Already 8?!!

How is it possible that our first baby is already 8 years old?? Some days I feel like she should still be 4 or 5, but then I see her--how mature, responsible, and independent she's becoming and I catch a glimpse of her in another 8 years as a teenager. That's both terrifying and exciting! 

She is such a great girl. She's the typical first born leader, strongly opinionated, and quite the planner. She's also one of the most thoughtful and compassionate people I've ever known. She loves to read, do arts and crafts, and cook. She likes to play with babies (both real and pretend!), play school, and sell things in her "stores" to raise money for orphans and childhood cancer. 

Catherine, we love you so much! Happy 8th birthday!!

(This was at her school's December birthday celebration. The babies really enjoyed dancing with her!)

He had a birthday!

Last week Will turned 6 years old! I can hardly believe our "baby Will" is such a grown up boy. He is such a gentleman and has the sweetest heart. He can also be all boy and just wants to get dirty, climb trees, play in the creek, and wear camouflage.

For his birthday, he chose to go to Papa's cabin. Jay took the 3 big kids and spent the night at the hunt cabin. The next day, Papa took them fishing. Will and Catherine each caught a fish. Papa cooked them for lunch and they ate it right up! They also shot BB guns and had lots of fun hitting the targets. 

 For lunch, we had pizza and fruit and chips with the cousins and family. Will requested cupcakes for his birthday treat. You can see how lovely and homemade these were--straight from the Publix bakery! On his actual birthday, he requested my homemade banana pudding so I treated him to that.

Will, we love you so much and are so proud of the wonderful young man you are becoming! You're such a special part of our family and are so much fun. Happy birthday!

Happy First Birthday!!

On Saturday, James and Elizabeth turned ONE!! 

I can't believe it's already been a year since these sweet babies were born. It's been the longest, fastest, hardest, most exhausting, most exciting year we've probably ever had. In some ways, it seems like we are still in the new stage of figuring out how to handle two babies, and in other ways it feels like a really long time ago that they were snuggled together sleeping in a crib in our room. 

I always feel like once we get to the first birthday though, that I kind of exhale. Things settle into place a little easier and it's not the constant change of routine with sleep and eating every other month. It seems to get a little easier, and I'm looking forward to that as we head into this second year with them.

   We celebrated, for them and for us, on Saturday.

We had a small party with family and a couple of friends to just enjoy the moment of getting through this year and celebrate how God has sustained us through it and how precious these two are to us.

And it was a lot of fun to watch them eat cake!! At first they weren't really sure what to do with it, until I gave them each a little lick off my finger. Then they dove in, especially sweet Elizabeth who was just face planting into her cake while James grabbed it by the fistful. 

Happy Birthday James!
Happy Birthday Elizabeth!
We love you!!

Anna's birthday celebration

 In the midst of the Easter celebration this past weekend, we also had a quick birthday party for Anna. The sweet girl has never really had much of a birthday party. I guess that's what happens when you're the 3rd child. This one was simple too. We invited her two favorite friends from church to a little party at a local cupcake shop (gotta love Living Social deals). They ate pizza and decorated cupcakes and ate ice cream too. Not a healthy celebration :) But the kids loved decorating the cupcakes and had fun. It was an easy and fun way to celebrate our special little Anna.

Anna got her own apron with her name and a cupcake monogrammed on it!

The kids enjoyed pizza

Blowing out candles is always fun

                                                   Look at Anna's cupcake decorations

                                                    Friends enjoyed cupcakes too!

                     
                                              Will was really concentrating on his icing

                                             Catherine is a pretty good cupcake artist

 
                                   Anna ate a lot of cupcakes and icing. But hey, it's her party!

When you run out of cupcakes, just decorate the table with icing and lick it straight off the table!

  Anna was very excited to get a couple of fun gifts from friends. And her friends were very excited to give them to her! Her friend really wanted to get her a bike with purple hearts on it, but she settled on this princess dress-up gift instead :)

 James and Elizabeth enjoyed the party too. I'm pretty sure Mimi and PopPop sneaked them some cupcakes and ice cream!

We love you, 3 year old Anna! We're excited about another fun year with you!

Anna is 3!

This crazy, sweet, spunky, lively, silly, gorgeous little one turned 3 years old this week! Wow! I can't believe she's so big. She thinks she's a big girl too. She told me that now that she is 3, she's as big as me.  She is changing and learning so fast. It's really exciting to watch.

We always let the kids pick what they want for their birthday dinner and she picked hard boiled eggs and juice. I hope it's not reflective of my cooking that her favorite thing to eat is a hard boiled egg! We did convince her that we should have pancakes and fruit too, but she mostly ate hard boiled eggs. Strange, for sure.

She really enjoyed helping make her birthday cake, especially the pink icing and the sprinkles. 

She was very excited to open her presents. So much fun to watch her get really excited about something. Catherine and Will picked out a Minnie Mouse memory game for her and she has told them thank you multiple times for it. She received a few other games, puzzles, and books and has really enjoyed them. She also has a new Dora Hot Wheels, but so far she can only pedal backwards.

We love you, sweet Anna! You keep us laughing and every day with you is full of surprises. It's been that way since the day you were born. We should have known we were in for a crazy ride after your quick labor and delivery of all 9lbs 5oz of you! You have a lot of personality and spirit and we are so glad to be your parents. Happy 3rd birthday!

Mimi's birthday celebration

Mimi's birthday is in a few days, so we surprised her this past Saturday with a few special events. Jay took her out to a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant, just the two of them. I think that's pretty special and I hope my boys want to do that with me when they're grown!

When they got back from lunch, Catherine and Will asked Mimi two very important questions. 1. Who is your favorite pig? 2. Who is your favorite spider? Wilbur and Charlotte, of course. Mimi lives Charlotte's Web. It's one of her favorite stories. So we took her to the children's theater production that afternoon. It was great! We all really enjoyed it.

When we came out if the play, it was snowing!! It never snows around here without people discussing the possibility of it for days. But on Saturday, the snow fell for about 30 minutes. Nothing was sticking, but it looked a little like a snow globe for a few minutes. We enjoyed some special treats at a little cafe and watched the snow.

What a fun way to celebrate a birthday. We are so very thankful to have Mimi and Poppop live here now. They are an incredible blessing to us. Happy birthday Mimi!

Mary Poppins Birthday Show

Instead of having a birthday party, Catherine opted to attend Mary Poppins with one of her friends who also has a December birthday. We met them downtown, watched the show, and had dinner at The Lazy Goat. This was a special birthday treat by Mimi, who is very excited about going to more of these shows in the future. Jay and Steve don't love the musicals, so we figure the girls can enjoy them.

The show was great. Catherine especially liked it when Mary Poppins flew in and out with her umbrella and when the chimney sweeps danced. Parts of it were a little hard for her to follow the storyline and it was slightly different than the movie, but overall she really enjoyed the experience.

We are so fortunate to have a great performing arts center here, and lots of fun restaurants downtown too. It was a very fun way to celebrate Catherine's birthday (which yes, was in the middle of December--but I'm still catching up!).