The Big 0-3 and 3-0!

Well, the boys in our family just celebrated their birthdays this past weekend-- the big 3 for Zach, and the really big 30 for J-Man. Here's a rundown of the 2 day celebration, but first, my personal favorite, a walk down memory lane:

Zachary Jonathan Cardon, born 4/6/2009, 7 lbs. 4 0z. born @ 7:30 p.m. A VERY happy arrival!

Awwww, this picture both melts and breaks my heart. They grow up TOO fast!

Last year on his 2-year old birthday with his big blue eyes and curly blonde hair.

And one year later, as he turns another year older at age 3. A bright and cheery morning wake up to LOTS of presents. Hooray!

Zach has been super excited about his birthday coming up. When he woke up to all those presents he thought Santa had been here again.:) This is his new dinosaur hat Lucy got him.

Opening presents! He got a new Hot Wheels race track, a bunch of new Thomas trains, and some other fun boy toys to grow on. Luckily Jon had the day off so he got to enjoy the celebrations as well.

A delicious birthday breakfast of waffles, strawberries, whipped cream, and bacon. Actually, this breakfast was more for Jon's birthday than Zach's. His all-time favorite breakfast food is waffles, and as he recently pointed out, I've never once made waffles in our almost 8 years of marriage. Indeed, when I opened our waffle iron to use it, the wax paper was still inside. Whoops!

After playing with the new toys for awhile, we headed up to Asheboro to the North Carolina Zoo. Zachary LOVES the zoo, and was super excited about seeing all the animals again. We started in "North America" at the alligators. When you live in the South, who needs a zoo to see these guys anyway?

Lucy with the bison. I love bison. I think they remind me of those summer vacations to Yellowstone. I wish they still roamed the prairies.

Zachary fascinated by the honey bees! They had a glass "hive" so you could see all the busy bees making their honey. Pretty amazing.

We then found the carousel, and Zach knew right away he wanted the crocodile. Luckily we had to wait a turn or two, so when we finally got through we were near the front and got first pick.

Lucy picked the cheetah. What is it about carousels that kids LOVE?

We then made our way to the "Africa" section where the baboons fascinated us for a good 30 minutes. They had the zebras, giraffes, elephants, and ostriches all together in the same enclosement.

By about 4 p.m. Zach zonked out and since we'd had such a big breakfast we skipped lunch and were by that point STARVING, so we walked the 1.5 miles back to "North America" and headed out for some dinner!

Zach "picked" Cracker Barrel (more like it was the first place we saw off the freeway that we all liked) and enjoyed his mac and cheese and free birthday sundae. Yum!

Since we were so close to Greensboro, we drove the rest of the way and found REI for Jon. This is his mother ship. He got to spend all his birthday money while I entertained the kids with camping gear.

Even though we got back pretty late, we hadn't dug into Zach's Transformer cake-- which when we went to Michael's a few weeks ago to pick out a cake pan, he was ADAMANT that he wanted it, even though he has no idea what Transformers are, and they had Lightning McQueen, Buzz Lightyear, Spiderman, choo-choo cakes, etc. This guy knows what he wants. It looks awful, but he was totally happy with it.

Playing one last time with his new race track until 10 p.m.!! Only a birthday could justify such a late bed time...

The next day was Jon's birthday, so he got to pick the schedule. He decided to spend the afternoon hiking at Raven Rock state park, and then get dinner with us at Outback. He's pretty easy to please. We sure love both boys in our family and are SO thankful we get to celebrate birthdays with them. They are the absolute best, Best, BEST son, brother, husband, father, etc. a family could have. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!