Carter's dinner

Carter's birthday is Sunday and here's the conversation that happened today in the car on the way to preschool...

"Hey, Boog, what do you want for your birthday dinner?"
"Huh? What dinner?"
"It's your birthday on Sunday and I thought I'd cook you your favorite dinner...what do you want?"
"Oooooooooh!! Yes!! My BIRTHDAY!!! Ummm hmmm, I don't know."
"Well, hun, what do you like to eat?"
"Toast! Yes, I like toast!! Let's have TOAST!! Hooray, it's my birthday and we will have TOAST!!"

Seriously, Carter?! You crack us up!

Videos!

I've finally gotten a few videos uploaded to share! And in the process I think I've made better friends with YouTube so maybe I'll feel motivated to get video uploaded more often!

Here's two from our first time skiing. The first is Carter and Joshua skiing down the hill. Sorry I don't do a perfect job of keeping them in the middle of the frame. It is so starkly white out on the slopes that the glare makes it impossible to see anything in the viewscreen of my camera. So this is all a "point and hope" deal...and considering that, I guess I did pretty well!


And here's Trev navigating down the hill...


And this one is yesterday morning in our driveway, "sledding" down the icy slope!

Snowy sunrise and fun!

It has been very UN-white here for us in Idaho. For a family who LOVES the snow, we got unlucky this winter and have largely missed out on the snow (a big blizzard hit Idaho the week before we moved here, and two blizzards have hit Oklahoma since we've left). So it was terribly nice to wake up to the above picture yesterday morning!

Trevor got dressed, ate his breakfast and packed his backpack as fast as he possible so he could get outside and play (shovel sidewalks) before school. Emilee and Carter weren't far behind him. I'll betcha the neighbors were thinking crazy things about the new people who've moved in and were outside playing at 7am before school!

I actually caught a nice straight-on smile from Carter...man, those have been hard to get lately!

The mountains in the background are nice and white again. The past two weeks the snow line had creeped up mighty high, putting a risk to ski season ending early.

Immediately after school Trevor headed back outside to play. You can see how much snow had melted just in about two hours of sun around lunchtime. But Trevor still managed to create this huge snowball from the patches that were left along the basketball court and beside the fences. (Don't ask me about the serious look on his face...I sent Em out to snap a pic of his snowball and this is what she came back with haha!)
And I had to crack up when I called him in to dinner. He said "OK Mom, I have to get my basketball first!" I thought he'd run real quick to the court, grab his ball that he'd obviously abandoned to make the snowball, and then come in to eat. So when he'd been gone several minutes, I looked out the window to try and see where he was. I saw him hacking at the snowball with a shovel.
"Trev, come on, get your ball and come in to eat!"
"I am trying, Mom!!"
"Uh, Trev, where is your ball?"
"INSIDE the snowball!!"
LMBO!!!!

Carter's getting big!

So I was completely caught off guard last week when I discovered that aparently preschool registration season was in full swing. We intended to put Carter into preschool in the fall, for his last year before Kindergarden...but doing anything about this was FAR from my thoughts at the moment. I thought I had plenty of time to worry about finding a program for him, sometime in the next few months. Well I started noticing flyers and billboards giving notice that it was registration time. I called a couple of preschools to ask a few preliminary questions and they were already full for fall...yikes!! Suddenly I felt like I had about 2.3 seconds to figure out where he was going to preschool this fall, or he might not be able to go! I was able to arrange two tours/interviews and went armed with questions and fingers crossed. Carter and I went to the first one and loved what he saw! He immediately started asking me if I could drop him off there! I told him "no, hun, you can't start school until the fall." As we walked out to the parking lot from that first school's visit, Carter stopped, looked up at a tree and said "look Mom, the leaves are falling...it's fall!!" Smart cookie, eh?! We went to check out the second school (the one I ended up chosing) and he again so super excited at seeing all the kids and fun activities. The director took us around to look at the classrooms and we were supposed to just peek in the door and see what the students were doing. Well Carter walked right in and went and sat at a table full of kids and starting doing their actitivy like he totally belonged there!! I immediately told the director that I was sorry and started to walk in to grab him and she said "no, don't worry about it, let him stay for a few." So we chatted and Carter sat there for the longest time, visiting with the teacher and students and doing the counting activity with them. It was ADORABLE! I finally pried him away and we started to leave, paperwork for next fall in hand. Carter was tugging at me saying "Mom, please drop me off, I want to stay with my friends!!" and the director wispered "yanno, we just happened to have a student drop from our three year old class, it's two days a week, since he's obviously so ready for this environment, would you be interested in that spot to start him now instead of waiting for fall?" HAHA, so between Carter and the director, I got convinced to start our big boy in preschool! His first day was Monday and he was sooooo happy!

Here's a picture of us on the way, complete with new "big boy" hairdo!

Here he's posing, backpack on, in front of his preschool's playground before class.
And a pose at the classroom door...
This is one of the little things I already love about his school...the parents are greeted with a note like this each day when we pick our monkeys up.
And, to make a make the first day of school all the more special, it was also Valentine's Day...so here's a picture of Carter showing off all of his goodies and cards from his new friends!
So after two days, Carter absolutely loves going to school!! Of course the only bad thing about having school two days per week is that there are FIVE days he CAN'T go! "Moooooom?! Do I have school today??!!!!" :-)

LaVerne Came To Visit!

One of my most wonderful friends, LaVerne, just came for a visit for ten days and we had such a great time! She is just an amazing lady and the kids and Joshua and I loved having her! We took her “up the hill” on her first weekend here so she could see some snow (there’s none at her home in central California so this was a big deal for her). She can’t ski, but she enjoyed hot chocolate in the lodge and watched us play on the mountain. She also hung with Carter for a bit when he pooped out and the four of us got to explore the bigger hill for a while.
Posing for a couple of look where I was shots!


Here’s Joshua trying out the new “learn to ski harness” we got Carter. He wears the harness like a backpack and the adult can steer him and keep him from skiing uncontrollably down the hill with two leashes. It is sooo much nicer than trying to ski with him between our legs or use ski poles to give him balance. He did soooo well with it! It’s adorable and hilarious to watch him sliding down the hill with his knees bent and his little arms out like an airplane.

And I got some shots on the lift with Em

And then Trev

And then I caught this picture of Joshua and Trev going up the lift when I was skiing down the hill.

And since we had someone else there to snap a shot, all 5 of us got to be in a picture together!

That night after a long day at the snow, Carter was watching some TV before bed and LaVerne crawled on the couch with him and passed out.

In the evenings after the monkeys were in bed, LaVerne and I got to enjoy some adult time. We had a couple of drinks in front of the fireplace and our favorite snack, fried zucchini. Years ago when we were next door neighbors, from time to time, one of us would make fried zucchini and then call the other to come over and enjoy a surprise treat…it sure was nice to have LaVerne here to enjoy times like that together again!


LaVerne had been dying for a Hot Toddy all winter to warm up with, so one evening I googled how to make one for her!

Miss you already, lady!!

Lovin' my laptop

I am the proud owner of a brand new laptop…THANK YOU, Joshua!!!

I just had to share the sad before and after of this. My old laptop was in pathetic shape; it sorta looked like it was in a computer Intensive Care Unit.
BEFORE...

The fan was broken so it had to be hooked up to a fan cooling pad 100% of the time (or else within minutes it would be HOT and shut down) and then the screen died (some part broke that cost more to repair than buying a new machine) so my laptop had to be hooked up to a second screen. (At this point it in no way resembled a laptop by definition of being portable and on my lap.) And then the sound started going weird so we had to hook up external speakers… You get the picture…
AFTER...

So my dear husband came to the rescue and found a screaming deal for me on a new one. And now I am on the couch, happily typing and surfing away hooked up to NOTHING but my wifi connection! Woohoo, it’s the little things!

Carter's Letters

The other morning, I was doing paperwork at my desk and Carter was playing with some toys on the floor near me. He was chattering at me, and I was saying “uh huh” and nodding my head, not paying 100% attention to what he was saying. Then at one point I heard “and that makes a T!” I stopped what I was doing and turned to look…Carter was making letters with some toys. I asked him what else he could make and he showed me this…

The kicker is that we really have not been working on letter recognition much. He hasn’t been very interested when I have brought it up, so I didn’t think he had caught on to much beyond “his ‘C’”. But not only did he show me 5 or 6 letters, he was able to create them sort of abstractly with sticks. It was really cool, too, because when he ran out of letters he could make with two sticks, he went and found another so he could form this.

And then he found one more so he could make this...

Smart cookie we have here!!

Albertson's, oh how I've missed you!

I haven't had an Albertsons to shop at in 5+ years. In the couponing world it didn't used to be amazing, but their loss leaders were frequently fun so I enjoyed stretching our budget there. Well, here in Idaho, they run a "doubles" deal where they print three coupons in the weekly ad and you can stack them on a manufacturer coupon to "double" it. For the first time this week, I jumped into the doubling game and had FUN! All of the items in the above picture cost me $4.79 before tax. The 8 cans of soup, the frozen lasagnas, the hot dogs and the tortillas were FREE. The cheese slices were 50c each, the salad dressings were $1 each (not an amazing price, but we needed it) and the popcorn/soda was $1.29 all together as a combo deal. Normal price on all of this would be $35ish at Walmart and ALOT more if I bought it not on sale at Albertsons. Sorry, CA friends...I checked with my dad and it doesn't look like you get these special "double" coupons :-( ...maybe you should move to Idaho!!! :-D