Car Heaven!

Today, Carter and his friends were in Car Heaven! As mentioned before, Carter has three friends who are exactly his age, but two of them happen to have birthdays within the same month period as he does. Because Logan's birthday was last week and Derek's was today (Carter's isn't for another 3 weeks, but we'll be on the road then and it's easier to celebrate one birthday early than two super late!) we decided to throw a birthday party for our weekly play group. Since the boys are all Cars lovers we knew we had to have a Cars party and that we did! Logan's mom provided Cars EVERYTHING--the table cloth, the place mats that also served as a runner with a bunch of them lined up, plates, cups, napkins, banners, confetti (which Carter proceeded to line up on the side of the table just like he does his cars on the couch) and cupcakes that had Cars paper liners and Lightening Red frosting and checkered flag and character toothpicks on them. I'm telling you I'd never seen such red frosting in my life--it was a thing of beauty, especially to the three year olds, tempting us for hours until lunch was served and all activities were done! I'm just sad I didn't get a picture of the fabulous looking table. After a lunch of kids food--mini corn dogs, chicken bites, french fries, grapes, truck fruit snacks (the Cars ones once sold were no where to be found this morning) and juice boxes the kids got to try to break the pinata that Derek's mom provided. WOW, that thing was solid. After each kid got a turn at bat twice (with 5 hits each time) the thing still hadn't cracked so Marc, who was able to take a break from studying to attend, finally took a few swings and broke it. Carter stood as cheerleader as everyone took their turn. It was cute to watch him yell go go Faith (or Derek, Logan, or Noah) and flap his arms around. The kids were thrilled with gathering the candy, which wasn't typical pinata candy--they had good stuff, snickers, skittles, m&ms, laffy taffy, reeses cups (the big ones). They even had Cars bags to put their loot in! After the pinata, it was cupcake time. We stripped the kids clothes off so the red didn't ruin anything and they went to town and boy did their red lips look tasty when they were through. Carter is swimming with his dad right now, but I'm hoping when he comes home and it's bed time that the toothbrush will get rid of his red teeth and residual red mustache he's had all day. After cleaning up a bit, it was present time and that was really fun. Most of the presents were even wrapped in Cars wrapping paper. Carter came away with the Sparkling Lightning McQueen (from the very end of the movie) and a remote control Mater along with Lightening McQueen camera and photo albums (which I plan to use to hold his printed party pics) and some color wonder markers, finger paints and books which will be perfect in about three weeks when we're in the car for hours on end. The party was soo much fun, but don't be fooled, it was really crazy! All four of the three year olds have little brothers ranging from new born to seven months which equals 8 kids plus the one two year old girl (the only nursery aged girl in our ward for church). Counting all kids the adults were sorely outnumbered--9 kids under 3 years and 6 adults. But it was more fun than crazy. I'm sure Carter will be having Cars dreams tonight!

The Days Go By

My posts will most likely be few and far between for a month or so. Our time here in California is winding down so quickly--in 3 weeks we'll be packing up the truck and Marc will have finished his finals. It is completely bittersweet. Some days I'm so excited to move forward, but most of the time I'm sad to leave the wonderful (that word seems so cliche at this moment when I'm thinking of them and trying to describe them!) friends we've all made, the fabulous spring, fall, and winter weather, and a time in our lives we'll never get back--being students. I'm sure the last 5 years of our lives will always be referred to as "The Good Old Days."

Carter has been very interested in dancing in recent days. We'll turn on the radio or a CD when we're doing our daily routine and he can be found dancing in front of it. It's hard to capture in photographs his silly moves, but maybe you can picture it seeing his crazy eyes and silly hand gestures in these pictures. He has also rediscovered the movie Cars. Here's a photo of his face during one of the scenes he loves (I can't recall which one). He forgot about it for awhile because Marc decided we should sign up for the Disney Movie Club and we got like 6 movies for super cheap so he's been into those ones for a few months--The Wild, Incredibles and Toy Story are the ones he's gotten so far. But now it's all about Cars again, not to mention I've finally found a few more of the characters that we didn't get in the sets we bought him way back last year. I got him Sheriff as an intended birthday gift, but of course I couldn't wait 6 weeks (I bought it about 3 weeks ago) so I gave it to him last week. He loves his "ice (police) car." Then I made the mistake yesterday of taking him to buy his friends their birthday presents and of course they love Cars, too, so we bought Wingo for one and Boost for the other and then Carter thought they were his and whined for the rest of the day for them. I gave in and took him back to the store last night and miraculously found King which one of his friends didn't have either and his mom has never been able to find it so I bought King for his friend and gave Wingo to Carter and now he is infatuated. He wants to take "Mingo" everywhere--to bed, on errands. It's silly! But once again I am a sucker for the face he makes when he is genuinely thrilled about something.

Last Wednesday our play group went to a wildlife reservoir to take a walk and see some wildlife, which of course is hard to come by where we live. It wasn't too far away and the funny thing is when we got there and walked on a dirt path around only one of the bends in the circular path to one of the places to view the ducks, we could see high rises in the distance. It just goes to show that no matter where you go around here, you pretty much have the city hanging over your head! Well that little inlet viewing place is pretty much as far as we got--the kids were not interested in the animals. They just wanted to search for rocks and throw them into the stream, so we back tracked a tiny ways to the bridge and let them do their thing for a while before going back to the grassy area near the cars for a cool and shady picnic. The kids kept themselves busy falling in the mud (wouldn't you know, Carter had to be wearing his brand new shoes) and climbing on the big boulders that spotted the lawn while we moms enjoyed a little talk time.

Last week Anderson started crawling--okay not the crawling we think of as crawling, the hands and knees stuff (which Marc reminds me is technically called creeping, while crawling is actually any other form of mobility a baby uses, so technically he is crawling--is everyone as confused as I am now?) It's funny how every child is different. Carter did the army crawl, apparently his weight was just too much for him. Anderson on the other hand is able to push himself up on his hands and knees and then he dives forward so he looks very much like an inch worm. He definitely gets around when he wants to though. The other day Carter got out his toy piano and was playing with it pretty close to Anderson so Anderson crawled on top of it. Of course Carter was not pleased, so he picked it up and moved it to the other side of the room. He is a beginning crawler, but this does not mean that he is slow. He was at the other side of the room on top of the piano again in a matter of seconds. So, Carter moved again and Anderson moved again. It was hilarious to watch, but Carter got fed up so I hinted to him to put it on the couch and play, though I did tell him that wouldn't work forever. It is only a matter of months before he can pull himself up to standing next to the furniture! We pulled out the top of Carter's old entertainment table for Anderson to start playing with because he doesn't like to stay in the saucer for very long anymore. He sure loves how the bowl in the center spins! And last night when we were putting Carter to bed I peaked in the the crib and found Anderson on his back almost spread eagle. He sure loves his thumb. I just don't know what I ever did with out my little guy.