The Patterson Family: The boys have been on this Earth for one year!! Can you believe it??

Before we start with a run-down of the day's festivities, this is Jack blogging on behalf of an exhausted Suzanne. Before we had kids, I was ALL about the one-year-old birthday party (food, cake, drinks, more cake). Now, I have lived through it to warn all future fathers!

We started our 4th of July at the early hour of 5:45 a.m., when Luke reminded us that we have twin one-year-olds. An hour later, after bottles and a change of clothes, we were off to Darrell and Gayle's (D&Gs) to prepare for the 11:30 a.m. party. We opted against making it a huge deal because we felt like it would have been too much for the boys to handle, so we just invited family and a couple of the boy's good friends.

Let me start-off by saying that Gayle Tate can throw a party! I walked into their house and thought I was at Gymboree: Fourth of July streamers, red wagons, an Uncle Sam top-hat cake, etc. In all fairness to Darrell, I heard that Gayle "suggested" that Darrell take the day off on Thursday to get the house ready for the shin-dig. Thanks also to Pam for bringing a lot of the food and drinks.

The long and short of the party was that we got to spend a couple of hours celebrating our Love Bugs' first year on Earth by eating and swimming. We had some very special friends come to the party from far-away destinations: the Loughridge's, the Vaughn's, the Dethrow's, and the Nutt's. We missed our extra-special friend, Meredith Moore, who is in the hospital on bed rest with twins, herself. As with most 1st birthday parties, the boys took a king's haul in presents. My favorite part of the day was helping the boys devour their mini-cakes.

Now, we are exhausted!! However, we've got a busy week ahead of us. Tomorrow, we are going to another 1st birthday for our twin friends, Ben and Henry. On Sunday, Suzanne and I are going to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary by traveling to the site of our wedding, Rough Creek Lodge in Glen Rose. My parents and my grandmother, Mimi, are going to watch the twins from Sunday through Tuesday to give Suzanne and I some nice R&R.

I hope everyone had as fun of a 4th of July as we had! Enjoy our pictures from today. --Jack