ONE YEAR OLD ! ! ! ! !

Crazy that an entire year has already gone by. In one way I feel like it has gone so fast... but then again, I cannot remember my life before them so it feels like I have had these guys in my life for 5 years. A lot has happened since the last post so I will try to go in order.

Last weekend Chris went up north with Waddie to scope out hunting spots for this year, while the boys and I headed down to the cities for a visit. Grandma Chris was so excited to see Oscar walking and did lots of "exercises" with MacKay to help him on his way to walking as well. He's showing those early signs that Oscar showed about a month or so ago.... so I think in a matter of weeks MacKay will be walking as well. Friday night the boys' Uncle Dennis popped over to cut my hair (had about 6-7 inches cut off - looks SO much better now), and give the boys their birthday presents (some Little People sets). He also gave both the boys a trim.... tho Oscar doesn't really need it, his hair stays the same length but just keeps getting thicker. Saturday night I went out with my girlfriends to celebrate mine and Heidi's birthdays. Lots of the girls showed up and it was SO good to see everyone and catch up.

While we were down in the cities MacKay started to get the sniffles and had a runny nose, which Oscar quickly caught as well (there is no use trying to keep one well, if one is going to get sick, so will the other). And I started feeling a little under the weather at the beginning of this week too (could have just been sheer exhaustion or too much partying too)..... but I got better after a couple days. Unfortunately the boys weren't so lucky. They've been hacking and sneezing, stuff is oozing out of them all the time. Poor MacKay has a chapped filtrum too (area between nose and lip). And it is rather untimely as we were supposed to have their 1 year pictures on Sunday with Mandy Birdwell down in the cities. I had to cancel that and we're trying to figure out an alternate time to do them before she has her baby. I hate when they are sick..... they just LOOK so miserable. But they have their moments where they are all fun and games and giggly and look like they are on the upside of all of this.

Tuesday Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Dean stopped by to drop the boys' birthday gifts off. I thought it was good enough that they got them some cute shirts... but then they followed up by lugging in TWO...... count them, TWO Little People "Tot Rod" cars. They have one at their house for when the grandkids come... it is a little motorized car that has a controller stick so that we can walk behind and control it, tho it also has a button on the steering wheel so they can control it. We got them all set up and got the boys in them.... Oscar QUICKLY figured out that this little button on the steering wheel made it go. He was buzzing around (jerkilly) and at times even running over MacKay with it. We were all laughing hysterically at them. MacKay seems to have figured it out as well and it is so funny to see their reaction when it takes off. These boys are so spoiled.

I have to say I am also fairly excited at the boys' diet lately as well..... they are eating SO many other things now. Cheese, diced apples/peaches/pears... even carrots, bread (sometimes with raspberry jam), grapes, raviolis, goldfish crackers, nilla wafers, .... and we're almost done with our formula. They could have totally been purely on milk about a week ago... but I had some left over and am determined to use it until it is gone. AND..... we've even dropped one of our 3 bottles daily and are down to 2. They weren't taking their first bottle after breakfast....... so decided to try a few days without it and they seem to be doing just fine. Funny thing is, almost EVERY night MacKay refuses his nighttime bottle before bed too. I totally thought that would be the hardest one (and last one) we would get rid of. I am starting to wonder why I even stressed about trying to transition to milk and get rid of bottles..... they seem to be doing just fine and don't want them anymore anyway. These boys are just sooooo good. We are so lucky.

Onto the birthday celebration...... we decided a while back to forgo the idea of the big party and kept it simple. Just us. We invited Jolene (Chris's sister) and family over since they live in the area and were dying to be a part of the festivities and it was a blast. They got to our house last night around 6pm and we had pizza (boys already had their supper). And then they opened their presents...... Jolene and family truly spoil and shower these little boys with attention and gifts. They got a whole slew of stuff and absolutely love their new camera and cell phone to play with. And of course they brought the best gifts ever...... helium balloons. They can be entertained for HOURS with those.

Then we got the boys stripped down (thank god we did that) and gave them their cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday to them. They were slow on the uptake for figuring out what was sitting in front of them... but once they got their hands dirty they dug in. Someone (I'm not naming names JOLENE) thought it would be funny to get them to do "SO BIG" while they were eating their cupcakes.... which made both of them put their grubby little hands over their heads and mash everything into their hair. :) So after we got about 1000 pictures of the mess, we threw the boys in for baths and got them all cleaned up. They had a blast and were in such good spirits considering how they were feeling. All in all it was a fun birthday.

Here are some recent pictures..... enjoy....

We took the boys to BW3 (Buffalo Wild Wings) the other day with the Vagts family who lives down the street from us. Seth comes over to visit on the days he rides the bus until his parents get home... so I drove him in with the boys and we met for some yummy dinner. The boys did pretty well but got rammy after a couple hours. But Chris snapped these pictures on his phone camera of the boys wearing their BW3 hats. Oscar wore his the entire time - don't think he really knew he had it on. MacKay on the other hand ripped his off the second we tried to get it on (hence the blurred hand in the photo reaching for it)

Pictures from my get together with the girls. Had to throw in this picture of our cute little pregnant friend Lisa.... who I am happy to say is adding another boy to our group of kids.

The boys with their rocker toy. MacKay recently has learned how to get on this (swing leg over) by himself. I looked over the other day and he was just on it.

Just some funny pictures of the boys caught in the act. MacKay LOVES the weather channel... specifically Local on the 8s. Whenever we turn it on he B-Lines it over to the TV and gets so excited. Oscar lately has been showing off his prowess by lifting up his exersaucers.... do we detect a future olympic weight lifter?

These outfits are so simple but they are so cute on them. Here they were enjoying playing with the many storage bins I have for storing away the massive amounts of clothes they have that they can no longer fit into. I have 3-4 storage bins completely filled at this point and we're only in 18 month clothes at this point.

Just some goofy faces and hair. MacKay gives this devlish smile much too often. His whole face wrinkles up - he's such a clown. And Oscar woke from a nap with this rather nappy looking "do". There was no taming this either.... no matter how hard I tried his head just looked fuzzy.

Had to stick this picture in cuz it is just one of the neatest ideas for gifts for the boys - then again, it comes from a guy that loves to fish. :) Kevin and Lyn Wolfe had these shipped to us. They are "Cars" fishing rods for the boys for next summer. The handle lights up when you push on the casting out button so they love that.

Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Dean's visit. While MacKay worked on the wrapped presents, Oscar chose to help Grandpa Dean unbox the "Tot Rods" - I think he was more in the way, but he thought he was helping.

And the boys in their "Tot Rods". MacKay kept wanting to honk the horn (tho it makes no sound). And the picture of Oscar standing in it was actually taken while it was moving. Apparently we need to teach him vehicle safety.... or at least be good parents and strap him in next time. :) I love the "laid back" picture of Oscar..... likes he's picking up a couple of babes on the side of the road and trying to act aloof and cool.

The boys unwrapping their gifts from the Hehir family (Jolene, John, Kelly and Brandon) on their birthday yesterday. They got a few balls to play with, a cell phone, a camera, and this multi skill cube toy.

MACKAY AND OSCAR'S FIRST BIRTHDAY CUPCAKES

Let the mess begin....

Let's start with showing some before pictures taken while we were singing Happy Birthday to them.

Messy MacKay:

Who, by the way, fed the dog most of his cupcake, but thoroughly enjoyed smashing and mushing up everything on his tray. But he definitely got the jist eventually of cramming what was left into his mouth.

War Zone Oscar:

Again, Thanks to the "So Big" (JOLENE) :) ...... Oscar was definitely the messiest. You can even see in some pictures he has the confetti pieces from the cupcake stuck to him. Not sure he ate much of it, even tho Kelly was helping him eat it.

The Clean up:

MacKay had a blast in his bath afterwards..... Chris was kind enough to give him this nice mohawk for the pictures. And Meanwhile Oscar just kept making more of a mess of himself and thoroughly amusing himself and laughing himself silly.

But eventually they both came clean and played with their cousins (Brandon and Kelly) for the remainder of the night

Hope you enjoyed...... more to come later (hopefully some professional shots)....

Oscar is Walking !!!

First off, we had a fantastic weekend with the Wadman's, Matt, Jill and Cory. Friday night Chris and I (and the boys) went to Tim's (Chris's friend/coworker) 40th surprise birthday party. Jolene took to the kids home to put them to bed and we met Matt and Jill at Bada Bing's for a couple beers when they got into town. Then we went home and proceeded to drink massive quantities of wine and play Scene It until the wee hours. None of us were feeling too good the next morning and learned a lesson - we are far too old to be able to party hard two nights in a row. Must remember that next time and pace ourselves better :)

Steve, Stacy, Matt and Anna Wadman arrived on Saturday afternoon, as did Cory. The kids played well together and we grilled up quite a dinner...... but we were all so pooped we were all in bed by 11pm. Like I said - NEXT TIME..... But all in all it was a good weekend and I had a blast catching up with those guys and hearing about all the crazy times from Chris, Matt, Cory and Steve's college partying years. Chris informed me last night that they DID in fact study.... a couple times. Nice. But one very positive thing about having the Wadman's up here... they made me so much more confident about feeding the boys more solids. Anna was eating cheese, bread, grapes, Goldfish etc. So I decided to try the boys with this stuff and they ate it with no problem. So now they are getting this stuff on a daily basis and doing really well with it. I think next time we hit the grocery store we'll get them some deli meat to try too.... maybe even try pasta with them again. So Thank You to the Wadman's for that.

Yesterday Heidi and her 9 mo old daughter, Avery, stopped by for an hour on their way up to their cabin on Woman Lake. We had a nice visit and it was great to see Avery again - she is getting so big. And Heidi (generous Heidi) bought gifts for the boys for their upcoming first birthday. I just took them out of the boxes today and the boys LOVE them. Of course after they got bored with the actual toys they moved onto the enticing looking boxes that they came in.....why do we even spend the money huh?

And the big news..... Oscar is walking on his own. Self initiated and everything. Sunday after everyone left we were watching the Vikes and all of a sudden Oscar just let go of the recliner he was standing up against and started walking over to the coffee table. Prior to this he would walk about 5-6' to you if you put him in the middle of the room... but never did it on his own accord. Well now he is a walking machine (tho he looks a lot like Frankenstein in action) and prefers walking to crawling to get where he is going if he is already upright. We are so proud of him... and you can tell he is proud as well by the big smile he gets on his face every time. MacKay is completely content zipping around (gosh he is fast) via crawling and doesn't show much interest in walking yet. He will walk along furniture and behind his push toy... but won't even walk holding onto us. No rush though - I'm terrified that the day he learns to walk he will just start running. Those of you that know him know EXACTLY what I mean by this. We should start calling him "The Flash"

Well other than that stuff, not much else going on.... so here are some pictures

The boys' new Sports Center. We got this a while ago but just put it together this last Sunday. It has a basketball hoop (keeps score for each basket), a baseball to hit with a bat, and a football end post with a spinning football. They LOVED this game.... I say LOVED, cuz Angus has already chewed up BOTH of the basketballs that go with this and I cannot find any other balls that will work with this. THAT DOG..... unnnnghh. Well at least they got to play with it for 4 days before it was completely rendered useless.

MacKay and Oscar were kept pleased with two helium balloons from Tim's 40th birthday party - so they let us bring one of them home. MacKay just loves this balloon and screams and throws a temper tantrum when it gets away from him. And Oscar especially loves the rocker toy we set up for him this last weekend. We got it from Gpa Dean and Gma Bonnie last Xmas but just finally set it up. Eventually it turns into a mobile scooter thing too.

Some pictures of Frankenstein..... umm I mean OSCAR... walking. About 75% of the time he actually makes it to his intended destination too.

The boys were extra-specially giggly the other day and I was able to get some cute snapshots of them. MacKay wouldn't remove his fist from his mouth the entire time though.

MacKay and Oscar with their birthday gifts from the Nygrens. They got a counting piggy bank and the ball popper toy that every kid should have (Note I even caught a ball popping out in the picture). The boys didn't know what to think of that one.... but I got a lot of exercise crawling around after all the balls that bounced out of the machine.

And of course... the OTHER toy(s) they got from the Nygrens.... the boxes that the toys came in

Just a cute picture of Matt and Anna Wadman from this past weekend. Aren't they adorable? We meant to get a picture of all the kids together but Sunday morning was chaotic with people packing up so we never got one...... again... NEXT TIME :)

Over and out...... check back later.