Pumpkin Pumpkin

Today we took Carter to the Pumpkin Patch! It was a Fall Festival and Pumpkin Patch, complete with homemade root beer! She was quite shy in the pumpkins but warmed up after we gave her a little pumpkin to call her own. It got many hugs and a few licks!

She has developed a cute little, often difficult to deal with, personality. She has learned to point to things and say "DAT!" She woke up this morning and greeted Brad by saying "Dada Dada, Mama Mama Mama, Dada!" She babbles non stop and if she ever decides to use real words, we will have to start actually paying attention! It is easy to tune out these days! Dancing has become her favorite past time! Sometime she picks up on music playing that I don't realize is there until she starts dancing.

We decorated some pumpkins this weekend and put them on our front porch. She likes to pick her poor little pumpkin up and roll it down the steps! We have a feeling her pumpkin may have some internal damage right now!

Carter's First Birthday

So....Carter turned one on Wednesday July 23rd. We had a little celebration with friends and fam in a little park close to the house. The grandparents were here from the South. The G-Dads helped cook hotdogs and hamburgers. It was a particularly stressful day because the sky was cloudy and the winds were 20-40 mph. It started raining 2 hours prior to the party and Mandy was ready to cancel the outdoor party and move it indoors. But since it has only rained 3 inches here since January 1, we figured the rain wouldn't last. It didn't and actually is was a very nice day.

Carter had a cupcake table (see pictures) that the other kids enjoyed seeing. When I asked one of her friends, Paige, which cupcake she wanted, she said, "OOOOOOhhhhhh, the big one!" That was Carter's birthday cake. When Carter finally got to eat it, she started by picking off the green polka dots. The she took off the top of the cake and next thing you know the cake looked like sand.

Carter got many nice gifts. We got her a bike (with training wheels). Given that her birthday is during the Tour de France, she needs a bike. She was good at pushing the bike around, and even rolled it over -- she ended up under the bike -- HER FIRST BIKE WRECK! We now let her ride it supervised on the carpet, wrapped in bubble wrap.

Her evening was spent dancing to bluegrass music. She has mastered this, what Mandy calls "the white kid dance" (I was pretty good at that in my day). Check out the dance videos.

Baptism and the Eve of the Birthday

We have had quite an exciting week! Carter was baptized on Sunday. It was a very special service and meant so much to us. She gave the church congregation quite a laugh when she tried to jump in the baptism water and go for a swim. The preacher was having a time holding on to her at the end of it all!

Well, Carter turns ONE tomorrow! Brad's parents are here in Denver and my parents get here in about 1 hour!! We are having a party for her tomorrow at the park. We had a cupcake-a-thon today! Dee (Brad's mom ) and I started making cupcakes today about 10am, and we finished them about 630pm. We also made Carter's birthday cake! It is a huge cupcake, pink with green polkadots! I will post pics soon of the big party in the next few days!!

DENTIST VISIT!!

I think Carter will grow up to be a dentist! She is always sticking her hand in other people's mouths and grabbing their teeth. Carter went to the dentist for the first time today! She has 8 teeth and 2 molars are making their appearance soon! She did great, never even cried! Her Mommy cries more at the dentist than she did today! (But Carter has never had a root canal either!) Her favorite part was the mirror he used to look in her mouth! As the dentist was looking in her mouth, out comes Daddy with a camera ! Carter will hate us one day for taking pictures of every minute of her life....but oh well! It makes for a great scrapbook!

10 months old and Carter is walking now! She has been taking steps for about 3-4 weeks now, but she has gotten very good in the last few days! She has also developed this attitude. I am not real sure where it came from, but we are trying to make it go away. If she doesn't want to do something,or if you take something away from her, she acts a complete fool! I am not ready for this kind of excitement and DRAMA!
Carter is taking swim classes this week! That has been lots of fun, and has set us up for some really great naps! WAHOO!!
Here are some of our newest pics!

Fun times at the Rockies game!

Mother's Day Weekend

HAPPY MOM'S DAY TO ALL!!

This is my second Mother's Day--technically. Carter was still in the womb last year, but I needed an excuse to get that really cool Lounge Lizard Chair I wanted so badly, so I played the Mother's Day card!
Well this year Brad did a great job with a Mother's Day gift! He got me a membership to a spa here in Denver and I get to go once a month for a massage! WAAAHHOOO!!! I went Saturday for my first massage! She told me I need to come about every other day for the next 3 weeks to get all of the muscles working again in my back...just to let you know the extent of my stress! Although I am not sure why I am stressed.
So Carter had some huge milestones yesterday ! I am sure Friday will have it's own page in the scrapbook..."May 9th!" Let's see, she began the day by discovering a new sound "ddd" and "ggg". Before it had only been "ahh hah!", which now we can get her to do on command. So all day she was saying "day day day gay gay agy ady" And then it changed to "gay day" which we interpreted as "Happy Day". I think she was trying to tell me Happy Mother's Day but just couldn't say "Mother" yet!! When Brad got home from work we were practicing walking as we always do in the afternoon and she took a step without us holding on to her. She fell immediately after her foot hit, but we called it a step! When I was cooking dinner she decided to come help and proceeded to pull the pots out of the cabinet. Her favorite thing in the kitchen now is the colander (hmmm...not sure about spelling, but you know the thing with the holes in it!) We now have installed baby stopper thingys on our cabinets!
We went to the Denver Zoo today for the first time! It was super nice weather here today(although is is going to snow Tuesday =( yuck)! Carter had fun, Brad and I might have had more fun though! We bought a zoo membership, which means Carter and I may go every week this summer!
Here are some pictures from our Mother's Day weekend and last weekend at the Rockies baseball game!