Big boys...Almost one!

Well, we have been super busy as of late. I have been "slacking" on the blog posts and many of you have been asking when we were going to update it so here it is!
We have been to Houston to see Tim's parents and then to Henrietta to see my parents and go to a wedding. We are headed back to Fort Worth soon and will be there for the boys birthday on Tuesday.

Tim and I cannot believe they are almost one! What a wonderful year it has been and what a wonderful God we serve. We really didn't know that having children would be this amazing. It has not been a perfect year by any means or a sleep filled one, but it has been one where we have seen God's hand in so many ways through our kiddos. What a blessing... Honk! Honk! Make way for the twinkers!!!

Swimming at the grandparents!

Caleb's pouty face...

Choochie's sweet smile...

Our shirts say "spelling champ..." in honor of their mom, who was on the spelling team at her school...:) (thank you jeanette for the shirts!!!)

Dad's camera

Here are some pictures that I've taken over the last few months.

This were the last cold days of the winter so we got the boys dressed up in their warm clothes one last time

Dad and Chooch were having too much fun

Their Great Grandpapa (The Original Big Tom) came in a few weeks ago and loved on those boys so much. It is so obvious watching him interact with them how much he loves them. You have to pry our kids away from him with a crow bar!!! This is a wonderful picture of Caleb falling asleep on his shoulder.

Emily zonked out after a hard days work with the boys.

Papa was juggling two at a time and they were loving it. He has such a special way with kids

More wagon video footage...

I couldn't resist putting one more video of the wagon ride on here. This is even better then the first one because it's more of a close up of the boys....enjoy! It's so fun to see how kids delight in things and how contagious their laughter is.

Little Red Wagon

We took our first wagon ride the other day and the boys loved it! They had their toys in the wagon and were set to go. However, we ended up carrying all the toys between the two of us because they are in the phase now where they throw EVERYTHING on to the ground and laugh. After we had picked up the toys roadside about 5 or 6 times, we decided the game was over. And besides, who needs toys when you are on a wagon ride?!
Both boys have about 5 teeth a piece and constantly have their hands or a toy in their mouths from teething :)

Tim captured this picture and we both love it! As soon as we put their hats on, they try to take them right off so Tim worked at lightning speed to get this pic before that happened.

This video is GREAT. You can see that Caleb REALLY liked riding in this fun wagon...

First time for sketti...

Cabers always takes about 3 or 4 bites to try things before he decides if he likes them. He had mixed feelings about the sketti at first, but then he LOVED it!
Matthew is obviously smitten with his bites of sketti!

He GRABBED my sketti finger and would not LET GO...!

Cabers and his evil eye look...watch out!

This is a video of the boys eating their spaghetti...

Pacifier Snatcher

I made this sugar free banana pudding with a whip cream topping the other night. We let the boys have a little taste and as you can see Matthew was NOT happy when we did not give him another! I guess it was kind of mean to tease him like that with just a few bites!

This is Caleb having a taste of his little treat.

Daddy on meal duty...the boys love it when he feeds them because he makes lots of funny faces while he is doing it...they just laugh...

This is a picture of the boys holding hands after they fell asleep on a walk with Tim. Sooo sweet! These are my favorite "twin" moments!

These two were konked out after their walk! Good work Tim!

This is Chooch with his stylin tennis shoes on!

These tennis shoes are so fun and they squeak when they touch the floor. The boys love it when we hold them up and let them bounce with them on! They will be great as they start to stand up more and walk...yikes, are we ready for that?!

Matthew probably crawls under this table at LEAST 5x a day. He loves it! I finally removed the lamp cord thinking that was what was so appealing to him. But, it didn't matter. He still crawled right back under. The problem is he has yet to figure out how to crawl back out without bonking his head, so most of the time Mommy helps him. :)

This is one of my favorites. I was reading Matthew this ducky book that he loves and Caleb just snuck right up behind us and rolled over right onto Matthew. I had the camera close and was able to catch the pacifier snatch in progress!

After Caleb snatched the paci, Matthew just snatched it right back and went right back to reading his ducky book!

Dangerous Territory :)

Well, it's official---the boys are into EVERYTHING...kitchen drawers, baskets, magazines, newspapers, dresser drawers, fake trees (with the fake grass that gets everywhere), Dad's trashbasket...you name it, they have discovered it! It's a crazy phase and I feel out of breath chasing them around most days! But, man is it a really fun phase. And at the end of the day, there is nothing better than Tim and I sitting on the floor and the boys seeing us from across the room and crawling right up into our laps to snuggle. We are so thankful that our kids are developing normally and from what we hear, this is all part of it!

The latest thing they have discovered are the stairs. They pull themselves up onto the first step, but have yet to do anything else. However, we will definitely be purchasing a gate within the next week before these two try to spur one another on to step #2! We can already see them "tag teaming" on so many occasions. Caleb is usually the instigator and usually the one who comes up with the ideas (i.e. let's pull that newspaper down from the couch and then we'll each take a piece and tear it up and then eat it). So, I'll see Caleb head over to the couch with Matthew following and they work together every step of the way to accomplish the task at hand. They both love lamp cords and pulling down books from a table in our living room. They now look at us as they commit the crime and just grin every step of the way. We are doing lots of "redirecting" these days! Let's pray that we will run this "marathon of parenting," as one of my friends put it, with lots of grace and patience. I think the marathon will look differently at different stages, but what a huge and wonderful responsibility God has given us to run with endurance.

Caleb says, "Brother, come on over...the stairs are REALLY fun!"

As soon as Matthew crawled over to join Caleb, Matthew looked back at me just to make sure he wasn't in too much trouble YET.

Big grin from Cabers...

Baseball or football? Which one will I choose?