Anna Banana Pants Weekend!

Everyone has a trigger...a word that makes you so excited you can hardly breathe...McKenzie's "trigger" is Anna...that teeny-tiny-super-simple word has magic powers in McKenzie's little world.  This word grabs a hold of McKenzie's brain, sends chills up her spine and turns her into crazy excited super-child!  "Mine Anna" she would say...everything is "mine Anna this & Mine Anna that!"
 
The fun began Thursday...McKenzie was ecstatic to find out that we were going to be bringing her cousin Anna home with us...for 4 whole days!  YIPPEE!  Her family was taking a special trip to Chicago for some shopping and to celebrate my niece Erika's upcoming High School graduation (that's a whole nother blog, I CANNOT believe our little Erika is GRADUATING soon!!!!)

Both girls were in heaven sharing and playing nicely.  This lasted about 30 minutes...let the girlie-drama begin!  One minute they were BFF"s, sharing babies and coloring together nicely...the next minute they were screaming at the top of their lungs because of course it was necessary for both of them to have the exact same phone in their possession at the exact same time (never mind the 6 other play phones in the room), to no more than 1 minute later turn back into BFF's laughing and giggling to their hearts content.  This theme carried on, not only with phones, but babies, strollers, juice cups and SHOES...oh the shoe wars.  WHATEVER!  I think it is just best that us parents just stay out of it and let them "problem solve" on their own...

 We made sure to schedule in many distractions over the course of the weekend (for my, Joe & Macy's sake).   Cousins Brook and Ally came over to play one afternoon...Grandma Lee babysat for a couple hours, Cousin Danielle visited as well to help out for a while...we went out to eat a couple times, went to church, took a couple walks...I'd say these girls had plenty keeping them busy!  All I have to say is "THANK GOODNESS FOR 3 HOUR AFTERNOON TODDLER NAPS"!

We ventured into Waterloo and met up with G&G Lee at El'Bee's for some Mexican food...only best Mexican food EVER!

Everyone who has ever been to El'Bee's knows that you cannot leave there without a tootsie pop.  So of course, we took 4.  We knew they would come in handy later when we needed to "bribe" the girls to calm down and perhaps sit still for a while.  We brought out the heavy "sucker ammunition" after bath time.   hehe.  They never saw it coming!  Haha suckers (no pun intended)  Worked like a charm.

  So...the question still remains "How many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop?

The girls were trying to figure it out.  The fact that they can only count to as many as 14 was kind of making the experiment difficult.

Sucker Showdown

I am so incredibly glad and grateful that our baby girl is creating so many memories with her little friends and cousins.  These memories are going to last a lifetime.  I am not sure if my cousins Renae or Amber read this blog...but I recall MANY MANY sleepovers with the two of you when we were little girls.  Oh what fun did we have?!  I would not trade those memories for anything in the world  :-)

Joe wrestles with the girls just before bedtime...what a GREAT daddy and uncle he is!  While it was fun having Anna spend the weekend with us...I honestly would have been pretty overwhelmed without Joe helping out!  oh, and by the way, Macy was an angel all weekend, so that certainly made it a lot easier as well.  Thanks for being such an awesome, easy going baby Macy!