Nicky's 1st Birthday Party - Maryland

We had Nicky's 1st of 2 birthday parties this past Saturday (the 2nd one is in PA in 2 weeks!) Can you believe our little baby is getting so big already?!

All the yummy cupcakes -made by Mommy, of course!

Gramma Robin bought Nicky a special cake that he could have all to himself!

Happy Birthday Nicky!
Digging in...

Having a blast!

The Incredible Hulk!

This was not fun to clean up, by the way -but well worth it. He had icing lodged up his nose, in every ear crevice and all in his hair!

Aunt Melissa gave Ben a fun "Un-Birthday" present - a bubble maker that all the kids had a blast with! Ben, EZ & Logan had a blast chasing after Sam blowing the bubbles.

Trinity was super excited too!

Even little Christian joined in the fun!

Christian's such a handsome little guy.

Me & my Dad. I'm so glad you were able to be there Dad.

Grampa & Gramma Robin

My Dad and my step-Mom, Robin came up to PA for Nicky's birthday party. They both got a lot of really great pictures of my boys (as well as themselves) so I wanted to share them with you! I'm so glad they were able to come. They love us and our children truley and unconditionally and it feels so good. I'm grateful to have both of them in our lives. I love you both!

Nicky loves his Grampa!

-and his Gramma Robin!

A kodak moment...

A few great pictures of my happy, silly boys!

Dad helped Sam start putting the swingset together. We thank everyone for their donations to the swingset fund so far! The first step was buying the swingset, next we need to get some mulch and frame out a little play area. Donations still being accepted! :)

Quite the daunting task lay before Sam. Upon reading the front of the box, Sam learned that this whole project could take up to 10 hours -with 2 people! Anyone wanna come help?

The Flower Beds are finished!

Well, it was alot of hard work (mostly on Sam's part -thanks again honey! You're the best husband in the world!) but the flower beds are done! I really like how it makes our house look. We chose to use red mulch instead of black because everything is so "black and white" with our house, we needed more of a pop! What do you think of how it turned out?

Gardening

This past weekend, we decided it was finally time to enhance the beautiful walkway that Sam (and Garrison and Clint) laid down this past fall. We've added two flower beds up along side the walkway and then connected up to the ones that were already up against the house. So, now they're basically "L-shaped." So, first here's a pic of before it's finished...
And for a few of my artsy pics... I love taking these types of photos.

I love my new watering pail! Isn't it cute??!

I did all the easy planting in the boxes and hanging baskets... ;)

...while Sam did all the back-breaking work (Thanks so much - I love you honey!)

Sam really wanted me to get a picture of this thing tearing up all the dirt... I know how to say it but not how to spell it... it's a rotatiller?? Feel free to correct my spelling! Haha :)

Nicky had SO much fun playing outside!

It actually got hot enough to pull out the pool! (could you believe though that by today, Ben needed his winter jacket to go back outside? Crazy temperature changes...)

One of many pictures I got of Nicky doing what he enjoyed best outside -EATING DIRT. Hey, it's organic, right?

Ben came over to check out what Nicky was doing. Can you tell he was a little perplexed by Nicky's fascination?

Ben trying to show Nicky that it's ok to play with dirt, just not to eat the dirt!

My silly boy. He had so much fun outside, we had to bribe him with candy at the end of the day to come back inside.

Like I told you, this kid loves dirt. Do you believe me? And from what I've heard, he gets this from his Great Gramma. She used to eat it like it was going out of style! Then again, maybe it's just a boy thing, Ben used to pick out the rocks and eat those.

Playing an upside down version of peek-a-boo. My little cutie...

After studying the flower -very intently... Nicky ate this organic matter too.

And then came to eat Mommy! Oh no -watch out!!! : )

Ben helping Daddy plant the shrubs.

Well, there's more pictures to come once we finish putting the mulch down! I'll post the completed project hopefully by the end of this weekend!