Pictures before church

I found these matching shirts for the boys, and then I found the dress and jacket combo for Addie. It is harder to dress everyone alike or coordinating these days, but I love the challenge.

I thought everyone did a pretty good job, at first.

Ben doing Kung Fu, like he learned watching Kung Fu Panda. It is cute, but kind of dangerous.

Trying to get all three of them together is getting harder and harder. Ben does not like looking at the camera, Garrett is crawling and about to start walking so he doesn't hold still unless he is in his booster seat, Addie is the only one that will sit sweetly for me to take a picture.



Garrett is such a funny little boy. He loves to have his picture taken, Jon was able to get these shots of him at the table the other day. I can never pick which expression is my favorite.


We went for Garrett's 12 month well baby check up. He weighed in at 21 pounds 4 ounces and 29 inches long. That puts him right at the 25 percentile for both. He is a healthy little boy and we are so thankful.

Family Resemblance

My Mom put this picture on Facebook the other day. It is a picture of me the morning of my first birthday. We were living in England at the time and my mom was baking for my party that evening.

This is Garrett eating his blueberry pancakes the morning of his 1st birthday.


And just for fun, here are pictures of Addie and Ben on their 1st birthdays.
Addison


Bennett

Celebrating Gare Bear

This little birthday boy was so happy to see Daddy!

Addie was very anxious for Garrett to open his presents.

Garrett had lots of help opening his gifts.

Just looking at the wrapping paper was pretty fascinating for him.

Yay Balloons! Nannie, GeeGee,and Aunt Laura sent a cookie bouquet. They do this for the kid's birthdays and it is always a big hit.

The cookies, beautiful

and delicious.

We let the kids have a cookie upstairs while we watched Garrett's new Veggie Tales movie. The big kids did okay with their cookies, but Garrett decided that he wanted to make as big a mess as he could.

He was just to cute I couldn't stop him.

He loves to put on a show for the camera.

He was laying on his back saying "Mmmmmmm". It was hilarious.

Addie and Ben both loved their cookies, thankfully they didn't make as big of a mess.

The next morning we got ready for a playdate we were holding at our house. It was a Christmas Pajama play date so I washed Addie's Christmas PJs for her to wear them again.

They were watching a movie while Garrett took a little nap and I finished up some of the fun snacks we had.

Snowman donuts with orange frosting noses and chocolate chip eyes. The 'snowballs' in the middle were a big hit.

The snow man cupcakes were so fun. They are stuck together with white frosting and more orange frosting for the noses.

I thought the little snowmen were so cute.

Here is Garrett's cupcake. I saved this 1 from Ben's 1st birthday.

I did try to have some healthier alternatives.


Build your own snow man with bananas, blueberries and pretzels.

The Birthday Boy!

Getting some love from big sister, Addie.

You can't see it here, but there were about 30 people there, most of them able to sing, Garrett loved all the attention.

I love Garrett's frosting mustache in this picture.

Thanks to my friend Amanda for getting some family pictures.

Garrett did not want to share with Daddy.

He really liked his cupcake and marshmallows.

He loved the balloons that came with his cookies, the kids are still playing with the balloons!

Thank you to everyone who helped make our Little man feel special. I can't believe he is already 1. We go tomorrow for his 1 year check up so I will have all the stats for my long and lean Garrett.

Happy 1st Birthday Garrett!

I can't believe we are already celebrating this little guy's first birthday. I got up and made blueberry pancakes this morning as a birthday treat. Do you think he enjoyed them? There will be more birthday festivities to come in the next couple of days.

I had picked up a kids daily devotional at Lifeway during their Black Friday sale. Jon and the big kids have been reading one every morning during breakfast. After he reads he asks the kids if they have anything they would like him to pray for. Addie's hand always shoots right up and she always has something or someone she would like him to pray for. Ben's prayer requests are usually animals, the last two days it has been giraffes.

A Birthday Surprise

On Jon's birthday we hosted our class Christmas party. We had about 40 people at our house and everyone was having fun chatting when there was a tap on the door. I opened the door to see a gorilla crawl by me. He went straight to Jon, gave him the balloons and did a little dance to the music playing on his Ipad. It was one of the scariest/funniest things that has happened at our house.

It was even funnier when we found out the person in the monkey suit was our mild mannered friend Jeff. What a fun birthday surprise! And the kids are still having fun with the balloons.

Happy Birthday Jonathan

This year Jon celebrated the big 3-0. We hosted our Sunday school class Christmas party on his birthday, so the night before I made him some brownies and we had a family celebration.

Addie's Christmas Program

There is nothing sweeter than watching Addie sing her songs in her Christmas program. She is so good about practicing her songs, it is always fun to hear the whole chorus of little voices singing and watching them do the hand motions. Addie is toward the front, in the middle of the photo.

Garrett had a lot of fun watching Addie, at one point he started yelling what we think is his version of her name. It was so sweet, and loud.