Happy 1st Birthday!!

Happy 1st Birthday Carter and Corbin!!

Wow!! So much has happened this past year and my little guys have gotten so BIG I can't even believe it! I have loved every minute of every day they have been apart of my life. This year has definitely been the hardest, most difficult year I have ever experienced, but it has been worth every second of it and I wouldn't change a thing. It's true what people say about having kids, you don't realize how much you can love someone until you have a child, and that once you have children, you wear your heart out on your sleeve. I now know exactly how that feels. I love these two little boys more than anything and Steve and I are so blessed to have them in our lives'! Happy birthday Carter and Corbin... We look forward to sharing many more birthday memories to come!!

(These pictures are out of order, so start at the bottom and go up if you want to see how the party played out!)

I'm not much into parties, and I'm definitely not into planning any type of parties, and I'm sure not good at hosting any kind of an event... so what better way to get over my fear than to plan a big party for the boys' first birthday?! I spent hours searching online for the best twin party ideas, foods, decor and everything else I would need to know/do for the party. I decided on a "Thing 1 & Thing 2" party theme and made cute little invitations and a banner and tried to decorate (sparingly, I didn't want to spend a fortune on decorations just to throw them out when we were done) in the theme of Dr. Seuss. It was a lot of fun making everything and putting it all together. We even had the cute little red T-shirts made for the boys to wear that say "Thing 1 & Thing 2". For the cakes I wanted to have cupcakes where the frosting looks like the "things" hair, so I spent a lot of time on the Internet and taste testing different bakery shops to find the perfect cupcakes! (This was the worst part... tasting all the different kinds of cupcakes was a tough job... but hey, someone had to do it! :) We ended up using a lady that works from her home and she did an EXCELLENT job on the smash cakes and cupcakes! I couldn't have asked for better cakes! And as you can see below, the boys loved them as well!

Following are photos of just some of the close family and friends that attended the party to help us celebrate the boys' party!

The final result of the cake smashing event. I don't think they ate much, but it was sure fun to watch them get the frosting all over themselves!

Me and Corbin! I thought he would be the messier of the two, but I was wrong, he took a little convincing to actually dive in, but once he did he loved it!

If I would have thought about it, I would have asked to have the cake decorated more in blue frosting than in white because the pictures don't do it justice, the white frosting just kinda disappeared in the pics, but he sure was messy!

Here I am with our cute little Carter... He was so-SO tired that he kept rubbing his frosting covered hands in his eyes, poor little guy was ready to be done! But he loved the frosting and made a beautiful mess of the cake!

Corbin enjoying his first taste of sugar!!

I love this picture of Carter, he has the most beautiful eyes and eyelashes!

Carter loves the camera and was trying to get at it in this pic.

Corbin loved all the attention he was getting at his party!

Both boys not sure what to do... (Mom never lets me play with my food?)

Aunt Tori helping Corbin open his presents

Carter being cute and posing for the camera!

The wrapping paper and boxes were a BIG hit!

Carter enjoying the wrapping paper

My cute little "Thing 1 & Thing 2" inspired cupcakes. They were by far the best tasting cupcakes I have EVER tasted! And after throwing this party I've tasted more than my fair share of them!

And last but not least... the SMASH cakes! SO cute!

Christmas... Better late than Never!!

So, I realize I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing... It's almost February and I am just barely posting our Christmas photos... but my motto in regards to the blog is "better late than never!" So here are a few of our Christmas photos...

I've always been a firm believer that having children around at Christmas time is absolutely the best. They get so excited about every little thing and just make the Holiday Spirit that much better! This year we were able to share in this experience with our two little boys for their FIRST Christmas! I was so excited! The boys were still too young to even realize what was going on, but they loved the attention and especially the boxes and wrapping paper!

Carter (above) and Corbin (below) absolutely LoVeD the toy riding cars that 'Santa' and Grandma Pickle gave to them! The cars have songs that they play and Carter loves to just sit on it and hit the buttons to make the music play and then bounce up and down to the music... can I say adorable!?!

Even though we have two of the riding cars, the boys always fight over which ever one the other one has! Maybe one day they will learn to share (sigh!)

The boys had been playing with this set of toys before it was wrapped for Christmas, so they knew just what to do with it! It is a set of musical instruments... piano, drums, etc.

It was so much fun helping the boys open all of their presents! Steve and I said we weren't going to spoil them this year, but lets face it... they were SPOILED!!

Corbin being SO cute with his little bow in his hair!

We put the bow in Corbin's hair when he first started opening his present, and he left it on the entire time!

This is Christmas Eve at my aunt Kalee's house. The boys had so much fun playing with their cousins and getting into everything! They were far too busy to sit and get their picture taken with mom! :)

This Christmas I wanted to do something special for Steve. I felt like this year has been a very difficult, challenging, exciting and scary year and he has been AMAZING through it all! So, I decided to do the "12 Days of Christmas" for him to show him in a small way just how much I LOVE him and how much he means to me and the boys. I wanted to incorporate the boys as much as I could, so for the 2nd day, the boys painted him a picture and we 'signed' each painting with their hand print. I hope that he liked it as much as I did!

I love these two pictures of the boys 'finger painting' for their first time. It was more of a whole body painting than it was finger painting, but they LOVED it!

Corbin looks so PROUD in this picture!

This scene rarely plays out around our house... My two little boys don't really like to cuddle, and getting them to fall asleep when you are holding them is near impossible! (This is great when you just want them to go to sleep in their crib, but not so great when we are at church and they just want to be left alone and not be held in order to fall asleep!) So, here is a rare but very precious moment of Steve and Carter sleeping at the Condo in Park City.

Family photo... This was too perfect... while shopping at the outlet malls in Park City, my mom and I found this great deal on these little teddy bear outdoor suits and when we got back to the Condo, it started snowing, so we couldn't resist and we dressed the boys all up and had to have a little photo shoot in the snow... like I said... 'Too perfect!' Also, this was the boys' first time in the snow!

Here Steve is on 'daddy duty' up at the Condo... The boys are getting so much easier to feed their bottles to. It used to take us FOREVER to feed each of them their bottles, but now it takes only a few minutes and most of the time Corbin will hold his own and if we're lucky Carter will hold his too! Too bad eating solids is still a disaster! Oh well... it's a work in progress!

And finally... Carter and Corbin's first time meeting Santa Claus! The boys weren't very interested in him, but they weren't scared either so, all-in-all it was a good outcome!

ONE semester down and OnLY three left until I'm done with my Master's Degree!!!

Although I have to say this semester was alot of WORK I've never written or done so much research in my entire life! I found that I really like the research part of it, and actually don't mind the writing part either. The tough part for me is getting started on the writing, once I get that first paragraph or so things just come together and the pages start to fill up. My longest paper was over 25 pages long! It was a group paper so that helped! But still the longest I have EVER written. And it sounded pretty dang good! So now that I have a little break... after I finish my Provo students' grades, go Christmas shopping, and doctor's appointments for the boys... I'm going to update the blog and upload all the CUTE family photo's we had taken last month.

Halloween Haircuts

Halloween was definitely one of my favorites this year! I have always wanted to have kids to take to grandma and grandpa's house to "show off" their costumes and how adorable they look all dressed up. And this year I was finally able to do just that! I put the boys' in their costumes as many times as they would let me! I even MaDE Steve dress up and found a costume I could wear so the whole family was participating in the festivities.

I L O V E D it!!

I can't wait until next year when the boys will be old enough to go 'trick or treating'!!

We took the boys' to our ward 'trunk or treat' and Corbin loved all the people! He is definitely the more social of the two.

It was so fun to see all the little kids all dressed up. I love to be able to dress up as something and just let your imagination run wild.

This was as much as I could get Steve to dress up... he is Steve Erwin, the crocodile hunter. And I'm Dracula's bride (or something like that!)

We had wanted to do some type of theme to our family's costumes, but couldn't agree on anything. My mom had bought the boys' costume last year when I was pregnant and got a really good deal on them, so luckily we didn't have to buy theirs. But that made it a little hard to decide on a theme to match their tiger costumes.... Not to mention I really wanted to be a witch for some reason! So the day before Halloween we went out to search for mine and Steve's costume. Apparently everyone else had that same idea because there were no costumes left! I found this one and thought I would just buy a witch hat somewhere else and that would work. Steve on the other hand didn't like any of the costumes they had left, except for the really expensive ones, and we weren't about to spend $100 on a costume! So we ventured off to Walmart in hopes of finding something there. Thats when Steve decided to just be Steve Erwin and I would just be Dracula's wife. (Walmart was all out of witches hats! :(

This is typical for these two right now. Whatever one has the other one wants! Even though they both had the tiger mittens attached to their sleeves Carter still wanted Corbin's mittens.

We got family pictures last week and Steve insisted that the boys get their haircut before the photo shoot! So my friend Kamie cut their hair for me. It was quite the little adventure trying to get them to be happy.... it was past their bedtime...and hold still long enough for her to cut what little hair they have.

Carter went first and other than a few attempts at crying he did pretty good. Cade, Kamie's husband kept him entertained and looking in one direction for the most part.

Corbin on the other hand was a bit more of a challenge. He has figured out how to escape from his bumbo, so he tried that and fussed almost the whole time. Until Kamie figured out that he likes to be squirted in the mouth with the water bottle. He loved it!! So every time he would start to get a little fussy, she would just give him a shot and he'd be ok for another minute or so. It was HILARIOUS!! Who would have thought that a little baby would like such a thing!?!

So, here is Kamie squirting Corbin with the water bottle... So cute!

I just love this picture... The way Corbin is just glaring at Kamie is adorable!

Carter showing off how good he looks after his haircut!

What a HANDSOME little man!

Carter wasn't too sure about this at first. Then he settled down and did pretty good.

Carter right before Kamie started to cut... look at how shaggy his hair is!

And finally... the reason for the haircut....

...the boys' photo shoot!! :)

This is the only picture we have so far, but I love it!! Our photographer did such an amazing job! She was so patient and easy going I loved her!! I felt so comfortable with her. We went up to Logan to get these taken and so between traveling, feeding and everything else, the photo shoot ended up being right in the middle of their nap time... so it was really hard to try and get them both to be happy and smile in the same photo. In fact it was almost impossible! Not to mention all of the fun leaves and rock and grass that they kept trying to play with, getting them to even look at the camera was a major task! But if the rest of the pictures are even half as good as this one I will way impressed!!

Our Summer in Pictures

So it has been an incredibly long time since I have last posted anything, so this post is going to be more like a marathon than a sprint... hope you enjoy!

This summer has been jam packed with packing, moving, babies, doctor appointments, babies, work, school, babies, teaching, homework, and did I mention BABIES!!?!

Carter and Corbin keep our lives' very busy! We hardly have time to do anything but take care of them. It has been so much fun to watch them grow and progress throughout these past few months. I am amazed at how much they have grown in such a short little while. I love to see their progress but I hate to see them getting so BIG!

Out side of babies my life has been a little crazy as well. I started my Master's program this August and have been busy trying to keep up on all the homework and projects and research papers that are assigned. I guess it's a good thing that I love school cuz I'll be going for at least 2 more years!!

A good friend of mine gave me these taggy blankets for the boys' and they just love them. Especially Carter!

Corbin with his taggy blanket and his thumb in his mouth. Thankfully he stopped sucking his thumb on his own soon after he started doing it. But he relies very heavily on his Binky. I don't know how we are ever going to get rid of it!

Corbin lost his Binky!

But he looks so cute!

First time eating solids!!

Carter took to this much better than Corbin did.

Corbin's first bite of solid foods.

He wasn't so sure of it!

Corbin loves attention. As long as he is being talked to or has any type of attention he is happy!

My cute little nephew Logan and my uncle Harry @ my cousin's funeral.

My aunt Cindy flew in from London for the funeral and was able to meet all of her new great nephews. My aunt, Cindy, is such an amazing person... I just love her to pieces and am so glad that she was able to meet all the new additions!

Me with my niece Sam and sis-in-law Jen at the cemetery.

The boys' first time eating baby food, the food before was rice cereal. They were pulling some of the funniest faces! I read somewhere to start babies off on veggies, but these guys weren't too sure about them!

Corbin before....

...and after the veggies!

Carter has just recently found his toes and every chance he gets he tries to pull off his socks and put his feet in his mouth! It is so stinkin cute!

I just love these little outfits! They are totally not my personality at all, but a friend talked me into buying them and I'm glad I did 'cuz they look adorable in them!

Here is my cute husband with Corbin. We have decided that Carter looks just like Steve and already has more of his personality. Carter is so easy going and laid back. While Corbin looks more like me and has more of my personality traits. It's funny how that works out.

At Steve's work they all call Steve "Carter Senior" because he just looks so much like him!

Here we are at the Welsville Labor Day Parade! It was their first parade and I was a little nervous all the noise from the fire truck's sirens and the guns going off would scare them, but they were such little troopers and did so good!

This is one of my FAVORITE pictures right now!

We took the boys to the State Fair. It was fun to see the boys with all the different farm animals. Corbin especially liked the pigs! Carter wasn't having a very good day that day and was a little fussy.

So now I know how Carter and Corbin get cleaned off when I'm not around! I couldn't believe this! Steve showed me the pic, but first made me promise not to get mad... Once he finally showed me I couldn't stop laughing!

Koda (my dog) is so good with the babies. She just lays there while they pull at her ears and poke at her face and eyes. They are going to all be the best of friends here soon!

Because the boys were 2 months early they wouldn't circumcise them in the NICU, so we had to wait until they were old enough to be safely put under anesthesia before we could get it taken care of. So here we are the last week of Sept and they FiNalLy get it done! Corbin had a lot rougher time coming out of the anesthesia than Carter did. But we knew he would. Carter is such a good little baby and hardly cries and does so good when it comes time for his shots and IVs and things like that. Corbin on the other hand is our high maintenance baby and cries and is needy the rest of the day and for days after his shots. And this surgery and proven this again.

Before the surgery both boys were sleeping through the night with no problems. But since the surgery, Corbin has been waking up numerous times throughout the night having to be rocked back to sleep. And most of the time he wakes up once we put him back in his crib, so we end up either just sleeping in the recliner with him or bringing him back to bed with us. It's a horrible habit that I hate to even start but I hate to just let him in cry when I don't think he is fully healed. I'm hoping however that this little sleeping issue is coming to an end. Last night was the first night since their surgery that Corbin has slept through the night! So here goes hoping it happens again tonight!

Carter slept for a while after he came out of surgery. And when he finally did wake up, he just layed there and watched everything that was going on.

They had their surgery at PCMC and my best friend works there in the PACU, so it was nice because she was able to take the boys back to the OR and hold them while they were put under, and then she brought them back out and stayed with them until we could be with them. It was nice to know they were being well taken care of! Thanks Kam!!

First time at the ZOO! Corbin didn't really seem too interested in the animals, he just enjoyed being held. Carter on the other hand loved looking and watching the animals. He was so fascinated with them. He especially loved the monkeys! He kept trying to reach out to grab one of them as it would walk past the window! So CuTe!

Everyone has to get the famous 'lion head' shot! So here is Corbin's first!

Carter enjoying the little animals!

Even though life is a bit cRaZy right now, we are LOVING every minute!