Happy 1st Birthday to our Miracles!

Dear Sydney & Olivia-

I cannot even believe that it's been a year, and what a year it's been. Your Daddy and I thought we loved you before you came and we thought we loved each other as well. But let me tell you, I now know that I have never loved someone so much as I love the both of you, and I never even thought that how much I love you was possible. You two are the best things that have ever happened to your Daddy and I and we just wanted to share with you how much we love you.

From the 13 seemingly endless weeks at Children's Hospital in the NICU to FINALLY bringing you home on Sept 27 to meeting all our family and friends, holidays, photo shoots (and lots of them), 2 and 3 am feedings, you smiling for the first time, sitting up, giggling, going for walks, bathtime, cuddling, learning to crawl to watching you discover the Boxers and new exciting things around our home, it's been quite a year.

After that, I have a question, it's the same question I posed to my friend Laurie's triplets 2 weeks ago...WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULD GET BIG?????????????????????????? You are so big now..what happened to my babies? Don't get me wrong, I don't miss all the pumping and frustrations from trying to convince you to eat, but dang, you're big. I miss my small little cuddle bugs. The most cuddling I get now is in the middle of the night when you wake up upset (and even that, thankfully while sad at the same time), doesn't happen all that often. :( Oh well, I guess I have pictures to remember how cute and adorable you little stinkers were.

Your first birthday was AMAZING. I hope you two had a great day... I know Mommy and Daddy did. All in all it was a MUCH better day for ME (and I'm sure your Dad), than your actual birthday was. NO worring about if you'd be okay and how long of a NICU stay we were looking at, and for me, no constant throwing up and all the other fun stuff that being a new mommy brought with it! WE went out to breakfast and got you pancakes along with strawberries and bananas for your birthday. I'm positive that the people at First Watch remembered us for awhile after we left..or at least you two with all the food you donated to the floor!

Eating our Breakfast at First Watch....

A family picture before you Birthday Dinner!

We had a great time playing and just enjoying you guys! Then we had all the grandparents over for dinner. I know you had a great time being spoiled by all of your Grandmas and Papas and your crazy Uncle Mike...and you know that they love you of course! You are so spoiled and I hope that some day you don't turn into unmanageable brats! :) I do however know that you two are going to be MAJOR clothing divas...which is fine by me! :) As long as the grandmas continue to help out!

Sitting in your new chairs from Grandpa Gale and Grandma Vicki

Those darned Grandpas...they get you into trouble everytime! Whose in charge of them and making sure THEY behave????????

Livi Hanging on the Patio table!

Sydney watching us eat from her Pack N Play!

YOu certainly seemed to enjoy your birthday cakes...it was so cute watching you explore these new interesting foods and the textures found in the cake. Sydney, you much preferred to eat the icing and cake, where as Livi wanted to play in the icing and get her hands all messy. I especially enjoyed when Livi shared some of her cake with Sugar...just what we need a sick dog and a large vet bill! :) NOt that sharing our food with the dogs is a new trick for you guys by any means...you've been doing it for awhile...but turkey and sweet potatoes/bananas/raspberries/strawberries, etc. are MUCH better for the dogs than icing and cake! I suspect you'll be doing this OFTEN over the coming years!

hum.....let's taste this stuff...

Olivia...

Sydney....

On Saturday we had your First Birthday party, and man was it a party. 65 fun fabulous people all invited to come see you (note that 65 does not include children under the age of 5, so in actuality it was more like 87 fun fabulous people all invited to see you! :) It was so fun to see all of our friends (well, not really all of them b/c our house isn't THAT big) and family and to see all the kids interacting and playing with each other. YOur Aunt Nancy predicted that you guys were going to learn LOTS of new trickes from the other kids and boy was she right. WIthin 2 days Livi was actually pulling up and cruising our couches, which Miss. Sydney has been doing for about 2 weeks now! I doubt it will be long before we are actually walking! You guys got so many cool presents that you have been playing with for the last week and many of them that Mommy has to clean up at the end of each day so that you can continue to enjoy them fully the next day!

HEre's some of the food that we served (I took a picture for Aunt Nozomi, since she's in Japan and missed it!).

Playing around at our Birthday Party.....

Olivia..

Nikki and Sydney

Gage and Sydney

Gage & Sydney & Olivia


Olivia trying to eat Gage's new toy!
Aunt Amy & Caroline & Aunt Julie and Baby Kara...

Miss Caroline....love those eyes!

Aunt Amy, Caroline, and Olivia


Uncle Drew, Aunt Nancy, Stephanie, and Sydney...

Aunt Laura & Uncle Brent, Collin, Cameron, Brandon, and Kyra....

My favorite girls! (By the way...who told you 3 could get big too?)

Alyssa, Olivia, Peyton, Taylor, and Sydney (listed in the order pictured)!

The girls are big sisters to Baby Brendan.... note how cute he looks in his hat! :) Can you guess who bought it for him? His mama is my friend Laurie!

Mommy & Daddy with the girls after their 1st Birthday Party!

After Our Party...for dinner...wearing our 1st Birthday Bibs from the Birkenmeier triplets!

Bed and Bath time was not too long after this picture!

As I said before, it's been a great year. I have more than enjoyed all my time off with you guys this summer and I look forward to all of our adventures during the summers to come (vacations, parks, play groups, little gym, visiting friends and family, the zoo, you name it), and I fully intend to be sad each summer when my vacation is over, but know that I am a MUCH better mommy to you when I am working and helping other kids at work. I love you girls and I cannot wait for all the new and exciting things that you are going to learn this year! Now, do you think that the 2 of you could get some teeth?

Happy FIRST Birthday....

Love,

Mommy & Daddy

Happy 4th of July Weekend!

Craziness and Insanity rule our lives these days and it just get's more and more hectic around here. As I write this, I can literally feel my summer break and the time I have left with the girls speeding by. It's coming up so soon that I will be having to go back to work, and I'm very very sad about it. :( I love my days with the girls...yes, it's hard to go places and do things, but it's so neat waking up to their babbling on the monitor in their cribs, playing on the floor in the morning after bottles, before oatmeal, and talking and singing all day long. I am going to miss this, yes I know I'll have weekends and evenings, but it's not the same. My little bitty babies are gone..darn it WHO told them they could get big? I cried in Babies R Us last week, when I was looking at the size/length of 12 month sleepers...seriously, they have to be TOO long for my girls...I know it...so, I refused to buy any! :( My own little rebellion about my girls getting older...I'm not ready for this AT. ALL!

The past week has been crazy busy in our house! In the last week, Olivia has learned to not only sit herself up, but has officially decided that crawling isn't that bad. A day or so AFTER Olivia learned to sit herself up, Sydney figured out how to do it as well, which was good for her, but she would often go straight from laying down to standing in her crib...so weird. What's even weirder is going in to get the girls up from naptime or in the morning and they are sitting there and waiting for me and playing.

I have noticed that the girls are becoming more and more dependent on each other..it's cute. Often times, Olivia will not lay down for her naptime until I bring in Sydney or vice versa. They also interact more and more these days, playing with each other's hair (not so gently at times), touching eachother, singing/imitating the other. It's so adorable and this is what makes having multiples even more fun! The flip side of this, however is that They also notice when one of them is getting something the other isn't...like who get's their bottle first thing, etc. SO, I've been taking turns off and on so that neither of them can claim (when they are older of course), that I favored one over the other! :)

WE have been getting the house ready for the girl's upcoming birthday...god, I am not ready for that...so on Sunday Nana Sharon called and volunteered to watch the girls for a couple hours while we did yard work and went shopping....now that I'm in traction b/c I pulled a muscle in my leg during the 4 hours of yard work that we did! Craziness, but it needed to get done..I can now report that the weeds are gone and our flower beds have been remulched..THANK GOODNESS!

This is what happens when Nana watches us during nap time! Probably not much napping taking place here (despite all Nana's efforts to get us to sleep)! Oh well, at least Sydney had fun! :)

HELPING Daddy put the Wii back in the entertainment center after he took it over to the Fatzinger's for the 4th...who wants to place bets on how long it will be before Uncle Keith get's a Wii? It's fun...everyone's doing it... you should get one! :)


PICTURES TO BE POSTED IN THE AM..............

For the 4th, we went over to our friend's Keith & Amy's new home....we love it and had so much fun grilling with them and their adorable daughter Caroline. I must admit, as much as I love the house.. I have some SERIOUS closet envy. They have some pretty cool closets in that place!

While at K&A's, the girl's had a BLAST playing in this window in their living room by Caroline's Play area! I tried to take a picture from outside b/c the girls' were making faces at me, but it didn't come out...so alas we only have indoor pics.


Sydney & Caroline playing...Sydney was crusing around everything she could find at the Fatzinger's house!





Sydney LOVES her Aunt Amy...here they are as Amy attempts to keep Sydney from getting in trouble! :)

Olivia...playing with Caroline's toys which of course are WAY cooler than ours...b/c they are different! :)

We brought the girls' highchairs over with us since we were going to be there through the girls' lunch and dinner...it definately made things easier! All 3 babies enjoyed their finger foods and played around in their highchairs!

Olivia...

Poor Sydney was so tired she fell asleep while eating her dinner (in her defense she didn't take a good afternoon nap)!

On Friday, July 3rd, Matt's company was closed for the 4th Holiday, so we had a great day! We took the girls' out to Breakfast at the Cracker Barrell, where EVERYONE had to comment on how cute they were or how how little they were (DRIVES me crazy when people do this), or to tell us about how they have twins, know twins, or are a twin. So fun. (note the sarcasm). The girls had fun! We came home, took naps (well, the girls' and Daddy did...Mommy continued to read her Twilight Saga novels)....then we had lunch and napped again before we went out for our first family picnic..it was so fun!

A little example of what our lives are like these days....pictures TOGETHER of both the girls are becoming increasingly more difficult to obtain! :)

Olivia...playing!

Sydney....

How does this thing work? I need to text my BFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well, since I can't call anyone, I think I'll eat it! :)

Our new sippy cups from Grandma Pat...we really like these! :)

We had our first family picnic today...and we went for a nice long walk at Cliff Cave Park by our house...did you know that there is a real train that goes through there? The girl's reactions to the train were pretty funny!

Cassius had a rough day...he was so tired he fell asleep on the girls' toys.

These pictures are from Wednesday, July 2nd..it was just time for a photo shoot, so I took a whole bunch of pictures of the girls!

My mom came over last Saturday and we covered the box that Matt's Dad made for the hearth so that the girls won't fall on the brick and hurt theirselves....now that is one of their favorite places to play and in Sydney's case, one of her favorite places to walk along side!

Sydney and Cassius...Can you guess who won?

Olivia...

Sydney & Olivia in their new outfits from Aunt Nozomi's Mommy and Grandma in Japan! We miss her! :(

Olivia...

Sydney....

Going for a walk in our new outfits from Japan! :)

Hope all is well!

J, M, S, O, C, & SR