We Survived the First Year!!!!

We have officially been parents for one year, and three weeks! We survived a year with twins. And it has been one of the greatest years of my life. Even better than 8th grade, which was seriously one of the best years of my life thanks to being on the Bay Beacons and watching lots of Bob Ross and playing SPIT.

The babies are pretty much entirely different people than they were in my last update. They are so awesome. I can't get over how much fun they are.


Annabelle Rae is running the show. She is definitely the dominant one at this point. Some of my favorite things about her are:

• She loves her baby dolls.  
• She loves to bring stuff to you and make you pat them like they are a baby doll. 
• She loves to be picked up and when you do pick her up she waves at all the pictures and things on the shelves. 
• She has three teeth as of August 25. 
• She has started saying, "Hi" just like I do. She just goes, "hi. hi. hi. hi." and when I notice that I do it too, it makes me so happy. 
• She can also say Ma-Ma, Da-Da, and Baby.
• When Brian comes in the room she goes, "Da-da-DA-DA" very excitedly.
• She dances. Really well. Especially to the Glow Worms.
• She knows where her head and her nose are. 
• If you tell her to get you a book or a toy she knows what to do. And she has definitely mastered saying "please" in sign language. 
• She loves to climb in and out of laundry baskets and Huggies boxes. 
• She is the sturdiest walker and so speedy. At our company picnic she just walked and walked and walked. 
• She is the sassiest and most outgoing one at home but in public she is shy, serious, and takes a while to warm up to people. 
• She also very much enjoys climbing onto the bottom shelf of the book shelf and pushing all of the books onto the floor.  
• Right now, my absolute favorite thing that she does is bring me a book and then scoot her way into my lap and snuggle in to turn the pages. It is the best. 

Stephen Michael is just the sweetest boy in the world. I love him because:

• He is such a cuddle bug. 
• He is very focused. 
• When he is playing with a toy he gets engrossed in it. 
• And he can sit and play with one thing for a while. 
• He loves his See and Say. 
• He is a big flirt. 
• He has the best smile and when he is in public he makes googly eyes and smiles at everyone. 
• At our company picnic he went up to random strangers and held his arms up to get them to hold them. 
• He is a walker too. 
• When he gets really tired he walks like a drunken sailor and often times tries to reach out for the couch or the table and just misses completely. 
• He loves to go to the window and wave when you leave the house. 
• He has the giggliest laugh in the world. 
• He loves to pull every piece of tupperware out of the cabinet in the kitchen. As does his sister. 
• He still only has two teeth. 
• My favorite thing about him lately is that he will just sit in my lap contentedly for a few minutes here and there and it is the greatest time of my life. 
• He can say Da-da, Ma-Ma, and Nana. 
• He knows how to give kisses and high fives. 
• He has crazy hair. 
• He is also pretty freaking good at patty cake. He dominates it.

A few more cute family pictures:

Finally, I am well on my way to being trained up for running the Marine Corps Marathon on October 30th. I will probably write a separate post about it but it is really exciting to be here. I started the year in January running 3 minutes and walking 1 minute at a time with the hopes of training for a 10K. And now I have run 16 miles and I have 18 miles this coming Saturday and then we have 8 weeks till the race. I really didn't think I could get here . So it is pretty exciting. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. And exciting.