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!