This LUCKY boy is ONE!

One year ago, we were blessed with our own little lucky charm! I love this little boy to the moon and back. He loves life and is so happy. He just wants to laugh (or make other people laugh) all day long. He is so strong-willed and solid in his opinions or wants, and most of all he loves me!

He is SOOOOO BIG!!!!

All I wanted for his first birthday (yes I get a birthday wish too!) was to take some cute one-year-old pictures. Nolan did not disappoint! It helped that I had my mom and ALL his older siblings to help keep him smiling! It was pretty easy!

My parents have been visiting for the past week, and the kids have been out of school for spring break, so we've just been playing and celebrating the first year of this busy boy's fun-filled life. We are all pretty wiped out (Nolan most of all!) but we had a fun week! I am crazy about this cute little guy! My life was forever changed on that fateful St. Patrick's Day one year ago!

 "Why do they keep lighting my cake on fire? And then pushing my hands away when I try to touch it? So weird."

No he hasn't mastered the fine art of blowing out a candle just yet!

Swinging, however, YES.

While we're on the topic of St. Patrick's Day, here's another crazy story! Travis told me today that he just read that the chances of actually finding a four-leaf clover are 1 in 10,000. Well, I've been searching clover fields since I was a little girl with no luck. Now as an adult, I've realized that the common variety of clover always has three leaves and it would take some kind of rare mutation (if that is even possible, which I doubted) to result in a four-leaf clover. So I gave up. Brooklyn, however, does not give up, and she looks for four-leaf clovers everywhere she goes. I didn't have the heart to tell her she'd never find one. Imagine my amazement, then, when today she found not one but TWO four-leaf clovers in our backyard. WHAAAAT????? I honestly didn't believe her and thought she was playing a joke on me. (I think that kind of offended her.) I examined the first one closely and was shocked to find that it really had four leaves. She said, "I'm going to go look for another one!" and ran back outside. She was back with another in about five minutes. I even made her take me out to show me where she found it, and sure enough, it was an average patch of three-leaf clovers. Amazing. What a lucky, patient, stubborn, stalwart girl!