Dad Takes Same Sweet Snap with Twins for 8 Years Running: ‘Growing Older Together’
"The same little smiles that were there from the beginning are still there," Luke Gibbs tells PEOPLE
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Luke Gibbs and his twins in 2016 and 2024Every April, Luke Gibbs picks up his identical twin daughters, and his wife Melanie snaps a photo with one girl looking over each shoulder.
Melanie took the first photo in April 2016, a few months before Rosalind and Cordelia’s 1st birthdays.
"They were just so cute,” says Luke, a 47-year-old English professor from Springfield, Missouri.
When the photo showed up in his Facebook memories a year later, he decided to recreate it annually — he even set a yearly calendar reminder on his phone.
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“They just get a little bit bigger every year,” he says.
His now-8-year-old daughters are in 2nd grade. He loves looking at the pictures all together, watching the small changes in his girls — Rosalind is always on his left and Cordelia on his right — and in his own hair ("It's just all part of the passage of time," he says).
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Luke Gibbs and his twins in 2017RELATED: More Stories to Make You Smile
“They have changed in many ways, but they're still the same little girls. The same little grin, the same little smiles that were there from the beginning are still there," Luke adds. “The girls are getting bigger. I'm getting older, and as the years go by, we'll keep growing older together.”
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He hopes to keep the tradition going every year, if he can. In the very first photo, he was kneeling, because the new dad didn’t want to drop his girls. But as they've grown, so has his "dad-confidence," and in every subsequent picture, he’s been standing with each girl in his arms.
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Luke Gibbs and his twins in 2021“I was able to hold up pretty easily this year, but obviously, when they get to be teenagers I think it's going to be more of a challenge,” he jokes.
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