A week in the life

We've had lots of different things going on in the last week, only a little of which we captured on camera. But here is at least a peek into our life in the past week (in random order of how things happened).

We have a tradition of celebrating Friday with our friends Kate, Kevin, and Annie. We switch off houses and who cooks, but we try to get together every Friday. This Friday Kevin was sick and Steve was out of town, so it was an all girl night.

We had fun helping the girls make pizzas:

Annie favored pepperoni:

Clara declared "no sauce!" but had fun putting on pineapples and pepperoni.

Elena ate LOTS of toppings, but got very few on her pizza!

Kate took a moment to wrangle the girls together for a shared story (Elena was here too, but WAY too blurry from moving all around!).

We went to a birthday party on Saturday, but it was set to run from 1-3. This was tricky, because the girls sleep from 12:30-2:30, and are really grumpy if they get woken up early. So Christina tried to keep them up, instead. We had some moderate success in the end, but these photos are from about 12 that day, when the girls were being such funny little characters!

Clara is alternately giggly, and then...

Smiling a super-sweet smile...

And then looking so demure, and so grown up!

Cut to hard-core Elena, slouching like any angsty teenager...

But not able to hold the pose for long before she cracks up...

...and then shows how absolutely loving she is.

Here's a new bathtime trick! Turns out it's easier to hold a sister on a lap in the bathtub, where a little buoyancy gives you a hand, so they have taken to playing their "clippity cloppity" game (otherwise known as "this is the way the lady rides") here in the tub.

On Wednesday of this week, the girls became officially done with diapers except for sleeping (and we're working on losing those, too). They've had a few mishaps here and there, but have been playing and leaving the house all week like big girls. To celebrate the end of diapers, we got them each backpacks, which double as a place for them to tote along some emergency clothes in this new big girl time.

On Monday, it was finally the right kind of snow for making snowmen, something the girls have been waiting for all winter! We took them out and made a lovely Frosty (he's two sided, so that each girl got a turn putting in the nose, which was the coveted job!).

Sadly, Frosty didn't make it long. Within half an hour, he had toppled. The girls sent Christina out in slippers to go fix him. Then overnight he toppled again. The next day we took out the middle snowball and made him just a head and body. That lasted one more day, when the head was on the ground, and there were footprints suspiciously walking up to poor Frosty from the street, and then back the same way. Still, the girls are undeterred, and say goodbye to Frosty every time we back out of the driveway - even though he is just a plain snowball now!

More pictures are on their way soon - especially of some lovely sweaters the girls got in the mail this week from Grandma, but which have not yet gotten photographed properly! That's a taste of the week, though. We hope you had a good one, too.