Let them eat cake...

Our boys are a whole year old! I cannot believe it! It has been a great weekend full of lots of fun stuff. My parents came into town on Thursday and we were able to do a bunch of fun stuff with them, which I will post later. For now, I will just try to post their birthday party.

Their birthday was on Sunday, the 14th, but we celebrated on Saturday instead.

We kept decorations simple...a couple balloons and a few streamers hung around the boys chairs to (hopefully) make them feel special.


Everyone came over around 12:00. My parents were there, as were Cory's. We also had Cory's sister Kelly there and two couples that we are good friends with: Mark and Janean and Brady and Nicki and their twins. We had a taco salad lunch which the boys loved. Then all the men and some of the ladies left to go watch the BYU UCLA game. The rest of us stayed here, played with the boys and then played some games while they napped. Oh, by the way, the boys took AMAZING naps all day, so they were in great moods! Yeah!

Around 4:30 everyone was back from the game and the boys were awake, so we opened gifts. The boys just sort of stared at the pile of gifts for a while, but after we showed them they could rip them paper, they had some fun with that, although they weren't very effective at actually unwrapping the gifts. They just wanted to play with the paper they had just ripped off. So, Cory and I assisted them a bit.

They made out big time! We feel very blessed to have such generous friends and family. We recieved enough clothes to last them through another 6-8 months. (In fact, the only clothes we have bought them since birth are: shoes, swim trunks, church clothes, and some onesies...can you believe that!?!). They got some fun interactive baseball/basketball toys. Cory immediately opened the baseball one and had his boys hitting home runs before they even got to the rest of their presents. They got some fun talking animal farm fridge magnets, and a talking book. They got a homemade ABC book (pictures to be posted later b/c it is AMAZING!), and some fun personalized CD's (familiar songs with their names being sung). We got them a fun 8 sided toy. It is a block that has something different on each side (clock, phone, shape sorter, piano etc). And we also wrapped up a bunch of toys that Cory's sister Jonelle sent down (every few months she gives us all the toys she has that her kids are done using...AWESOME!). So, they were pretty spoiled, but they sure had fun checking everything out. Talk about sensory overload!

Then, we ate cake. I really wanted to find a way to make them each their own unique, but similar cakes, So, my mom and I made an ABC block cake. It ended up being quite a bit more work than we anticipated, but it was worth it in the end. We made one big cake for all the guests and a couple of smaller versions for Micah and Noah. Their individual cakes each had the boy's initials on them, while the larger cake just had and "M" and and "N" and the number "1."

I expected Noah to make a huge mess very quickly as this is what he does with most of his meals, but just the opposite happened. Micah, who is usually far more neat and particular when he eats (although not completely mess free), jumped right in and made a HUGE mess relatively quickly. He even got a bunch in his eyes toward the end...poor guy:


Noah poked at his for quite a while before finally jumping in (after watching Micah for a bit), but ended up making quite a mess of his own. Grumpa (my Dad) kept asking him where his head was, so that he would pat his head with his very messy hands:

Then we grilled up some hot dogs and hamburgers and visited. The boys played with some of their toys and their balloons. They LOVED crawling around the courtyard outside playing with and visiting with everyone.


A big thanks to everyone who came to play. It was a lot of fun! We missed all of you who weren't able to make it, but appreciated the love and phone calls.

Happy Birthday, Micah and Noah!