self portrait

Hello friends and family!

Check out the new birthday counter for Easton and Layla at the top-right of the blog! It tells how old they are.

At some point in the past few days Kendra changed Layla's outfit in the living room and I saw our cute, little peanut on the floor in front of her. I ran to grab the camera to capture the rare occurrence of Layla lying down in just her diaper. This is rare because she is SO energetic that lying down is not something she does unless it is bed time normally. And the other rare part is that we have clothes on them all of the time so it's hard to get a real, true picture of how their bodies are developing underneath all those layers. OK, enough jabbering... Here's Layla with her hand doing the Vulcan sign like Spock from Star Trek:



I have lots of stories so I'll jump right in and start way back at Saturday evening. Our friends, David and Tam, are trading baby sitting nights with us so that we can each have a date night without the kids. They have 9 year old boy/girl twins, Ben and Trinity and we spent a little time getting our kids used to them and their kids used to us:


They went out for fondue... we hung out at home and played the night away. I thought ONE set of twin babies was tiring, but now after that fun experience I can say with confidence TWO sets of twins is pure craziness. We made cookies, hit the punching bag, and played pool. Actually, Kendra and Trinity made delicious cookies while Ben and I played pool.


Ben combined boxing with playing pool by wearing the bag gloves while shooting pool. Hey, it worked! We won the boys vs. girls pool game. :)


Kendra and I consider the night a success and we're hoping this trade off routine will become a monthly exchange. It's hard to imagine our two bambinos will be walking, talking children like Ben and Trinity. It was cool to see how twins interact and they really best friends. We're expecting our babies will turn out much the same, if we're lucky.

On Sunday we went to the church picnic and spent a few hours eating BBQ and hanging out with our friends, including Scott and Marisue, who Layla and Easton have always enjoyed as much as we do.



Some of you may be wondering why there aren't many pictures of me... Well, someone has to hold the camera, right? I decided to take matters into my own hands so after bath time last night I thought I would try the old mirror-self-portrait trick and here's how it turned out:



HA! How's that for flash placement... Don't they look sweet in their hoodie towels? Before attempting the self-portrait I caught Easton trying to get out of the tub. You may be wondering, "why would he want to get OUT of the tub? I thought he loves bath time?" Well, Layla is starting to crawl around in the tub and she gets a little aggressive with Easton from time to time with her high-pitched screams and desire to crawl over him. Easton has such a happy heart and cute smile:


One last milestone to mention is that Layla is doing her best to start walking soon. Kendra and I call this "prairie dogging" for lack of a better term:


She bounces up and down slightly on her heals and sits upright like that for several seconds at a time. Layla was showing off for Oma and Opa when we were video-chatting over Skype! Great timing, Layla!

I may as well throw in the obligatory "Easton might be teething" section of the blog. We've been talking about his top two teeth possibly coming in for literally months now. Our in-depth research shows: puffy gums, drool, insomnia, etc. That can mean many, many things, but Kendra is convinced his top two teeth are going to break through any day now.

Have a great week and stop by again soon, OK?

Bye bye.