Carter meets Santa

Robert took Carter into the Mall to meet Santa today.  She was VERY excited.  She told him that she needed a pink bike and that she was a very good girl.  (Good thing that there is a little pink bike with her name on it hidden in the garage!) I asked her how Santa was and she told me that he was so nice and didn't give her a spanking.  Not sure why she was worried that he would, but you never know! 

The Cavvy

Having 4 kids trapped in the house during cold winter means I have to get MUCH MUCH more creative about keeping them busy.  We got all them "saddled" up and ran "barrels" around the living room, then just pretended to chase cows.  Cade was not happy about lining up for pictures, it was time to play dang it!

Carter making sure Cade was properly mounted on his steed, Biscuit.  Carter's pony is Blaze, and Avery has Pinky.  Carter is not afraid to be the bossy older cousin, although Cade is plenty determined about just when he gets to be bossed around and when he doesn't. 

And they're off!

Meet Kona

Leave it to Robert who never saw a critter he didn't want to bring home!  So now we've added Kona to the petting zoo, a very sweet German Shepherd/Lab cross.  She is really great with the kids and has a great disposition.  Her only downside is that she is pretty sure she would like to chase chickens.  After all the commotion of my dad's dog coming down the hill to see how fast our chicken can run (not nearly fast enough apparently from all the feathers and traumatized chickens) this may not work out very well.  So Kona may not stay for long, but I imagine it won't be too hard to find her another home. 

Action Heros

First look sweet...

Show off your special stick...

Then go for your best action hero pose!

I really like Cade's pose...he goes all out, but would NOT look at the camera.  We were having fun though!

Playing in the park

My sister and I were feeling a bit stir crazy so we headed down to Huntley to play in the park and check out the fancy stuff at R and R trading.  It was really pretty cold for playing outside, but good thing we have some tough kids!  (Well, tough until they got cold, naturally!)  Carter liked riding down on the slide with Aunty!

Avery LOVED the slide!

Chase watching everyone go up and wishing he could climb too! 

Carter and her red cowboy boots she wears everywhere

Carter hoping someone will come play so she can push them!

The Huntley park isn't great for little bitty kids, but we did our best and had a pretty good time.  When everyone got tired and cold, we packed them up and headed to Stokers for lunch.  Always an adventure with 4 kids in a restuarant.  I can't imagine why my parent hardly ever took us out as kids!

Luckily the place was pretty empty, and we wisely sat right next too the pool room, aka the run around the pool table and burn off some energy room without tormenting the other patrons.  Worked pretty good.  Chase didn't understand that there wasn't a dog under his chair, like at home, and kept throwing food everywhere calling out Hadley's name.  I'm sure Hadley would have been very dissapointed had she known the feast that he left for her.  I don't think the waiter was all that impressed though.

Going for a Ride with Sterling

Sterling brought over his newest toy to take Carter for a ride.  She thought it was SO much fun.  Pretty darn cool toy!  Aunty Linda carefully supervising to make sure Sterling gets Carter properly strapped in!  They had a great time riding around although they had to stay pretty close to the house. 

Getting a little help

Chase has been a little on the slow side in regards to walking.  While his cousins were chomping at the bit and got started around 9 month, Chase has not been interested in any way shape or form.  He does not like to have you hold his hands and try to help him walk.  Apparently if he is going to do it, he'll do it himself, thank you very much.  However, he did like cruising along behind Carter on her trike.  They had a great time roaring around the kitchen, although we had to keep reminding Carter that he can't go as fast as she can!

He's getting closer all the time to walking!

Helping Dad

Chase decided that Dad needed his help changing the water filters.  He was great help too...taking the tools Robert needed, throwing a fit if you took his tool....

I love how they want to mimic everything you do at this age!

Here Dad!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

This year to celebrate Carter's 4th birthday, I decided I wanted to throw a big ole kid party for her and her cousin Cade, since his birthday is the day after Carters. She was so excited about the party. All day long you'd ask her " Who are you?" and she happily yell back "I'm the BIRTHDAY Girl!". I spent 6 weeks planning the party, nearly 2 weeks cooking, prepping all the activities since I could only do a little bit each day, not to mention all help from my sister. In the end, I think it was worth it as I think the party was a big success and fun was had by all. We invited a bunch of our friends with kids around Carter and Cade's age and I think there were around 23 kids ranging from babies to teenagers. Robert's mom had flown in from PA and also got to be at the party. It was quite a commotion! Gramma Pat made the great caterpillar cake above.

Avery promptly decided that what she really needed to do was go sit in a mud puddle! Luckily her and Chase are about the same size so I had plenty of clothes she could change into.  Corrine has a much better picture of a very muddy Avery on her blog.

Carter giving a new friend a push

The pony and four wheeler rides were very popular!  If you look real close, that's Cade holding his sister Avery with Carter leading the horse Titan.  (You can also see both sets of Gramma's frantically snapping lots of pictures!)

Blake and Mackinzie came in full costume! We were so glad they were able to come to the party. We'd been telling Carter about the party a couple weeks in advance to get her all excited about it and all she could talk about were all the things her and Blake were going to do together. She just loves Blake! (We do too!)

Aunty Nancy was a big hit with the face painting and Aunty Gwynnie came in full costume. It gave quite the carinival atomosphere to the whole proceedings!

I never would have guessed that one of the most popular attractions would be chasing the chickens. Hannah holding the long suffering Dora!

Lots and lots of little kids! Cousin Everett checking out the wagon...

Carter naturally spent most of the party either riding her horse or leading it for other kids to ride. She was a great sport about letting the other kids ride her horse. I wasn't sure if she would be or not, but she was wonderful. We also had the kids make pet rocks, decorate bug jars and then go on a bug scavenger hunt for plastic bugs scattered all over the lawn. It was a great party, other than all the dang flies!  It was a beautiful day, not too windy. Robert was wonderful about getting everything outside all clean-up, helping with the pony rides and then cooking burgers and hotdogs.  Another great bonus was my mom and Dee, my sister's mom in law, who stayed and helped get the kitchen all cleaned up afterwards.

Happy Birthday Carter! I hope you know just how much your mom and dad love you!

Fixing the Flower Bed

Robert thought that he would fix up the really nice flower bed that he had made earlier this summer right by the door.  Between the new puppy Gracie and the darn chickens, it was pretty much destroyed over the summer.  He wanted it to look nice for Carter's party so he had picked up some replacement flowers.  Chase and Carter were more than happy to "help".

Carter naturally wanted to get in the picture as soon as she saw Chase getting some attention!  I should have gotten a picture of how beautiful it looked before the dog decided to dig it up 10 minutes later.  Robert was not pleased to say the least!

Sigh...However, he IS the one who brought home all the dogs, chickens...  He fixed the flower bed and it stayed really nice for about another 2 weeks before the deer snuck in and ate all the plants, then the chickens came and tore it up and now the dog has it all dug up again.  I'm thinking maybe hot wire next year?

Chase's First Birthday

My little boy had his first birthday today. I know all mom's say this, but I just can't believe it's been a year already.  It's gone so fast!  He's learned to clap in the last week and says a few words like "hot", "Hadley", "Gracie" and "Moo".  Naturally it does sound like he's also working on "No".  He kinda got gyped in the party department since we were up to our ears in party planning for Carter's big celebration in less than 10 days. So we just made some pig cookies and had a couple family members over. I don't think Chase noticed or minded very much.

Cade and Carter were only too happy to help sing Happy Birthday and help Chase blow out his one candle.  Chase really liked his cookies too!  I don't feed him many sweets so he really thought this was a great treat...not that the expression in the picture is a good indication!  I think he was getting tired of cameras as I have about 100 pictures of him eating that cookie trying to catch a smile.

Carter and Grampa checking out the directions for Chase's new toy truck.  Nothing like "Some assembly required".

Chase watching Grampa closely as they assembled the toy. 

Trying out the new toy...he really liked the truck and KNEW it was HIS! 

Carter was pretty sure the new toy should be HERS although she mostly wants to play with it because Baby Brother was, of course. 

Cousin Everett checking out the new ride.  Thanks to everyone who came down to wish my little boy a happy birthday!