Girls' Weekend

What do you get when you pair two three year olds and two 11 month olds? A wild and crazy weekend. It's like two sets of twins, but with the added bonus of extra mom hands to help out. The girls and I traveled to Waco a couple weeks ago to visit my friend Elisabeth and her girls while her hubs was away for work.

We had the best time visiting and playing! The girls got along quite well, especially for so much face-time, and the babies were their typical easygoing selves. Avery had a few meltdowns, and the weekend seemed like one crazy event after the other thanks to the weather, but flexibility was key and we had fun! Plus, Annie is one of the funniest, coolest kids I've ever met (next to mine, of course).

I baked with the girls Friday night - Annie was so excited to have a pastry chef help her make cupcakes (see EMU's post for pics), and we baked grown-up desserts (tarts) the next night after the girls were down. Once the girls were in bed for the night, Elisabeth and I had lots of catch-up time. It's nice to have hours of uninterrupted talk time with a good friend, especially one who is in the same stage of life right now.

This was also Avery's first sleepover experience, and let.me.tell.you - this was the best free entertainment I've ever had. They shared a room each night, and as soon as we tucked them in, we'd race downstairs to listen on the monitor. They talked for at least an HOUR each night. Both of them are quite talkative by nature, and they just shared everything on their minds that weekend. Some favorites:

"Annie, do you love Jesus?" I love God. "So you don't love Jesus?"

Avery: "I put my lovey on my bottom." Annie: "I put my lovey on my bottom too!"

Annie: "If you have to go to the bathroom, just tell me and I'll take off your diaper and pull your pants down and put you on the potty." (This was a recurring theme and they'd circle back to it every 15 minutes or so.)

Concerns about a cricket in the room, from a story Annie told about a bug her mom killed. It was really a cockroach, and apparently it's now in heaven. With God and Jesus and D-dad (Annie didn't know what a D-dad was.)

A discussion about an event that transpired while playing earlier on Saturday, in which Avery hurts Annie's feelings, words were misunderstood, and sweet Annie tried to express her feelings on the matter. I don't know that Avery ever really got it. But, to hear those two try and work it out on their own - melt my mama heart!

Annie fell asleep first Friday night - it was silent for a couple minutes, and then we hear, "Annie? Annie. ANNIE!" Avery settled for talking to herself for the next few minutes before also falling asleep.

Saturday night, Annie: "Now, when your mommy comes in to tell us to be quiet and no more talking, don't talk. We have to stop talking. It's time to go to sleep. And when she comes in, don't cry. And when she leaves, don't cry." Guess who did too much crying!

They also practiced their diving off the end of the beds (for the Olympics, of course). It's a favorite past-time of Annie's these days. 

We took a trip to Baylor (where Luke and I went to college and also where Elisabeth's hubby just started teaching) where we saw one of the bears, got soaked in the rain, dumped both big girls out of the stroller onto the sidewalk resulting in massive amounts of crying, stopped at Common Grounds for a break from the rain and some good coffee, and showed Avery a bit of the campus where Mommy and Daddy met. We also convinced hundreds of college students to delay having children for awhile.

the only pic I have of Elisabeth from the whole weekend, and Sally! This was pre-rainstorm, at the bear pit.

At least I look happy. Neither of the girls wanted to pose for a picture.

We visited my old church, Redeemer, on Sunday and enjoyed a potluck (of course I picked the weekend there would be free food) where we got to visit with old friends and meet some great new people. The older girls had fun in their class, but the mamas were paged out at the exact same time for the babies. It looked like we were ditching the sermon. Oops.

silly girls

sad faces because it was time to go home to Austin

Thank you, Ueckers, for such a wonderful weekend! We can't wait to see you gals again soon!

**If I can figure out how to get it off my phone, I have a video of a portion of the girls' conversation from Friday night. I'll post here for your extreme entertainment.