Thanksgiving

I have been preparing for Thanksgiving for a few months now. I have always felt bad that I did not know how to make the turkey. So back in early October I took a cooking class from a friend. She taught me how to make it all-turkey, two kinds of dressing, green beans and mashed potatoes. I was determined that I was going to make Thanksgiving dinner! The class went well and I was ready to make my turkey today. I started prepping last night. Luckily, I had a helper! The second I open the dishwasher it's like an alarm goes off--Carter can't help herself. She has to climb all over it. 

 I set the tables and made some fun place card holders. Here is the "kids" table:

 The entry was dedicated to the birthday girl:

 The adult table...

 I made Carter a teepee to go along with the Pilgrims and Indians theme...

 The true kids table:

 Game day started at 5am when I woke up, put the finishing touches on my bird and stuck it in the oven.

 Then we continued with our annual Thanksgiving tradition of running the turkey trot.  I have only missed it two years since my senior year of high school. One year I was pregnant with Davis and my ob told me "no way" and last year I was in the hospital having Carter girl.  I love running it because I feel less guilty about the thousands of calories I consume later in the day.

 When we got home from the turkey trot Jason and our neighbor set up their turkey frying station.

 The kiddos enjoyed playing in the beautiful weather...

 And the birthday girl kept them company.

 And then the moment of truth. And I must say, I was happy with how my turkey turned out.

 I am so thankful for so many things this year. Happy Thanksgiving!

October

Where is this year going?! 

Carter is BUSY. She is climbing, crawling, couch walking and just busy, busy, busy.  

 I love fall. It is the kick off to the best time of year. We visited the pumpkin patch at the church and it was close to impossible to get a decent photo!

 We enjoyed Carter's BFF's first birthday party. Hadley's mommy had the cutest theme, Paint a Pumpkin!

 Papa and Grammy came to help out while I was in trial last week. Carter fell asleep on Papa one night waiting for me to get home:

 We set up a movie on the side of our garage one night. All the neighbors came over and the kids enjoyed a movie while the adults watched football.

 Davis is still loving school. We went to our first parent/teacher conference this week. We dropped Davis off in the cafeteria to go to the meeting. When we came back through to say good-bye we caught him going through the line a second time. This explains why I keep getting a negative balance on his meal plan!

 Davis enjoyed dressing up as Pete the Cat for storybook day

 We also enjoyed going to a football game with some fun friends:

September

September flew by-I am not even sure we really even had a September! 

Carter is now ten months old! Sweet girl is amazing. She has two teeth on the bottom and her top two teeth are starting to break through. She crawls all over the place and loves to push her cart around the downstairs. She says "dada" and loves to wave "hi" and "bye!" She is NOT a picky eater-she will eat anything.  

 She loves to crawl over to brother when he is eating anything at his table. This bugs him to no end!

 We enjoyed Davis' meet the teacher.

Bus Rides, Cafeteria Cookers and Girlfriends....

I had to fill out a questionnaire about Davis this week--his teacher wanted some insight into each of the students. One of the questions asked "What are you most concerned about?" I stated that I was worried that Davis would be the class clown. He tends to do things, regardless of the consequence, if he knows you will laugh at him. I am waiting for the first note to be sent home talking about something Davis did for a laugh....

But for now he still wants to hold my hand when we walk into school (for the record he grabbed my hand):

Davis LOVES pre-k but it wears him out! There is no fighting bedtime. Thursday of the first week he was asleep on the couch by 6:30! He came home on Thursday from school with a full lunch box. I was a little concerned that he had not touched his lunch. So Jason asked him what he ate for lunch and he told jason "we" ate pizza. He made it sound like the whole class had pizza. So I am thinking that they must have had a pizza party to celebrate the start of school. Jason asked him "who gave you the pizza?" and he answered "the cafeteria cooker" Oh man. Hilarious. So I emailed his teacher letting her know that I had no problem with him ordering pizza but just wanted to make sure that she did not pay for him or that we didn't owe any money. She let me know that the cafeteria workers are really good about letting the kids buy what they want the first week and just charging their account. I logged onto his student account and sure enough there was a negative balance! I just could not believe that my 4 1/2 year old was independent enough to see the pizza and decide that he would rather have pizza and go through the line!

 He is such a big kid with all the friends at the bus stop:

 One morning last week the bus came too early and all the kids missed it. Jason took Davis to school and dropped him off in the carpool line. Davis is so independent and such a big kid. Jason never got out of the car--Davis turned to Jason and told him "bye daddy! I love you! Have a great day!" and walked into school all by himself (this was on day two of the school year). I am so proud of him!

 We asked Davis who he wanted to sit next to on the bus and he informed us he wanted to sit next to Charlotte. He asked "Is she my girlfriend or something?" We had to nip that one in the bud real quick. We told him that no! she was a friend that was a girl and we have lots of those! But this past weekend we spent the majority of the weekend with Charlotte and these two were joined at the hip.

But you gotta love girls. Davis asked Charlotte if he could sit next to her on the bus Wednesday morning. She told him "okay Davis, but not tomorrow!" Love four year olds.
Davis goes to after school care nearby. I asked the after school teacher to please let me know if there are ever any behavior problems from him--I want to know about it. She told me that Davis was great-that he was very extroverted and loved to talk to her! I can attest to that--he starts talking from the moment he wakes up until the moment he falls asleep!

Happiest Baby on the Block

Nine months. It does not seem possible. I need time to please.slow.down. This time thing is breaking my heart. 

Carter is still the sweetest baby ever. Still a total momma's girl (yeah!) and still has me wrapped around her little finger. She is my baby!

 Now she no longer will take a picture with lamb sitting still. I get this:

 This month Carter started pulling up and crawling. She still only has two teeth. She is a good sleeper (although my standards are skewed because I am comparing her to Davis).

Over labor day our neighbors invited us to a birthday party. They had a giant water slip n slide in their backyard. They designated a time for the babies to play and all the big girls had fun holding Carter

 She still is breast feeding like a champ, inhaling yogurt and sweet potatoes and will even eat peas and green beans!

 Her favorite toy is the remote control so Jason, in his wisdom, dug out an old remote control and gave it to her. The last time my mom was in town she brought a big bag of clothes from when I was a baby. I am enjoying putting Carter in some of my old outfits. Here she is with the remote and in a gown I wore as a baby:

I am concerned that she is as big of a ham as her older brother. Here she is at bath time--intentionally throwing herself backwards-and looking at me sideways before she does it just to make sure I am looking. 

This sweet girl has brought even more love to our family.