Happy 1st Birthday Baby Gavin

It's hard to believe a year ago yesterday Brad was delivering this little boy in the bathroom floor...of all places. It's still hard to believe his labor and and how just how blessed we were in his delivery. Once again I look at him on his 1 year birthday and again am absolutely amazed at all that transpired within a year and how much not only life changes but how much children grow in just 12 short months, especially their very 1st initial year. To go

from this

to this

to this

..........is still just a miracle to me of how God works and life takes shape. It's incredible to both Brad and I to see how different they all are and see how much the younger ones now are all influenced by the older ones. Their personalities are so incredibly individually different, unique to only them, yet they all share sibling similarities and you can't help but notice one in another. I am amazed that he has turned out to be our 2nd redhead, though I don't think he can quite compete with the fiery orange glow Grant has going. I love how driven and intense he is even at the ripe old age of 12 months yet one of the most content and happiest among our crew. He goes from sunup to sundown on town days and only utters a whimper when the day starts to interfere with his 7 pm bedtime. All day long he smiles and is loved on and draws the attention of the world by his contagious little grins and silly and LOUD antics while we shop, eat, run errands and visit with whoever we happen to run into that day. He is amazing to me. To watch the bond that he and Garrett have is amusing to say the least. To have them be the 14 months apart that they are and to watch that bond have grown like it has over the past year is just amazing to me. Though Gavin can crawl and make his way through the house at lightening speeds he has yet to make it to his feet to try them out at all. The most that he does with his feet at this point is walk his way around the coffe table. He is quite good....and quite quick!!!.....on his feet with that. I think he just prefers making it anywhere else in the house much faster by crawling rather than ever trying to get to his feet and the trial and error falls that are unavoidable. So.....he crawls through the house in his rather successful efforts to keep up with the rest of everybody's busyness.

So, we celebrated by going to the SAFD vs SAPD baseball game Friday night. Brad ended up with a bunch of the chest stuff due to allergies so he called in Th...one of the reasons for my absence on here.....but by Friday was feeling good enough to play. The boys are still in awe that Daddy plays "real" baseball and have loved going to practices and LOVE going to the big field to watch the guys in action. They let Grayson down in the dugout during the game and Garrison and Grant have done nothing but hit balls with their bats and try heroically to catch what each other throws in their little gloves. Garrison was absolutely devastated over the fact that he was being required to come with me and sit in the stands while they practiced. So, amongst his wails Brad and the guys told him he was welcome to hang out and so it was that he got down on the big field with everybody and practiced throwing and catching with the best of them.

You can see Grayson and Garrison out on the field at the bottom of the bleachers as Garrison gets ready to catch Grayson's throw.

In this one Garrison little tiny body is over to the right walking around with all of the fire guys. Brad's on the front row, farthest on the left with his back facing the camera.

We left the house at 9:30am and arrived at the bank at 10, spending 2 hrs there attending to business, then rewarded the children for their incredible behaviour and patience by doing a nice sit down lunch, then headed on to Sam's, Wal Mart, picking up the cake, running by to pick up a few new Praise Baby DVD's at the bookstore for Gavin's birthday presents and continued on in our errand running ways until it was time to show up at the field at 3 for practice. The game was over at 6 and after visiting with everybody and then stopping for water we returned home at 8. This is what the van looked like while waiting on Brad, Grayson and Evye to return with the waters. It was VERY quiet. Nothing like a 10 1/2 hr day on the town.

We picked up Gavin's cake while in town for the game and came home to celebrate on Sat. Of course the cake didn't survive completely undisturbed until it's allotted time. In the midst of unloading the van Garrett went unattended and expertly helped himself an entire 24 hrs before it was to be eaten. You can kind of see in the pics where Brad attempted to patch it back up.

OH...I can't forget that we somehow managed, for the 1st time in history, to forget to load the stroller after the game was over. We realized it wasn't in the van...along with my phone that was still in it....as we stopped for water. We headed back to the field to see if it was still there only to find that someone....probably us!!!.....ran over it! How in the world do you manage to run over a DuoGlider and not know it???? Still pondering that one. As it was, we...or whoever it was....only managed to run completely over the left front wheel of it. Seeing as how that is about the only way we ever get out with all of them in tow it is a very critical piece of going anywhere. Any shopping is done using the stroller. Lunch and errands are managed without it. So, I now have to see whether I can switch out one of the tires from our older back up DuoGlider to see if that will meet the need and fix it. We are leaving for FW on Wednesday so we have to have something figured out by then. If not, we'll be hitting Kid to Kid and Once Upon A Child in search of a gently used double stroller. As sickening as the feeling was once we discovered it, it was still kind of funny. We drove up, back to the place we had been parked, only to find a group of firemen standing around babysitting it and each taking turns calling Brad's cell, which he didn't have on him - a once in a lifetime occurrence. You've got to be thankful for friends!

Nothing like summer, baseball games and birthdays! I will say being 22 wks pregnant kind of puts a damper on the 95 degree baseball games. Though I am immensely grateful for the dry, west TX winds that keep it tolerable and even go as far as to make it enjoyable....even if we all did end up sunburned!


Our Birthday Boy