Miscellaneous Carter

(This post is a lost and found one. It should have published back in November but apparently Blogger ate it...so here it is now, better late than never.)

Carter is VERY obsessed with gardening, and watering plants, and taking care of anything green. When we dug up our flower beds this fall to plant bulbs for the spring we pulled out some small paintbrush flowers that never really thrived and threw them in the trash pile. Horrified, Carter pulled them out of the trash and found some extra dirt and replanted them. Then every day he watered them and talked to them and moved them around so they were in the best sunny spot. He cracked us up with the attention he paid to them. This is the end result after he carefully cared for these decrepit plants. He even found some moss growing around the park area and transplanted it to his pots to make them look prettier.

And this picture is for Carter's Grandma Cathy. Carter is happily playing cars on the living room floor...with Daddy's truck stop collection from his childhood (bet this looks like Joshua did when he was little) and then since he needed extra room to play, Carter added the car rug that Grandma Cathy sewed years ago for Trevor. Pure boy fun!!!
Carter has all of a sudden blossomed with his fine motor skills and the other day he spent A LOT of time and drew this very busy picture. Here's his description, clockwise from noon.

Carter's name, Dad's office window in blue and Dad standing in his office window, flowers growing along the bottom in black, Carter and Karen standing in the bottom middle in black with Bunny in the middle, it's Bunny's birthday (thus the balloons attached to the top of her), Reese is in red, the fireplace is in blue, water balloons for the party are hanging from the black line, and the chimney is in black in the middle with lots of smoke coming out the smokestack.
It's that time of year...the leaves are falling and that means Moms and Dads rake them up so little monkeys can jump in the piles. Happy Fall Y'all!!!

Trevor does Track

Trev is in the middle of his first Track season. He loved Cross Country so much in the fall that he decided to give Track a go. He is enjoying this too, but boy it's different managing several running and field events as opposed to just running one cross country event and being done.

Here's Trevor giving discus a try. He's doing pretty well with it, considering it's his first time ever throwing, and he's improved his distance at each track meet!



(Imagine a cool disc-flying-through-the-air pic here...my camera stinks and didn't catch a clear one.)

Trevor also tried the 400m run last week and placed third!


(And the final picture is what happens when you have an awesome camera...thank you to the awesome dad standing next to me who snapped!)

Here's the coolest picture ever, of Trevor flying through the air on a fantastic long jump!!!

Texas surprise!

One of the awesome perks of moving back to Texas is we will now be a quick three hour drive from our dearest friends, Brett & Sanda, and their boys, Mason & Ethan. When we went out to TX on our house hunting trip I joked with Joshua that I wanted to take one day off from house hunting and drive up to see them...but I was firmly told that I was on a mission to find a house and visiting would have to wait for June. So we house hunted and found one...and then on the last day of our trip Joshua pulled off a huge surprise for me. I thought we were going to grab some quick lunch and relax at the hotel room for the rest of the day before flying out early the next morning. But when we walked into Taco Bell guess who was sitting there waiting for us?! I almost fell over dead from sheer shock at seeing them! My amazing husband had secretly called them and arranged for them to come up down!! Once I recovered from the unimaginable shock at seeing them when I didn't expect to, we had a wonderful afternoon, hanging out and visiting!

We took the boys to an indoor bouncehouse and playland to wear off some of the long car ride wiggles.

Thank you to Brett and Sanda for making the trip and to Joshua for setting it up!!

And today just happens to be the boys' third birthday so here's a special shout-out to them!!
HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY Birthday
Mason & Ethan!!!

To the FARM!

Over the monkeys' Spring Break we went out to visit our friend who has a FARM. This is extremely awesome to my kids because they love all things out doors, especially animals! It had been raining for weeks so to add to the fun, it was also MUDDY! So we put on our (borrowed) farm boots and headed out for fun!

The most important part of the farm visit for Carter was seeing the baby chicks. Of course, this is the point in the day that I realize my camera doesn't have the battery in it, so there aren't any pictures...but rest assured, Carter got to love on "Miss Lindsey's baby chicks"!

Next was feeding the big chickens and collecting some "farm fresh eggs"

And then it was time for mud! And what better to play in the mud with that a four wheeler?! Here's Trev and Rich spinning some donuts...


And all three monkeys piled on for a ride


And at the end I remembered my iPad can take video, so here's Em and Rich throwin' some donuts!


Then we went to the stables to meet some of their horses...and Trevor and Carter got to actually feed them!







It was funny, after a day of hanging out on the farm, I've realized how much of "city folk" we've become in the past few years. BUT I will add that Em, Trev and Carter LOVED being "farm kids" for a day and would probably do it every day if somehow I could let them.

Thank you, Rich and Miss Lindsey for a fantastic day on the farm!!!!

Seven

Emilee just finished up her Club Volleyball season and it was AMAZING! She was one of the most experienced members of her team so it was a proud mommy moment to watch her lead and teach her teammates. We are also very proud of how much Emilee has improved over the last year. Serving used to be her biggest struggle but now it's one of her strengths! AND I'm tickled to say that I actually caught one of her better streaks on video!! (It's so hard to catch any of the awesome moments on video when we are at 6+ hr long tournaments, you just can't get it all!)

So here is Emilee getting SEVEN amazing serves over!!

Wonderful surprise

This morning Joshua and I are on a plane headed back home. We've been in Houston all week to close escrow on the new house. I'm excited to report that everything went perfectly and we have a wonderful home to arrive to on June 1st! Now, I want to share something really awesome the sellers did for us.

Here is a picture of the kitchen area from before the sellers moved out. Notice the sticker in the upper corner. This family loves their stickers. There are 6 or 7 throughout the house. We thought the kitchen one was pretty cool and assumed they'd remove it before we took possession.


Well we went on Tuesday morning for the final walk-through inspection before signing the closing papers and look what they had done...


Can you believe it??!!??!!

We really feel lucky to have bought this house from them. Not only are they are terribly thoughtful but they have done a fantastic job of upkeep and maintenance on the house, which makes us feel like we made a great decision in purchasing it. Oh! And they even left us the pictures of the construction of the house, and even a postcard about Kindergarden roundup for Carter. Aren't they pretty amazing?!

Last day of skiing

Over the kids’ Spring Break last month, I took them up for one last day of skiing, for the season and for a good long time due to our move to “no snow for 100s of miles Texas”. (Emilee also brought her friend, Sage, along.) It was a gorgeous day, a bit of fresh powder and NO LINES so though it was bittersweet, it was a perfect day on the slopes!! Again, I don’t have many pictures of Emilee and Trevor skiing because they are experienced enough they take off and ski the harder hills together without me now. But I did snap a few shots…

Carter's last run down the Big Hill
Em and Sage getting off the lift
Snowball fight

Carter making his snow ball to join in


Three monkeys saying a snowy "cheese"!

Carter turns 5!!!

It’s been a whirlwind here since we found out we were moving (thus the several week gap in me getting any posts up here on my blog). One of the most important posts I need to catch up on is Carter’s birthday!!

We invited several of his close friends to a local arcade type place for his party and they all had a blast! And we did an Angry Birds theme since he’s kind of a fanatic. So while he waited for his friends to come, he got in a couple of levels on Daddy’s iphone…


And then he played skee ball and rode the motorcycle game with Daddy…

Singing and cake and presents were enjoyed…


The carousel ride was the big finale!!!


It’s nuts that our “baby” is 5 years old now! He’s such a character and we are so blessed to have him round out our family!!

I wanted to close with a story that I wrote down on a scrap piece of paper and found a couple of weeks ago. It’s from his FOURTH birthday…and is a great example of his hilarious personality. It was the middle of the day on his birthday, gifts had been opened in the morning and cake was to be after dinner. So I asked Carter, “Boog, how does it feel to be FOUR?!” And he replied “I am not four until I eat cake!!!!”