














Then Sunday, Kurt's family came over in the afternoon for more Easter and birthday festivities...

Animal Crackers

Pictures of Easter and egg hunting to come, but I couldn't help sneak in a snippet that made me laugh today.

Weston is a HUGE animal fan. Animals were some of his first words and now that he's a "talker" animals comprise a large portion of our conversations.

Today, we were having some animal crackers for a snack. First, he pulled out a teeny tiny tidbit of an animal cracker and said, "Look mommy...a cow tail!!!". He pulled out the next one and while showing it to me asked,"What's dis mommy?" (the typical game he likes to play with this snack). I said, "Well, what do YOU think it is?" He replied with much confidence, "An anteater!" What?! Funny. To me at least.

Two

Weston turned "two yea-ahs ode" yesterday. I canNOT believe that our firstborn baby son is TWO. What happened to that time? This time last year he wasn't even walking. Today he's running and talking a mile a minute. Tomorrow he's getting married. Unbelievable.

Weston decided to maximize every minute of his birthday by arising at 4 a.m. After delaying getting going as much as possible, we finally fed him breakfast...pancakes (he even stopped saying "panpakes"...a sure sign that he is getting too old for his own good). Weston would probably sit in his high chair the entire day eating pancakes if we let him.



Kurt was able to take the morning off, so we opened presents. Luckily Grammy and Grampy sent a generous box of gifts in the mail so it added to the fun of the morning. I was surprised that he didn't just blow through each gift without looking at them. Instead, he wanted to carefully read/play/handle each present before moving on.





Lily rolled with the punches all day and let her big brother enjoy being the birthday boy.




Because the zoo is so close, we go there often, but we splurged on the train for a new twist and ate lunch overlooking the lake. Good times.





I still haven't figured out what happened to my cake, but it was a mess. So whaddya do with a cake disaster? Make a trifle. Just as tasty...
















All in all, a great, beautiful, finger lickin' good kinda birthday!