Neill and Jenny are here!

Greeting friends and family,

The weekend is over, but guess who is taking vacation days this week? Me! Our friends from South Africa, Neill and Jenny, are staying with us this week and I am taking a couple of days off from work so I don't miss a thing. We are extremely blessed to have them all to ourselves for a few days as they relax in between ministry opportunities here in AZ. Everyone else, including Kendra's parents, have to share them with a classroom or church-full of people. However, the 4 Webbs get great one on one time to fellowship and converse.

After church this morning and baby nap time we drove out East to Joes Farm Grill out in Gilbert, which was featured on Food Network's TV show with Guy Fieri called Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The unique thing about Joes Farm Grill is they get all of the produce fresh from their backyard (literally) and everything is home made from scratch. Two thumbs up from the 4 Webbs. We saw our friends Preston and Sarah along with their two kiddos who also ate there for lunch. Here are Neill and Jenny standing by the entrance walk way


Easton and Layla walked around on the grassy slopes to work off those french fried. You can see Easton doing his best to stand up straight on the steep little hill while Layla is in the background doing laps up and down the hill.


She walked up and down at least 20 times and never grew tired of the exercise. We had to physically pick her up and head out to the car because she was so intent to wonder around in the grassy knoll.


Easton and Layla are both developing the constructive and destructive motor skills relatively well. I have no idea what "normal" is, but we all clapped and cheered when Easton and Layla created a stack 6 blocks high. Easton destroyed the tower and I was only able to convince them of a 5 block high tower after I found the camera, but it still deserved some verbal praise and a good hand clap.


and one other good, clear picture of Layla giving daddy a block.


I'll continue the WFMW (Works For Me Wednesday) where I share the most crucial consumer purchases and wisdom. However, this is the exact opposite where I'm telling you of our experience to help you AVOID the same mistakes we did. Maybe this will be a new section called "Do as I say, not as I do". This weeks product to avoid is magnetic letters from Wal-mart. Notice anything odd about the back of the "B"?


Hint: these are MAGNETIC letters to stick on your fridge.

Give up? OK, notice there is NO magnet in the back of the letter "B". We bought this package of A-Z magnetic letters from Wal-mart for 88 cents. That should be your first red flag and trigger some caution. We brought them home and found the magnet on the back was so wimpy they wouldn't even stay on the fridge (red flag number 2)! After a couple of drops to the floor we could tell the magnets were coming unglued from the plastic letters (red flag number 3), but we didn't get rid of them. Until... Today Layla picked something up from the kitchen floor and began chewing on it in a way that obviously showed she was not successfully breaking it down to eventually swallow. Kendra ran over to her and did the motherly finger-in-the-mouth to clear out whatever she was munching on. Yes, it was a magnet. I'm not sure what health damage eating a magnet could do, but we certainly don't want to find out! All the letters went directly to the trash and there goes a waste of 88 cents. So there you have it... don't buy cheap toys with magnets especially the 88 cent letters from Wal-mart.

As you can see from this picture, Layla survived just fine and although she has a magnetic personality that draws the attention of everyone around her, she didn't swallow any magnets (at least any we know of).


Easton learned the word uh-oh and "all done". When anything falls to the floor he looks up and says, "uh-oh!" and repeats the word until someone acknowledges his alert to let us know something hit the floor.


Layla resorts to shaking her head back and forth to say "no", which means she's finished eating. Easton makes a good effort to do the sign language and at the same time announces "all done!" The communication between us parents and our twins is making life MUCH easier. They can actually tell us what they want and what's wrong. The still have the basic needs of food, sleep, and diaper changes, but at least they are giving us queues as to what they want. Hooray for another milestone.

Have a great week!