The babies of '08 reunite!

After our detour-filled drive, we made it safely to Chuck's parents' house in Elko Wednesday evening and enjoyed a great long fourth of July weekend - there's a long post about our actual Independence Day BBQ at the park to come. But first, one fun thing about going to Elko is getting the three baby cousins together. Lily is two months older than Will, who is four months older than Bri. Lily and Bri both live in Elko and get to hang out often, but it's funny to add Will to the mix and watch all of them interact.

Naturally, we attempted a little toddler photo shoot, but pretty soon after Melissa started clicking, Will tumbled off the bench and took Bri, who had been holding onto him for balance, with him. Between Will's minor bloody lip and Bri's tears, we called it a day and settled for some less formal photo ops:

All three wee ones playing nicely side by side - Bri is in the middle and Lily is on the right. After visually evaluating their sizes for a few minutes, we pulled out the bathroom scale and did an official weigh-in: Bri and Lily are both 20.5 lbs and Will is 24.5lbs. This makes me laugh because Bri and Lily are awesome eaters - at one point Bri was gnawing on a huge piece of pork - and Will is the one who gags on table food and still prefers baby food. Whatever keeps him growing, I guess!
There doesn't seem to be any striking resemblance among the three. Will seems like a decent mix of me and Chuck with an emphasis on my side (leaning towards my brother Cody), I think Bri looks a lot like Aleesha with Lee's coloring, and Lily is all Kevin's face with Melissa's petite-ness (is that a word?)

I'm not sure how Lily and Will ended up in the hula hoop together (or why they're only in diapers, other than the fact that it was a warm July day and the sprinkler was on) but Lily was not a fan, especially since Will wasn't going where she wanted to go.

Feel free to check out Will's awesome rash all over his torso. It appeared the day after we got to Elko and at first we thought it was some sort of allergy, but it turned out to be a virus. Isn't that a great way to show our gratitude for everyone's hospitality - by bringing a virus in to a house full of children? We thought so. He also threw up a couple times for good measure, including the night we were supposed to take some nice family pictures.

Here's Will and Bri at the park on Saturday in their cute little patriotic get-up.

Will was not happy that Bri was playing with my phone; apparently HE's the only one who gets to slobber all over it.

Later Grandma got a snuggle with both Lily and Will.

Will and Lily took the opportunity to poke and prod each other's faces. They might as well enjoy it while it's still socially acceptable to get to know people that way :)