Celebrating Half a Year
Where has the time gone and why is it moving so quickly? We've come so far already, with still so many more amazing moments and memories to share. Our boys are now 6 months, and yet we are still in the middle of a global pandemic, but with vaccines now released, an end is finally in sight. And although our special celebrations have been different, with only the closest immediate family around, they have been that much more meaningful to all of us. These are the special moments that we all carry with us, and that we will always cherish.
Seems like just yesterday we were heading North to meet our boys for the very first time. It's been a whirlwind experience of a lifetime, one which we are incredibly grateful for. Our lives together started rough, with a two week NICU stay, but we wouldn't want it any other way. Our boys grew with incredible strength and adversity and pulled through with ferocious might! Holding our boys for the very first time was the best memory of our lives. The journey was a hard and long one, but worth every sacrifice, every tear, and every heartache. Our lifelong dream of becoming dads, had finally come true!
Memories to last a lifetime
Celebrating our first Halloween with our two adorable pumpkins, in a pumpkin patch, and scarecrow daddies, was another dream. From designing and customizing your costumes, to the beautiful backdrop of an actual patch in the Redlands, the holiday was picture perfect!
We also took our first family vacation! With all the current travel restrictions, the only means of travel is by car, so by car we traveled! We drove North until we reached Beech Mountain, North Carolina, at our families beautiful mountaintop chalet. It was definitely a site to behold, full of beautiful greenery and the trek took us through hills and ridges, where we witnessed the leaves changing season. During our vacation, we were visited by tens of deer, we hiked to Linville Falls Waterfall, and most importantly, we enjoyed each others company building nightly fires, eating the local fare, and relaxing immersed in nature. It was a definite treat for us and the boys, and we will be back in February to see the snow!
Holidays
Thanksgiving was a small affair this year with only our parents and grandparents taking part. It's very important for us to keep our boys and family members safe from Covid, so we opted for tiny gatherings, with extensive precautions in place. Christmas was a similar affair, with a small Noche Buena celebration and a morning Christmas breakfast with our close family. The boys received a special visit from Santa, with tons of great gifts, because apparently they evaded the infamous naughty list! The holidays offered many blessings, all things considered, and everything worked out, as it was meant to be.
Dean and Devin,
You have brought us immeasurable love and watching you grow and your personalities shine, has been the highlight of every day we have shared together. You have brought so much love and joy to those you touch (figuratively, lol) and we can't wait to see you continue to grow healthy, happy, and shine brighter. The stress of parenting is forgotten the second we see the beautiful smiles on your faces, every day. We couldn't be happier or more honored to be your Dads. We love you so much!
- Papi and Papa
How we celebrated 6 months
Daniel found a recipe from Cupcake Jemma for 4-layer mini cakes, so we decided to be brave and bake our boys their own mini birthday cakes. We setup 4 different batches of cake mix and using food coloring we mixed colors to match the blue-green Ombre color scheme to match their room decor and balloons. Turns out we added to much food coloring and we got a dark booger green, a Miami Dolphins green, and the third color matched one of the colors perfectly. Daniel, being the perfectionist he is, decided to head to Publix and purchase new batter to redo all the colors, in lighter hues. For the record, no cake went to waste, as Dennis devoured all the unused cake (lmao!). After a few hours of baking, the boys bedtime came and went so we finalized all the cake prep, and decided to leave the actual celebration to the following day. We didn't anticipating messing up the colors, but we did it with so much love, so it was worth every second. Also, our 4-tier cake turned into a 3-tier because we felt it looked better and the cakes were pretty thick so an extra layer was a bit much and we weren't going for the leaning tower of Pisa look.
We celebrated their 6-month birthdays in their nursery. We dressed them up with the latest swag (so cute) and brought along all their closest friends, several stuffed animal bears and sang them happy birthday over and over and over again. They absolutely loved it and I'm sure you can tell, from watching the YouTube video below. We couldn't have any friends and family so stuffed bears befit the occasion perfectly. We can't wait to celebrate their first birthday, and hopefully, we can do it full on, with all their family and friends around (fingers crossed!).
A quick thank you to our friends at Nano Baby Co. for sending our boys the cutest rainbow colored teething bracelets. They love the colors and they're definitely serving their purpose as they don't stop chewing on them, sometimes for hours on end. If interested in teething toys and then some, follow their Instagram by clicking ---> @nanobabyco or visit their Etsy store here.
YouTube Video
Check out this weeks video below, where we chronicle the past 6 months with our boys and make them their very own 3-tiered cakes (originally 4-tiered). As always, we thank you for the love sent our way, and ask you to comment and like our video to get the algorithm going in our favor. Please subscribe to our channel, as well, if you haven't already done so. We appreciate you all so much!
