Tyler's 4th birthday

Lexi and Tyler showing us how old he is now (with a really cool Lincoln log fort in the background)

There's our handsome fella on his birthday

Colton showing off his "proper" crawling now

Our attempt at a firetruck cake

One of Tyler's favorite gifts this year, he's excited to start soccer next month

Another favorite of Tyler's, more Thomas (thanks Grandma Sherry)

Colton looking ferocious with his teeth (although you can't really see them)!

Tyler and one of his best buds Elijah playing a game at Tyler's party. They were trying to put out the fire by smothering the flames (aka - trying to pop balloons with blankets over them)

Ty with his friends Chandler and Elijah

Here's Joshua playing the firehat stepping stone game. It took a little while for the boys to get the hang of it, but eventually Elijah and Josh thought outside of the box and figured out how to get the job done quicker and with less effort (it was hilarious).

Here's the hot potato (or hot firehat) game with Ty, Elijah, Chandler and Isaiah

Well Ty-Ty's 4 now (he'll probably not let me call him that much longer...) and seemed to have a great birthday. His actual birthday was super bowl Sunday, so...there was a little competition for attention, but he did open some great presents and have his choice of dinner (pizza of course) and I made him a couple giant chocolate chip cookie cake things. We had some friends over to celebrate Tyler's big day (and maybe watch a little of the game while they were here, right?). He really got to celebrate the following Friday though at his long-awaited Firefighter Birthday Party. We had it in the Firetruck room at Focus on the Family (which was free, nice!) and he had just a few good friends come and they played a few games and partook of the firetruck cake, which was a little sad looking, but fun just the same. The next day we had set up a little tour of our local fire station for Tyler and his friends with hopes of sitting on a real firetruck etc., but it didn't quite work out as we hoped b/c the firefighters were out on a call (doing their job....I guess we can't be too upset). Now Lexi and Nate's b-days are right around the corner.

As for Colton, he's 9 months old now. He started getting into the sitting position by himself a few weeks ago, which he is soooo proud of! He also likes to say "mama" a lot, which is fun b/c Tyler and Lexi both said "dada" first (I'm sure he doesn't really grasp the meaning yet, but I'll take it!)He also started crawling on all fours about a week ago. He still seems to prefer the army crawling as he knows he can get places a lot faster that way. He's pulled himself to standing a few times and is even starting to try to get into the fireplace and can open the doors, yikes...some of you know how that turned out for Tyler. Needless to say we definitely need to get back into the mode of baby-proofing everything again. He almost has 6 chompers now and I'm feelin' it (whereas Lexi is about to lose her 6th tooth - so I guess they're balancing each other out nicely).