Little Daredevil

Carter already thinks he is 5 like all the rest of his friends in the neighborhood, so we weren't surprised at all a couple weeks ago when Carter decided he was ready to ride his bike without training wheels.  He is 3 1/2, NOT 5 like Rylynn and all her friends were when they started riding sans training wheels.  This didn't phase him for a second though.  Two weekends ago, he begged Garrett to take them off.

 

After a few tries he was staying up and riding just fine, he just couldn't start by himself and his turning was a little shaky.  He was determined not to give up so easily though.  On Monday I went out with him to practice and realized that the only reason he couldn't start on his own was because his seat was too high.  So one quick adjustment and he was a new man!  

The next day he was hot doggin it and standing up while riding, only holding on with one hand, and riding up and down the curbs in the neighborhood with no problems.  He seriously has no fear when it comes to physical abilities.  

I have to say it was really fun for me to watch Carter pick this up so fast and so young because I vividly remember the day that my older brother just decided I was ready to ride my bike without training wheels when I was 3!  He taught me in one day.  As a parent I have second guessed that memory thinking there is no way a three year old could do that, but now watching Carter, I have no doubts.  Keeping up with older siblings is a very motivating force!

Fall Update

Carter's preschool class had a trip to the pumpkin farm a couple weeks ago.  I got to go with him and have a mom and Carter date which was so fun!  Unfortunately, it was rainy and cool.  It was the only yucky day so far this fall so that was unfortunate timing.  

He didn't seem to mind though!  We got to walk through the corn maze.

He did such a great job of finding his way through the maze.  The orange rope helped:)

Then each child got to pick two ears of corn and dry it so it would turn into popping corn.

Carter's favorite part of the trip was the tractor ride!  He loves tractors, cars, trucks, basically anything that has an engine and moves.

The tractor drove us out to the pumpkin patch where the kids got to pick two mini pumpkins, two gourds, and one medium pumpkin!  He was so excited about his choices.

He LOVED his first fieldtrip!  Carter is doing so well in Preschool.  The first week we were a little worried he wasn't going to love it because he had a hard time saying goodbye when we would drop him off.  But everytime we picked him up he would tell us how much fun he had so we stuck with it and now he loves it and he has no problem saying goodbye.  His teachers always tell us how helpful he is and what a great builder he is.  He is always building marble ramps and tunnels and block bridges.  Carter has loved building train tracks and bridges since he was 18 months old.  His teacher commented the other day that he was going to be an engineer when he grew up.  It was funny that she said that because Garrett and I have always joked that he would be an engineer.  We shall see, but no matter what we love our sweet darling Carter!  He has really grown up the last couple months.  He is so good at doing his chores and helping me around the house.  He is a great big brother and he is really great with Ollie too.  He thinks that he is 5 and can't understand why Rylynn and all her friends get to go to Kindergarten and he doesn't since they are all his friends too.  

Our second baby boy is growing up before our eyes!  He can walk now but he much prefers to crawl still.  He's just so much faster when he crawls and like his mother, he is quite impatient, so the walking is usually put on the back burner.  This picture is of Beckett eating his first bowl of ice cream!

I think it's safe to say that he LOVED it!  He is such a fun little boy with a huge personality.  He loves footballs these days and he still loves to cuddle with his mama.  When he sees birds, or any animal for that matter, he points his little finger and squeals at the top of his lungs.  It is so cute.  Well not really in church, but everywhere else it's cute:)  Speaking of church, we are officially on the nursery countdown.  Only 3 1/2 months to go.  I swear nursery should start at 12 months old!

He also loves reading books these days.  Rylynn is such a great helper with little Beckett.  He loves when she reads to him.  Beckett's favorite words these days are "Dat" for that, mama, dada, uh-oh, dant um for thank you, ink for drink, and ba ball for football.  

And then there is our little kindergartner.  Rylynn is loving Kindergarten and she is also in a dance class that she loves.  This was Rylynn on her picture day for school last week.  We did her hair very fancy and Carter came in and exclaimed, "Rylynn!  You look like a princess!"  It was so cute.  She is loving reading and math and has made lots of great friends at school.  She loves riding the bus to the Kindergarten Center.  (I don't let her ride the big bus with the elementary kids)  This week they have started sending homework home with the kindergartners and Rylynn loves it.  She started reading this summer, but I can't believe how much she has improved since school started.  Rylynn's class got to go on the fieldtrip to the pumpkin farm too, the day after Carter's preschool went, but I wasn't able to go with her so we don't have any pictures.  She loves her pumpkins though and has decorated her room so cute for fall with her gourds and pumpkins.  Rylynn's dance class is with all of her friends at church.  It is so fun to have them all in the same class.  It is a ballet, tap, and tumbling class which is perfect for her because she really wanted to do dance and gymnastics.  We are loving watching these cute kids grow up!  

Finally, I just want to put in a little plug for my awesome sister.  This is her newest book from Deseret Book and it is soooo good!  Seriously, I am not just saying that because she is my sister.  If you liked the Work and the Glory series, you will love this book.  It is a historical fiction about one of my ancestors who came across from England as a non-member with her member mother.  I just finished reading it and I can't wait for the next one to come out.  I highly recommend it!  

Happy Fall!

Summer Catch UP

I have been going through my picture files lately and I realized that there are tons of cute summer pictures that never made it to the blog.  So here are some fun moments from summer 2010!

Beckett consumed way too much sand!  He never seemed to mind it though.  

This was on a fun picnic with some friends at Hayden Lake.

This was Rylynn's favorite pose of the summer.  Don't ask me why she had the broken neck look going on.  Aren't the mountains in the backgroud beautiful?  Hayden Lake is my favorite of all the lakes we visited this summer.

The kids loved the recycling bin in the backyard this summer for some reason.  It was left in the back because we used it for dirt removal when we made the garden.  The kids loved using the dirt for many "projects".  Mom and Dad didn't appreciate the "projects" so much.  

Another favorite summer activity was the slip n' slide in the backyard.  It was sooo worth all $9 that it cost and it got a lot of use from the neighborhood.  We have a big slope in our back yard which I don't like, but it makes slip n' sliding really fun! 

Carter was definitely the biggest fan though.  He still begs me everyday to do slip n' slide!

Cute kids excited for their brother's birthday party.  We still can't believe that Beckett turned one over the summer.  That year flew by!

This was at our neighbor Kate's birthday party.  It was at a water park and the kids had so much fun!

Rylynn and Carter LOVE their friend Kate.  She cracks me up because she has three older brothers so she wants to be a boy.  She had a spiderman cake:)

Grandma and Aunt Andrea and baby Lauren came to visit for two weeks and we had so much fun!  We really didn't take any pictures to prove it sadly.  I'm not sure why.  This is one of the only ones.  Grandma is pushing Beckett in our produce basket for the week.  He loved it!

We have some friends that are renting a house right on Liberty Lake and they invited us to come play one day.  They have sail boats, and kayaks and even paddle boats.  It was so much fun.

Carter was loving the Dora vest:)

The paddle boat was really fun for the whole family.  Even Ollie got to come for a ride. 

Speaking of Ollie, he has been the life of the neighborhood!  All the kids love him and love to play with him.  This is Kate with Ollie.

A couple of days ago Carter got a little grumpy about how much the neighborhood has played with his dog and he said, "I'm sick of sharing Ollie with the whole neighborhood!  He's our dog!"  He has sharing issues.

Rylynn is a little sad that she is not Ollie's favorite so she tries so hard everyday to move to the #1 position.

You could find this scene on pretty much any day this summer in our home.  Carter LOVES setting up all his cars and then telling anyone who will listen each of their names.  He usually watches utube videos at the same time.  The utube videos are of other kids doing the same thing:) 

Yes, we realize he is obsessed.

There is a nice family in our ward that has a great pool and awesome backyard and since there isn't a public outdoor pool here, they opened it up every Tuesday and Thursday to anyone in the ward to use.  The kids loved going to their house to swim each week.

They have this awesome rope swing that goes so far.

It was great because the kids could take a break from the pool and go play on the swings or the trampoline and then go back to the pool.

The only problem with that is that Carter would take off his swimming vest to play in the yard and a couple of times he would forget to put it back on before jumping in the pool.  There were a couple of times I had to jump in with all my clothes on.  Luckily they don't live too far away!

Beckett loved the swing and playing on the steps of the pool.  Usually he loves to float around in his little froggy, but I didn't want to go in everytime we went so he would just splash around.

And finally, we learned this summer that Carter+skateboards+tall curb=road rash!  He had no shirt on either so his shoulder was all scratched up too.  Oh well, it could have been worse.  

You mean summer's over?!

Garrett's birthday

This year Garrett was a huge ball of stress for his birthday.  Not because he was turning 32, but because the week of his birthday he had his first big trial in Seattle and he could not stop worrying about it.  So needless to say, his actual birthday was nothing special. In fact he didn't eat hardly anything for the whole week of his birthday until after the trial.  But of course, he did great and came out victorious, so on Friday we finally got to go out to dinner to celebrate.  Then Garrett decided to invite a "few" friends over for dessert on Sunday to celebrate.  Well the "few" turned into about 60 people since all the youth in our ward love Garrett and wanted to come with their parents. 

I don't think you can tell from this picture just how crowded our house was, but it was lots of fun! Luckily it was a nice night so most of the kids flowed out to the backyard.

We played a fun "how well do you know Garrett" game and the answers that people gave were kind of funny(we haven't even lived here for a year yet), but it was a good way for them to get to learn a little bit more about him.

We had banana splits/sundaes, chocolate birthday cake, and root beer floats.  A few of Garrett's favorite things.  It was a lot of fun and craziness!  

So in honor of this amazing man I love, I will finally post our garden pictures from this summer!  Garrett worked so hard to make our garden awesome and we have loved having it this summer.

We had a space off to the side of our deck that was basically wasted space that got full sun, so we ripped up the grass thinking it would be a fairly easy job.  We were WRONG!  The dirt here is sooooo rocky.  

We ended up having to rent a tiller machine(I think that's what it's called) to dig up all the dirt and rocks to level it all out.  And of course this was on the hottest day of spring and it was like 90 degrees that day.

Then he outlined it all with paver bricks to make it look nice.

Then we had to add in all the "good dirt".  I never realized how much work goes into gardens.  I was mostly in charge of the weeding when I was younger:)

But it worked out great!  We had beans, tomatoes, beets, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, and strawberries.  Our only completel dudds were our bell peppers.  

It's so nice going out to the garden to get veggies instead of the grocery store.  

This year has been a tough one for Garrett and I have never seen him work so hard in his life, but I have never seen him grow so much either.  He has successfully started and run his own law firm for the past ten months, been the world's best Dad and husband, and in his sparetime he is the YM's president!  We love you Garrett and feel so blessed to have you in our family!!!  Happy Birthday!

Preschool Boy!

Look at my grown up boy!  I can't believe my baby started preschool on Tuesday.  

After waiting patiently, well kind of, for a whole week, Carter finally got his first day of school.  Rylynn was very excited for Carter.  She woke up with a cold so she stayed home from Kindergarten that day, hence the pjs.

Carter chose to have Daddy take him to school so Mom could stay home with sick babies.  Beckett is back on the nebulizer...another post.  I love how his backpack is enormous!

Here he is proudly displaying his new backpack in his cubby.  Look at that smile!

Daddy said he walked right in and was really excited about being there.

We're not quite sure why he is holding the marker in his left hand.  Maybe it was nerves:)

He adores the block area and could spend hours building.  He has been that way ever since he was one.  We think he is going to be an engineer or architect or something.

He loved his first day of school and felt so grown up!  One funny/sad story about the first day was when I picked him up after school he told me he built this huge marble tower and some boy in his class came by and knocked the whole thing down.  He was really mad about it.  His teacher told me she felt so bad because he had spent so much time on it and it was really cool.  Oh well, that's why we go to preschool to learn not to knock kids towers down.  It will be good for Carter:)  That was his only complaint though and he was so excited to go back today.