Easter 2015

Easter started this year with a trip to the church for the annual Breakfast with the Easter Bunny and the egg hunt.  This was Garrett’s first Easter and also marks one of very few times that I have dressed the boys alike.  I truly thought I would do that more, but just haven’t for some reason! 

All the grandkids except the newest one, baby Charlotte, who was still in the hospital during this breakfast!

 

Mrs. Kristi is explaining the egg hunt to the kids so they’re all waiting patiently for the green light to start heading outside to hunt the eggs!

 

It didn’t take but about 2 minutes for Carter to have his basket full of eggs.  Once his was full he started helping his cousins Cynthia and Celia fill up their baskets.  He’s a sweetheart!

Helping his cousin get some eggs with Nana.

Then there was the actual event of Easter…

This needs explanation.  See, Carter is OBSESSED with his Nana’s car.  Mainly because her license plate tag says “SING JOY”.  He spells it all the time.  With those magnetic refrigerator letters…on the bathtub wall with those spoungy letters that stick to the wall…all the time.  Everywhere.  He loves it.  I just so happened to find a place that does kid size license plate tags for bicycles.  So I picked our state and made it say SING JOY and the Easter Bunny brought it to him for Easter.  He was so excited!  It’s now on the back of his bike.

 

We will likely sign Carter up for some tee-ball this fall, but he’s never played before so we got him the tee-ball set so that he would get some practice in our backyard.  Naturally we had to have a quick teaching session with daddy before church.

It was the best I could get.  Y’all…the struggle is real.  Getting a picture of two kids while they’re both looking at the camera and not messing with their clothes and making decent facial expressions…it’s impossible.

The cousins before digging into their Easter baskets at Nana and Papa’s house.

Then we had an Easter Egg Hunt in Nana and Papa’s backyard.  Nana had a great idea to ensure all the kids would get the same number of eggs.  Each egg had the number 1, 2 or 3 written on it.  Each child was assigned a number so when they went hunting for eggs, they could only get the egg if it had their number on it.  If it didn’t, they had to put it back.  BRILLIANT.

After the egg hunt we may or may not have let all the kids ride Uncle Justin/Daddy like a horse.  He was a good sport :)

Christmas 2014

This Christmas is what I consider Carter’s “first Christmas”.  It’s the first Christmas, just days shy of three years old, that he truly understood Santa and all things related to Christmas.  He knew why we were leaving cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve night, he knew what Santa did for a living, and he got excited, for the first time, about coming downstairs Christmas morning.  Let’s begin by taking a look at Carter’s FIRST time ever for taking a picture with Santa and not crying!!!

Garrett wasn’t quite comfortable in Santa’s lap, hence his face, but this is the very first picture of both of my boys with Santa.  I will cherish this picture forever!!!

After that came the Christmas with my extended family that lives in Gordo, AL.  We only really get to see them once a year at this time.  One of my cousins, Quinn, had just had a little boy (after having 3 girls she finally got her boy!) and is roughly 2 months older than Garrett so it was nice having 2 babies for everyone to love on!

My aunt Delane (left) is holding Garrett.  To the right is Emily holding baby Cole.  These women loved on these precious boys most of the evening!

These are all the kids in the family.  That’s a lot of kids!!!  Thank heavens for Quinn and her three girls…otherwise our family would be nothing but boys!!!

Cole and Garrett….Love Cole’s face in this picture.  He’s like “ummm…why is this kid laying on me?!?!”  And for being 2 months apart, they’re basically the same size.  Garrett’s in the 75th percentile for weight while Cole is in the 25th percentile, which makes sense for why the look the same size!

Where our families started.  To the left is my grandmother and to the right is her sister.  Love them!

 

Love this boy!!!

And then came Christmas Eve.  We do Christmas Eve with my side of the family-this time it was just my immediate family instead of the whole extended family.  We went to my sister’s house in Tuscaloosa again and we had so much fun!

My grandmother held Garrett the majority of the time we were at Lindsey’s house.  Unfortunately, she had to ask whose baby he was several times (Alzheimer's) but you could tell that holding a baby again absolutely made her day.  And I will absolutely cherish this picture whenever my Nanny goes to be with the Lord.

 

On the left…these two boys.  They so love eachother.  I’m pretty sure that this was when I was playing “Turn Down for What” by Lil’ Jon on my phone.  Carter calls that his song and he loves dancing to it.  So I’m pretty sure this was him dancing on the ottoman and then Anderson hopped up there with him to dance too.  On the right is us skyping my other sister, Jennifer, who lives in Tampa and couldn’t be there.

My photographer sister found these fun props at Target and had to buy them.  So glad she did because we got some super cute pictures with them.  See:

 

When you have a baby, you can almost always count on never once holding him during a family function.  Everyone else wants to!

All the fun wore this kid out!!!  We were trying to get home in time to see Santa on the fire truck driving through our neighborhood, but we left too late and missed it.  So we decided to go to church where, shocker, Papa held Garrett the entire time…

 

We really wanted Carter to see Santa on the fire truck, so we went to Papa and Nana’s house after church because he was supposed to be on there street at 8pm.  Well he never showed up so we sent Justin to drive around the neighborhood to find him.  He found him alright…but he was leaving the neighborhood!!!  Justin came back to his parent’s house and we piled the kids up quickly.  The website said Santa would make one last stop in another neighborhood so we drove around trying to find him.  When we finally found him he was leaving the neighborhood!!!  We followed him in the fire truck back to the fire station and when they were in the turning lane, we pulled right up next to them and he waved at Carter through the window.  We went through A LOT of trouble, but finally got Carter to see Santa!  After all that drama, we went back home and put out cookies and milk.

 

You’ll notice that each cookie has a bite taken out of it.  That’s because this three year old decided he needed to make sure the cookies tasted ok for Santa.  He also took a sip of the milk to make sure it was ok too.  He cracks me up!!! 

Then came Christmas morning!!!

Carter’s main gift from Santa was a fun little dune buggy.  He also got a cookie monster toboggan (he still LOVES cookie monster) and that thing he’s eating??….well when you asked Carter what he wanted for Christmas he ALWAYS said “double cookie” (a double doozie cookie from the Great American Cookie Company).  So naturally, Santa brought him a few of those to put in his stocking ;)  I’ll have to learn how to better spread out the money for Carter and Garrett’s Christmas.  At Carter’s age, the toys are just more expensive…for Garrett’s age…I mean what do a baby need other than clothes, books and a toy? 

Santa got all of Carter’s favorite things in his stocking….candy canes, double cookies, twizzlers and blue M&M’s!

Why are there no pictures of Garrett??  Well, because my master sleeper did this while Carter was downstairs opening his presents…

 

After a while, we got Carter dressed and took him outside to drive his dune buggy!

I didn’t want him to eat only double cookies for breakfast so I gave him a bowl of fruit and he insisted on eating it while driving.  Toddler’s first to go food I guess :)

 

This is why I love our neighborhood and particularly our street.  All the kids were in our culdesac playing with their new toys so all the kids got to play together while us parents enjoyed cups of coffee in our pajamas :)

Carter thought Garrett wanted to read his Farm Animals book so he gave it to him.  But then he wanted to show Garrett his brand new lunchbox so he brought that to him too.  Poor Garrett!

After playing with toys for a bit, we packed up and headed to Papa and Nana’s house for lunch with the twins!  I didn’t take many pictures there because we were outnumbered by kids!  I took a great video of them all opening presents, but for some reason I can’t put videos on my blog via Windows Live Writer anymore.

 

Nana gave the kids Gingerbread Cookie Decorating kits so after opening presents, all the kids decorated their cookies (there may have been some assistance from the adults!).

 

That was our Christmas!!!  It was great!  We only had a couple of days before we had to gear up for Carter’s birthday party (will add that stuff to another post).  After his party we drove to Florida to have Christmas with extended family and stayed for a few days before coming back home.  Our December was super busy!!!

Christmas 2013

Christmas at age 2 is so much fun!!!!  Last year was fun, don’t get me wrong.  But at age 1, Carter didn’t quite understand much.  Even at 2, he still doesn’t understand that Santa was the one that brought the presents, but he showed so much more interest in his toys this year than he did last year.  I will say, we noticed that Carter doesn’t seem to be interested in opening presents.  He likes getting the toy, but he doesn’t want to open it.  Weird.

We started our festivities by going to the North Pole Express.  It’s a train ride that last maybe an hour tops.  Kids wear their PJs and we take a ride to the North Pole and stop to see Santa.  Santa and Mrs. Clause get on the train and take pictures with all the kids, then everyone gets milk and cookies and then we head back.  Carter and his twin cousins, Cynthia and Celia went together and of course Nana and Papa were there too.

The above picture is when Carter saw the train pull up to the station.  He was SO excited!

On Christmas Eve, we headed to Tuscaloosa to go to my sister’s house to celebrate with my side of the family.  I actually didn’t take any pictures while I was there.  I brought my camera, but never took any pictures.  Carter wasn’t in a great mood (Justin and I seriously think that large crowds may stress him out) and he had to have a nap over there.  So I just never took any pictures.  We had a blast though.  Carter got some great gifts from the family.  Lots of them included one of Carter’s favorite things….AIRPLANES!

We ended up coming home later than we expected.  Carter went to bed almost immediately because we had to wake him up at 10:30pm to go to our church’s 11pm service.  Around 9:45pm, the Hoover Fire Department came down our street with Santa Clause.  I was so sure Carter would wake up to the sirens but he was OUT.  Next year we may wait up to see them….not sure.  We’ll have to see.

Anyway, we got him up at 10:30pm.  He was so confused and kept saying “night night” and pointing to the crib.  We got him in the car and went to go pick up my mom (she came with us to the service).  I was worried about how Carter would do.  Justin and I were convinced that he would get wild and we would have to leave early.  He surprised us all!  The entire service he sat in either Papa, mommy or daddy’s lap.  There was one time where, during complete silence in the church, he spotted Nana in the choir and yelled her name.  But other than that, he was very quiet and just sat there.  I was so happy with him!

We put him down immediately after getting home around 12:40pm.  We were all exhausted!!  Justin and I did some last minute stuff for Carter’s gifts from Santa and then went to bed.  We woke up around 8am the next morning, but it was a little closer to 9am before Carter woke up.  I was glad he slept in a little bit since we were out so late.   Carter was so excited to see all the toys when he came downstairs.

After playing with his toys from Santa for a while, we packed up the car and went to Nana and Papa’s for more Christmas fun!

Train table was a huge success!  Though we’ve had to super glue some parts to the table because Carter kept destroying it.

 

The only bigger success than the train table was probably the basketball goal.  He LOVES this thing!!!

Some fun Elmo music toys and various books.

See what I mean about the basketball goal??

Eating his breakfast (a blueberry waffle) and playing with the train table at the same time.

He loves it!!!

Like I said, we had a ton of fun at home, but then it was time to pack up and head to Nana and Papa’s to meet up with Jen Jen and Uncle Aeron and the girls.  There was also a surprise visit from Gigi!!  Carter was so glad to have everyone he loves there!

Carter got another stocking at their house.  I think his favorite was the M&M’s :)

This fun nativity set spun around and made music and Carter loved it.

Opening presents!!

He is loving this hat.  He calls it his blue hat and he requests it all the time.  There’s matching gloves that go with it and he frequently requests those too.

As if the big train table weren’t enough, we got a Thomas the Train and train track too!!! 

Carter had such a great Christmas.  He got TONS of toys, as usual.  His 2nd birthday is this Saturday and his party is that day too.  Downside of his birthday and Christmas being so close together is all the presents.  He gets so many things and we literally run out of room in our house for places to put his toys!!!  We already are having to transfer several toys to the attic to make room for the ones he got at Christmas!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas with your loved ones!