Oliver and Silas are EIGHT!

How did my babies get to be 8 years old all of a sudden?

It seems like we were just here:

And now we're here:

Jared and I were totally in shock after the midwife confirmed two heart beats. We wondered what in the world God was doing sending us TWO more babies when we felt like we were already taking a leap of faith to go for ONE more -  the three babies we already had were keeping us super busy and Jared and I were feeling spread super thin with work and community responsibilities as well. How silly of us to doubt even for a minute that God knew exactly what we needed. Our family and our lives would be so incomplete without these sweet, kind, beautiful, bright, energetic, fun little boys! Truly, sometimes our greatest fears and greatest hardships become our greatest blessings. (To read more about our experience finding out about the twins and their birth story, click here.)

We had a grand celebration yesterday.

We started with the twins' favorite breakfast - Pumpkin Pancakes.

Ashton and the other big kids gave Ollie and Si some great coupons. This one from Ashton is for a "brother date" to the 7 Eleven up the street where he'll buy them the king size candy bar of their choice. Such an exciting gift!

 

I picked up them up from school to go out to their favorite place (and Indian buffet) for lunch with some surprise guests - Grammie and Grandfather.

After school, their birthday party was super fun. They wanted a "building party" (they're really into building toys - always have been) so we spent a great afternoon with friends building with legos, K'nex, Magformers, Zoobs and Snap Circuits.

The presents were very generous and exciting and most of them involved more legos and K'nex which was just perfect.

For the first time, the twins each got their own cake which was VERY exciting for them.

Silas went for Chocolate Cinnamon (like Ashton - recipe here).

Oliver went for Banana cake with Nutella frosting (recipe coming this Saturday).

I was pretty proud of myself for making the cakes actually look quite decent for once. I'm famous for really tasty cakes that really don't look very good.



When the friends left, we headed to Classic Fun Center for the family party. The twins have been begging to go to this place forever so we made it happen and they were ecstatic about everything. We roller skated, played laser tag, played on all the inflatables, climbed around in the big play structure thing there and ate pizza. Such a fun night!

There are still three more very exciting things the twins get to do as part of turning eight. Tomorrow night, they get to go to their first Cub Scout den meeting and they've already memorized the scout pledge and keep practicing the scout handshake and scout sign. To say they're excited is a serious understatement. After watching their big brothers do scouts for years, they're so glad to be able to start!  Then, quite soon (still working on the date), Jared and I will be taking the twins out to have the big talk we have with all our kids when they turn eight and they're getting excited to learn all about how babies get made (more about how we do this here). Then at the beginning of February, the twins will be able to be baptized. They've been working on memorizing all the Articles of Faith and they're very serious about preparing well for their baptism. An extra exciting thing is that since their dad is the Bishop, he'll get to be the one to interview them for baptism.

My babies are eight. Wow. Wow. Wow.