6 Years Old

Where has the time gone? Carter is 6 years old today! Last night for family night, we spotlighted Carter and went through all of our pictures of him growing up. We talked about different memories we had and it is amazing looking back, how most of it seems like yesterday. When I think about giving birth to him, all I remember is trying to push out this head for 2.5 hours. Ouch.
We lovingly call it "Carter Melon". Whenever I joke to people about his big head they always tell me (trying to be nice) that it is just more room for his brain. He sure is a little smartie, so it must be true. We love his big head and he has grown into it more now that he is older.
I saw this picture and it just made me smile. Another boy addicted to cowboy boots. He wore them all that summer and was so sad when he grew out of them. This picture also has his dog woof that he still sleeps with every night. My favorite part about this picture though is all the books scattered in the background. He has always loved books and reading. Now he is reading the books to himself and Preston!

Some of my favorite things about Carter are:
*How much he loves his baby sister and will always make her smile and keep her happy.
*His love for school and learning-he is getting to be such a great reader!
*He is obsessed with his stuffed animals-I will have to do a post on the 50 stuffed animals my kids have and all of their names.
*He still sleeps with his 2 blue blankets that he has had since birth and woof his stuffed dog.
*His ability to make friends easily. We are having a Star Wars birthday party on Friday for him and he has invited 15 of his friends. Yes, I know I'm crazy, but it is his first real "friends party" so we thought we'd go all out!
*How sweet and sensitive he is.
*He is still my cuddly boy. He was cuddly as a baby and still loves to cuddle with me. I love it!
* He is a great sleeper! He goes to bed when I tell him to, and when he is asleep there is no waking him up (just like his dad)!
*How he is such a great big brother to Preston. They are best friends and I am glad that Preston can look to Carter as an example.
*His laugh when I tickle him
*How he is obsessed with getting transformers, but after he has figured out to transform it once, he never plays with it again. The thrill is gone, I guess!
*What a great eater he is! He will try anything and never complains about dinner. When you have a picky eater like Preston, it is nice to have atleast one child who is easy going about what we eat.
*He is becoming self sufficient. He can wake up in the morning and get his own breakfast and keep himself entertained until I get up. He even gets Preston breakfast some days too. This is worth it's weight in gold!
*He is my first born. I just love him so much, words can't express. He has the tough job of being the oldest and being our little experiment, but he handles it well. He is such a sweetheart and I am so happy that he is part of our family. Happy Birthday Carter! We love you!!

Disneyland!!

Beware of the picture dump! This post has been a long time coming-it was just so much effort, that is why it has taken this long to post it! Better late than never right? We went to Disneyland in mid-January and had such a great time. It was the perfect time to go! No lines, 70-80 degree weather, and something to look forward to after all the Christmas madness, made it a tradition I want to continue! Here goes... Above is James and Preston with the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. We walked into the park on the first day and there they were! Preston didn't want to talk to the Queen, but liked the White Rabbit.
The girls met the fairy godmother from Cinderella. She was really sweet and we got quite a bit of time to chat with her.

Megan, me, and Claire on Small World-they still had it decorated for Christmas

Marie, Preston, me, Carter, and Nate riding Pirates of the Caribbean. It was Carter's favorite ride hands down. I rode it five times with him and he still went on a few more times with other people. Preston was a little scared of the waterfall and scary skeletons and it was Claire's favorite napping spot.
Trying to get a picture of all the kids together in the teacup was a joke. We took atleast 10 pictures and none of them had them all looking at the camera. Oh well!
We did pin trading this year which the boys had a great time doing. We bought our pins on ebay and got them sooo much cheaper! If you are thinking about doing it, this is the only way to do it. Carter collected pirate pins, I collected princess pins, and Preston collected whichever pin he thought looked cool.

Preston, Ryan, and Carter on Small World. Carter and Ryan became best buddies on this trip. Carter seems to make friends wherever he goes!

I love this picture of Claire. She is just my tiny girl. So cute.

Meeting Ariel with the girls

Carter hanging out at California Adventure while we fed Claire a bottle. It was a bad idea to bring a baby. She was pretty good, but it was just hard for her since she had no naps, teeth coming in, and diaper rash. Yuck! Lesson learned.

Meeting Mickey in California Adventure

How cute are these boys?!

Ryan and Preston on the carousel

Meeting Jessie

The boys got to pick a prize for being so good at the park. Carter chose bullseye and Preston chose Ham from Toy Story. They love stuffed animals! They have slept with them every night since!

We had so much fun at the Minnie and Friends character breakfast. We met so many characters and the food was delicious. Mickey Mouse shaped waffles, fresh made to order omelettes, sausage, biscuits and gravy, fresh fruit, you name it, they had it. We met Minnie of course, Brear Fox, Captain Hook, Gepetto, Tigger, Eeyore, and the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella.

Some of us enjoying the yummy breakfast with Amber (a Disneyland worker that we saw several days in a row)

Claire meeting Tigger-how precious is this picture?

We did have other pictures of the kids with the characters, but somehow Preston managed to erase all of the pictures on my camera. Thankfully my cousin Megan and other family members gave me a cd of their pictures and James had some on his Galaxy tablet still. We are still pretty well documented don't you think?

We went on a few rides while most of the group waited in line to meet Rapunzel in her "tower".

Mike, Peter, and Rapunzel. How cute is she?!

They let us come in with everyone even though we didn't wait-score! Here is our entire group that went to Disneyland. There were a lot of us! L to R-Mike, Heather, Peter, Jordan, Nate, Nate's dad, Amanda, Katie, Megan, Teresa, Gary, James, Marie Front: Sarah, Sofia, Ryan, and Carter *Notice Carter's leg sprawled across Ryan's lap-too funny!

Us waiting in line for Toy Story Mania-one of the boys favorites

Buzz Lightyear Ride-Preston's favorite

The boys posing in front of the Walt Disney statue-we did a little scavenger hunt on the last day there to find Hidden Mickeys and other landmarks. Our team lost, but we had fun, thanks Nate! I was with some really hardcore Disney fanatics. They knew a lot about Disneyland, it was fun.
The boys loved watching the Jedi training and I was bummed they didn't get picked. They were there early and kids got picked that had just walked up right then. Annoying, but Carter said he would have been too afraid that he wouldn't know the moves to defeat Darth Vader. So cute!
The whole time we were in Disneyland we kept seeing people munching on these huge turkey legs. Gary and I could not figure out what the draw was, they look disgusting! Are we from the middle ages or what? So it became a joke that before we left I was going to buy a turkey leg and get a picture of Gary taking a bite. On the last night while waiting to see World of Color James was hungry for dinner. What a perfect time to buy a turkey leg! We took several photo ops with me and Gary! It makes me laugh every time I see it.
We saw the show "World of Color" twice while we were there. It was very cool but also very disappointing. The first time we went, we got the fast passes to be in the front. We waited for 45 minutes sitting and then were told we had to stand up because the show would be starting shortly. 45 minutes LATER the show finally started. People started pushing to get to the front and so we couldn't see anything. If I can't see anything, how are kids supposed to be able to see anything? Gary complained and got yes VIP for the next night. Although VIP was better and we could see, we still had to stand the entire time! My legs were ready to fall off! Disney needs to figure out a way to see the show with everyone sitting because it was ridiculous.
That being said, it was really cool. It was like the Bellagio's watershow on steroids!
Preston fell asleep that night at the hotel in this position! Classic! That about sums up our trip! My boys were at perfect ages to go. They still enjoyed the little kid stuff but were tall enough to ride almost all the big kid rides. Carter was bummed he was one inch too short for Indiana Jones though. Next time! We had a great time with lots of fun memories.

Resolutions 2011

I love this time of year with new beginnings and goal making. Let's go back to last years resolutions and see how I did-

1. Print out my blog and pictures developed-somewhat failed at this one. I did get my blog book for 2006-2007 finished and am waiting to print it out. They get pricey when you have over 100 pages! I didn't print out my pictures though so that will have to happen this year hopefully.

2. Go out to eat less-I think I did better but definitely not just once a week. I go through phases of not eating out at all for awhile and then not feeling like cooking too. I can always improve on this!

3.10 new recipes-accomplished! I even have used most of them multiple times! My new favorite food blog is mrshardingcooks.blogspot.com

4.Less computer time-I feel like I have been better these past few months than the rest of the year. I don't feel so attached to facebook as I used to. Not sure why?

5.Paint the nursery-Yes and did wall board too. James did awesome! Paint my room-Nope, still need to do that. Does redoing my entire main floor's flooring count?

6.Sort through and sell boys clothes, de-junk-accomplished! I only have one tote left of boys clothes. The rest have been sold, given to DI or to friends. I also sold a bunch of stuff in my basement on KSL. I love selling stuff now!


Here is for this year's resolutions-

1. Start running again. I am hoping to do a half marathon by October, but not sure how the knee will hold up. I just want that amazing feeling of running back. I miss it. I also need to lose a bunch of weight so that is also on my mind. But, how boring is that for a resolution?

2. Floss my teeth atleast twice a week. I am the world's worst flosser. Ok maybe not the worst because I actually do floss occasionally, but not ever on a consistent basis. For those of you who are every day flossers and think twice a week is so bad, I'm just taking baby steps!

3.Organize and de-junk my closets/basement/garage again. This was a goal 2 years ago and needs to be again. How do I have so much junk?! I feel like I throw away stuff all the time!

4. Read the Book of Mormon with my family-we have already started, but need a jumpstart again.

5. Instead of just new recipes I need to learn some pressure cooker recipes to use with my new pressure cooker. I can't wait to start using it. Thanks to the in-laws for sending money for me to get it for Christmas!

I think I will keep it at that for now since I still am working on ones from last year! I have some personal resolutions that I won't post here too, so I am set for self improvement for 2011. What are some of yours this year? Do you need to floss more too? :)

Christmas cards and Decor

I love getting Christmas cards! I almost forgot to blog these pictures, but it helps me to remember what cards were sent for what year. I always buy one or two new things for my Christmas decor and this year I bought this fun snowflake card holder. I needed it with how many cards I get every year! I also inherited that cute retro wreath from my mom that my grandma made. Isn't it darling?

Thanks for all the cute cards and fun pictures. I love getting the mail in December!

Last but not least, I picked up this fun advent calendar from Tai Pan. My boys loved moving the star magnet every day to the next day.

Christmas 2010

We had a fabulous Christmas this year! I am happy to have it be over and done with and get back to the normal routine tomorrow, but we really enjoyed being with family and laughing a lot! We started Christmas Eve going out to breakfast at Ihop with the fam, then met at 4 at my grandparents house to carol to them. We then went to Aunt Mary's for dinner followed by our 22nd year of caroling at the hospital. One man we sang to said his wife needed us to carol to her. He begged us to go down there and said it would make his Christmas, and gave my parents the address. He called his wife and told her his Christmas gift was coming. I didn't end up going because the kids were ready for bed, but I heard she was so touched and had tears rolling down her face. There is always someone at the hospital that make every year worth it, and help you to remember the reason for the season. We came back to my parents house to get into our new Christmas jammies.

My camera was fogged up but Claire's jammies say "Baby's first Christmas". Awwww.

Chase and Claire--Chase thought he was Rocky Balboa and took a shot a Claire's face

Baby Chase

Carter and Kale-Carter loved his new Bakugan jammies!

The cousins had their annual gift exchange and Carter got a cool spiderman bionicle which he loved. Kale is the master and is showing Carter the ropes to bionicle building.

My mom got my dad a dog for Christmas! He has been asking for one for awhile so she decided to give in and get him a jack russell terrier just like the dog we had growing up. He decided to name him Rocky since our family is obsessed with that movie franchise. Isn't he adorable? Now my mom is trying to get him potty trained, yikes. It's like she has a baby!

On Christmas day we had our white elephant gift exchange, and this is Mike wearing part of my present. I accidentally ordered adult size Christmas pajamas from Children's place online last year on a great after Christmas sale. I decided to keep them for this occasion. They didn't disappoint! Mike looked like Tommy boy--fat guy in a little coat. We got good stuff-a cute beaded watch,scentsy cubes, a recipe book, and a calendar! Both of our gifts were from Melanie, she gave good stuff! Mine was more of a joke. We may have to change the rules next year...

My grandparents came over for a yummy Christmas lunch of turkey, stuffing, and all the fixin's.

Later on we played Phase 10 and opened Christmas crackers. Preston looks cute sporting his crown and showing off his compass. I love fun traditions like this.

Carter got a magic kit from his Auntie Helen and Uncle Ian. He was so excited to use it, he wouldn't stop hounding us until he did. His first potion was making his magic wand. Pretty fun!

My mom gave all of the kids this huge poster size photo collage of pictures she had of our family. It was so neat and something I will cherish forever. I love looking at all the photos and am looking for the perfect place to display it in my house.

Another magic wand making photo-not sure why it's out of order, but too tired to swith it! Cute boys I have that is for sure!

And last but not least, I found these kids snuggies on the 23rd of December at Ross and had to get them! Preston got Elmo and Carter got Spiderman. They love them! We all now have our own snuggie (except Claire). Our Christmas was great and I feel so blessed with all the material things we have. The best gift this Christmas was spending time with my family and kids and getting to see their little faces light up with all the fun things that Christmas brings. Christmas with kids makes it 100 times more fun. I can't wait until next year!

Parties and other Christmas fun

We had the annual Stephenson adult Christmas party on the 12th and then the Tenney family Christmas party the next week. Here is a cute picture of Claire my Uncle Richard took.

We also had the ward Christmas paty on the 17th where the boys got to meet Santa and tell him what they wanted this year. Preston wanted a wind up mouse (which he didn't get). Not sure where he got that from??

Carter asked for a bakugan (He ended up getting one from Grammy).

The boys both got presents from our friend Ann Woods from England. She is so sweet to always remember them every year. They got iron man figures that I let them open a day early that they loved! We went to see Tangled and they wanted to bring their ironmans in the car. I had to catch a photo.

After watching Tangled, James and the boys made gingerbread cookies for some of the neighbors. I had made homemade caramel a few days before with my sisters too so we bagged it all up and delivered the treats to some friends. Christmas is almost here!