Birthdays all around!

This past weekend Mimi came up to visit and help us begin our birthday celebrations.  My birthday is the 14th and Cory's is the 16th.  Mimi watched Lincoln on Friday while I continued my inservice for the beginning of the school year.  They had a fun time playing outside, shopping and cooking our dinner for Friday night.  Saturday we ran a few errands and then on Saturday afternoon she left to make 4 hour trip home.  Thanks Mimi for coming to visit!

Sunday we enjoyed the afternoon eating lunch at a one of our local favorites and more shopping!  I had so much fun hanging out with my boys.  Lincoln was feeling very affectionate, as if he knew it was my birthday!  Cory caught these priceless pictures of us. 

Then on Tuesday evening, we celebrated Cory's birthday by cooking his favorite dinner at home, opening presents and going to the local park to play with Lincoln. Here are two pictures of Lincoln and Cory back in June that I adore and I am not sure I ever blogged.

I love having mine and Cory's birthdays so close together.  As Cory tells it, I LOVE "togetherness" so I enjoy getting to basically share our special days.  However it should be noted that Cory is...ahem...older :)!  There is no one I would rather share with. 

Speaking of sharing, Cory is quite use to sharing his birthday since he is a twin and all.  Happy Birthday, Uncle Cody!  Here is one of my favorite pictures taken of Cody and Lincoln last October.  

And last but definitely not least our little princess of a niece has her special day on Friday!  We love you Tilly.  We hope you have a wonderful day!  This picture more than sums up her little personality...

Lots of people to celebrate and lots of reason to eat cake around here!

Happy Hump Day!

Look Alike?

After I took and posted this picture for Valentine's Day Cory saw it and said "Wow, he really looks like Cody (his twin brother) in that picture."

This prompted me to finally scan in several baby pics of me and Cory (that has been on my to-do list since August). It has also been commented that Lincoln favors me, Cory and even my dad. One of my favorite questions to ask people is "Who do you think he looks like?" So it only fitting that put the question to the bloggers.

So, you be the judge.........................

Here is Lincoln at a year old.

Here is my dad (on the left) with his twin sister.

Here is Cody (left) and Cory (right) about 20 months of age.

Here are Cody (left) and Cory (right) again about 2 years old.

And here is me :)

You may have gotten side-tracked by all the "twin" pics. Yes, my dad is a fraternal twin and so is my husband. This also means there are not pictures of JUST my dad or JUST my husband. They always come in pairs. Anywho, back to the subject at hand. As crazy as it sounds I think Lincoln favors me and Cody (my brother-in-law)!

Do you think Lincoln gets his good looks from my dad, Cody (my BIL), Cory (my husband) or me? :)

Lincoln's Loot.

After a bath to clean off the birthday boy he was ready to open up his loot. As any good kids birthday party goes, he had lots of little helpers. Here is Brodie showing him the ropes on how the baseball machine works.

Brooklyn showing Lincoln how his new swing from Mimi works.

Showing Lincoln his new tickle-me Elmo from Pop-pa.


Lincoln giving Elmo a hug.


Taking a ride in his new wagon from Papa and Gigi.



Lincoln again giving Elmo a hug. He does not give sugars, only hugs.




Opening up presents is hard work.

After presents, the party continued outside with the kids jumping outside in the bounce house as well as taking turns trying to break open the parrot pinata. In the midst of the craziness I have no pictures to show for the those events. The party was a hit and the last person left about 4 hours after the party started.

We wrapped up the day with photo opts with his grandparents -- Mimi and Poppy

Papa and Gigi with the birthday boy.

Proud parents!

Hope you enjoyed your first birthday, Lincoln. We love you!

Smash Cake.

For his birthday party, Lincoln sported this very fun shirt that I ordered for him off of etsy. I wanted to be sure and get a picture of him wearing it before the smash cake event began.


Ok, back to the fun, classic, tradition that who knows where it started of letting a one year old tear into a cake.



On Friday afternoon, we met up with Lindsey to take Lincoln's one year pictures which you can view here. We did a smash cake for the pictures so it gave Lincoln a trial run. So on Saturday he seemed to understand a little bit more that cake is not only good for playing with it but it also tastes good. He started off a little apprehensive but with some coaxing he caught on and ate it up.

"Mom, this stuff is yummy! Why have you been holding out on me for a WHOLE year?"

Fun memories in the making.

Come back soon to see all of Lincoln's loot from the party!

Historic snow fall.

Well, I will let the tape measure speak for itself....

Yes, you read that correctly. 23 inches measured yesterday in our driveway.

This is our neighbors car.


Snow was falling around 2-3 inches per hour which means that all 23 inches fell in about an 8 hour time frame.

Our house has definitely never seen so much snow. It was definitely one for the history books for the whole state of Arkansas.

This mound of snow was perched on our roof about the garage. A very interesting way of accumulating. We ventured out in the afternoon to explore this very fluffy snow.

Lincoln was not sure what to think about all of this.

It was so tall that we couldn't really let him "play" in it. We did let him stand up in it after we dug him a place to stand. His face tells it all. We probably won't see this amount of snow again till Lincoln is all grown up!

Yikes!

Pig Soooiieee

On Saturday, we took Lincoln to his first Razorback basketball game. He was amazed at everything! He sat for the first several minutes taking it all in.

He would clap when the fans clapped

He would point at the court and look at us like "What are they doing?"

He definitely loved all the timeout activities but became bored when there was not as much action as he wanted. He was easily distracted and hard to get a picture with. :)

The last 8 minutes on the clock he became pretty fidgety and wanted down to crawl and explore. Since that was a gross option we didn't want him to do that so we took turns standing up with him and walking around. All and all it was a very fun afternoon. We look forward to more games with him. O. And the Razorbacks won. They beat Tennessee and it was a GREAT game.

Our lil' punkin.

Today, we ventured off to the McGarrah Farms pumpkin patch.

Our first stop was to document the trip with some family pictures!





We then went in search for a BIG pumpkin for a little project that I have in the works! We found the perfect one. Lincoln loved all the people, the pumpkins and especially the hay. His favorite was riding in the wagon with the pumpkin we chose.




I remember going to the pumpkin patch as a field trip when I was in school and I loved it! It is definitely a tradition and memory I want to create for Lincoln as he grows up! He clapped the whole time we were there. I think that meant he approved.



I just love our lil' punkin.