Lots and Lots of Corn Fields

A few weeks ago the boys and I took a road trip down to Bloomfield, Iowa to visit my roomie from Ricks, Amber (Olsen) Jenson and her family, she has two little boys close to Carter and Gage's ages and another baby BOY on the way... it had been about 4 years since I had seen her. The drive there was less than fabulous, you know what I mean if you have ever taken a 6 hour road trip by yourself with two little boys! There were however lots and lots of cornfields to enjoy along the way.

We had a lot of fun just hangin out, reminiscing the good ol' Ricks College days and just being moms. Amber is super mom and has an amazing garden. I think the highlight for my boys was picking the green beans from the garden. I think they ate one for every 3 beans that actually made it into the bowl - oops. Amber also has a HUGE yard (like 6 acres) and they had a blast playing outside, catching frogs and all sorts of other bugs, and running around to their hearts content! It was great, we had dutch oven cooking one night and cooked smores out in the backyard, went to a neighboring Amish village, took the boys to the library, and went swimming in the backyard. Thanks Ams for a great time... Hopefully we can show you a good time when you head up this way!

Carter, Adam, Gage, and Matthew

Gage with his new found friend "Cat"

Havin a ball!

A bean, a bean, momma check out my bean!

The gang hard at work!

The critter jar, with the catch of the day... a frog!

The rain stopped long enough for the boys to enjoy a nice frigid swim.

Kickin it on the swing, enjoying the outdoors.

Oh boy, oh BOY, what a day!!

Today was a busy one! It was Carter's first day of kindergarten, Jared had the day off so we took Gage to the zoo, so he could forget that Carter was gone, and then we had our ultrasound! Whew!

Carter was ecstatic that the first day of school was finally here (he's been waiting for this day ever since a bunch of his friends started kindergarten last year!) We live just a few blocks from the school so we all walked to school together this morning. As soon as we got to the playground where Carter was to meet his teacher he turned to me and said, "Bye mom, you can go now." Wow, he is ReaLLy going to miss me isn't he! I explained to him that his teacher wanted us to walk the kids in on the first day of school. He wasn't thrilled about the idea but went along. As soon as we walked through the front doors he turns to me and asks, "Mom, when are you leaving?" (I think he asked me this like 4 times, am I really that embarrasing??) I went on to tell him that his teacher wanted us to come into the classroom with the kids and listen to a story together. To make a long story short the book she read was The Kissing Hand. I had never heard it before but it is a story about a little raccoon who is aprehensive about going away to Kindergarten and leaving his mom (soo not Carter). The mom kisses the little raccoons palm and tells him that whenever he is feeling lonely or scared that her kiss would be on his hand and he could press it to his cheek and feel warm and fuzzy inside. In the end the little raccoon also kisses his mom's hand to comfort her when she is missing him. Really a cute story and I REALLY WAS doing okay until she read the story. She then invited the kids who had parents there to go and get/give a kiss on their palm and say good-bye... and then Carter brought me back to reality when he said he didn't need a kiss from me. I told him that I needed one from him so he gave Jared, Gage and I kisses and then consented to us giving him a kiss in his hand. Such a funny little boy! His teacher had little individual packs of kleenex for us to take on our way out the door and really I barely made it to the hall before the tears started coming. I didn't think I would have a hard time sending him to school but he is such a great companion, I am really going to miss having him at home! Plus, he is still so young and impressionable, it is scarry to think of him being gone for 7 hours everyday!

The Zoo was a great distraction! Gage had a blast having a day with just mom and dad. Today I think his favorites were the giraffes, feeding the goats, of course the monkeys, and riding the train which he had never done before. I don't think he thought to much of Carter being gone, which was exactly the point. (It was a good distraction for me too.) He did boast to Carter that, "we went to the zoo without you!"

We also had our ultrasound today... AND... I think I need to get a pet of the girl variety! Yes, come January I will be way outnumbered when baby boy #3 arrives!

Sucking his thumb?? Hopefully we can break him of that habit!

Just in case any of you were wondering if it was really another boy! (Why is it okay to share nudey pictures of an unborn baby spread eagle but you wouldn't think of it once he's born??)

10 Reasons we're excited to have another boy:

10. Carter amd Gage really wanted another brother... girls have cooties.

9. Can't wait for father's and son's outings.

8. It only takes 10 seconds to comb their hair.

7. Although 6 years old and a bit outdated we already have baby boy clothes.

6. Girl clothes cost twice as much and there are way more cute ones... we won't break our budget this way.

5. Less drama... so we like to tell ourselves.

4. We only need two more boys for a complete basketball team...

3. Jared doesn't have to purchase a shot-gun yet.

2. My dad won't have to make me that Barbie house he promised me 20 years ago.

1. We already know that we make dang cute boys!

All About Carter!!

I can hardly believe that my little guy will be starting Kindergarten in two weeks!! Aahh! (Are we really this old?) Although Carter isn't really excited about another addition to the family he really is a great big brother. He and Gage are the best of friends and Gage is really going to miss him when he's gone at school all day (I think I will too)! He is so much fun to be with. His big cheesy grin makes my day.

Last month we decided to pull the training wheels off his bike and he is doing great! Actually I guess it would be more accurate to say that he "wore" the training wheels off of his bike. His smile was so big the first time Jared let go of his bike and he realized he was riding a "2 wheeler." He was so funny to watch the second night Jared took him out to ride. He was starting to get a little cocky and would ride down the street going, "nanananana, look at me!" Sure enough he started to wobble right after that. Our street has a slight incline to it, so he does great going down because it is easy for him to get enough speed to keep his balance but he is still working on going up because he is a little bit slower and not as steady, he can do it but he's pretty wobbly (the reason we moved from the sidewalk to the road). Jared has been getting a great workout chasing him up and down the street!!

Carter just finished up his T-ball season and loved it! He was on a team of mostly 5 year old boys (there was only1 little girl). He had a blast. He is a pretty good little hitter. The best part is when they all dog pile the ball, it doesn't matter where they are in the outfield they all run for the ball. I overheard him telling someone the other day that "it isn't real T-ball though because everyone hits and they don't let you get anyone out." That's the competitive side of him shining through (he definitely gets that from his dad). He has expressed interest in playing real baseball as he prefers to have someone pitch him the ball... oh well he gets enough of that everyday out with the neighborhood kids!

On Monday night it was Carter's turn to be in charge of the lesson for family home evening. We talked about different possibilities for lesson ideas. He decided he wanted to do the lesson on manners. He got so excited about choosing the dinner menu and helping me make dinner and setting the table all by himself. We had spaghetti, one of his favorites (next to chicken parmesan and homemade chicken noodle soup) corn, garlic bread, and spinach salad (a new found favorite of his... last night he was eating the spinach plain straight from the carton.) We practiced using our best manners and then read stories that he had checked out from the library on manners. It was lots of fun and he was unusually well behaved (for the most part). I think we will have to let him be in charge more often!

Carter has also recently really picked up on his reading. He has been able to read phonetic words for some time now but he recently found a love for "I Spy" books and since I am not always in a position to tell him what to look for he decided that he was going to figure out how to read the words so that he could do them himself... hey whatever works right! So I guess I owe "I Spy" for Carter's new found love of reading. He has been begging me to take him to the library at least 3 times a week... good thing it's close and we can ride our bikes! He has been keeping track of all of the books that he has read by himself and has read 22 books in the last few weeks... he gets so excited every time he gets to add another one to the list (and we don't count I spy books, since he usually only does a page or two at a time).

That's Carter at 5! (or 5 1/2 as he would say... as he recently celebrated his half birthday.)

The Pyromaniac and the Marshmallow Monster

On a whim we decided to go camping this weekend. Jared and I were recently talking about how this summer got away from us and we never even made it camping. Well, Jared called me at about 4:15 on Friday evening and said, "Let's go camping tonight!" Seriously??? Camping takes a whole day of preparation for me to get everything together and in order. "We'll make it simple... I found a campsite on a lake 45 minutes from here. I should be home at 5:00!" So I ran to the grocery store... packed a bag and was barely ready to go when Jared got home at 6:00... he had another patient come in. He threw the gear in the car and we were gone by 6:20.


I discovered that when you go camping on a whim you are going to forget LoTs of things! For breakfast we didn't have plates or forks so we emprovised and had pancake tacos... squirt a little syrup in, fold it in half and eat it like a taco. We had no hand sanitizer or soap and we didn't have towels to dry off after swimming... Oh well, all we really needed was a place to sleep, food to eat and each other, it was perfect! The boys had so much fun... lots of fire, dirt, water, spiders, frogs, caterpillars, and of course marshmallows... what more could a little boy want in life?

Emprovising! That was the theme of our campout... no cups, no towels, no plates, no spoons - the spatula was deemed the multi-purpose kitchen utensil - knife, spoon, spatula - it worked for all.

The boys particularly enjoyed catching frogs in that nasty, stinky, muddy swampy pond.

Our First Visitors and Soda Pop

Well... we had our first visitors come to our new home in Wisconsin. I have to relish the moment because I don't know how many more people will visit us while we are here! You are all invited by the way! My dad and brother, Rustin, stopped by on their way, or not so much on their way, to Virginia. Rustin is moving there to start law school so they swung up north to say hey before hittin' the road again. The boys were SUPER excited to have them come, they had anticipated it for weeks. They were only here for the afternoon and evening but we managed to make a trip to the Sprecher Brewery, where they brew Sprecher beer and more importantly Sprecher Root Beer. Rustin is a fan of the Root kind and I had heard this was a fun place to take company when they come so I thought what the heck. After the tour you get all you can drink of their 8 kinds of soda right off the tap. (I had also been told there was all you can drink beer, but I was pleased to find out that they limited the adults to 4 - 8oz glasses... still seems like a lot to me!) While the tour wasn't that great we had a fun time sippin' soda to our hearts content... and we all made ourselves sick! None of us our big soda drinkers so I think we all over did it... but hey we had to try all 8 kinds. I think my boys mostly enjoyed getting a new soda, taking a couple sips, then dumping it down the drain... I'm sure they appreciate that. Their soda was great and I particularly appreciated that it was all caffiene free (my boys would have been super crazy with a caffeine buzz). They had great Root Beer, rated #1 by New York Times, I also really liked their Cream Soda, Orange Cream, and Cherry Cola. Something I had never heard of was their Cherry Cranberry Soda which was too strong for my liking but interesting nonetheless.

When I was waiting in line to get my next refill the lady in front of me asked for a cherry coke, "what?" the guy said. "Cherry coke," she repeated. "What?" he asked again. "She spoke up a little bit this time and said, "Cherry Coke!" "What?" once again was his reply. Wondering how long he was going to let this go on for I leaned forward and whispered, "cherry cola!" She laughed and said, "Cherry Cola!" The guy was like, yah, we don't serve Coke here!!

Thanks for coming Dad and Rustin, we loved having you, even if it was a short visit!

"Cheers!"

Wisconsin's Biggest Smile!

Saturday we went to the famous Wisconsin State Fair. We had heard from friends in AZ before we moved out here that this was an event not to be missed. Jared had the day off yesterday so we rode our bikes in the heat of the day and were already nice and hot and sweaty when we got there. Jared had looked online to see what the days events were before heading out and since it was family fun day they had a stage with contests for kids. I must say the most impressive was the hula hooping contest, there was a little 4 year old who was hula hooping way longer and more gracefully than I ever could! Well since our boys inherited my large mouth we decided to enter them into the biggest smile contest and Carter won first place! Here is a picture of Wisconsin's biggest smile:

Be careful, Carter... don't hurt yourself!

The finals... Carter won his heat and this is what he was up against in the end.

How many different smiles can one kid have during a two minute smile contest?

Does he look like he's:

a) squinting to keep the sun out of his eyes?

b) scared?

c) constipated?

d) happy to be in the biggest smile contest?

Jared also decided to subject himself to the parent/child look alike contest and he and Gage took second place. (Quite frankly they don't look much like me.) I think he would have had it in the bag with Carter but since Carter had already won a contest we decided to give someone else a chance :)

We had been told by many that the cream puffs at the state fair were a must, people here rant and rave about them and go to the fair to buy them by the dozens. While I can't say they were to die for they were pretty good (they tasted like a cream puff) and they were HuGe. I think it was one of those things where they are talked up too much so when you actually try it for yourself your like, "well that was good, but it wasn't that good!" The funniest part was the LONG line we had to wait in to get them... but of course we had to wait the wait, partly because they were the talk of the town and also because Carter won a coupon for a free cream puff as part of his biggest smile prize and now that he is reading it's hard to pull one over on him.

Waiting in line for the famous puffs

There he is again with that cream puff winning smile!

They were so big that even I couldn't get my mouth around it.

Besides people watching, (which I did my fair share of) the animals are my favorite part of the fair. Gage loved petting the cows and Carter was afraid of them... even the little baby calf. We also really enjoyed watching the racing pigs, and even more impressive were the racing ducks, it was pretty entertaining watching them waddle to the finish line!

Some more random fair pics:

CHEESE HEADS!!!

We're really in Wisconsin!!