Christmas

So this Christmas we decided to go to Idaho and visit my parents house... at the last minute. So we drove surprised them on Saturday night! We had told them we wouldn't be able to go so they weren't expecting it at all. Sadie was talking about visiting Grandma and Grandpa's house and the snow the whole way there, little did she know it would be 12 hours in the truck with an hour and a half stop at the tire shop on the way. It was a loooong drive. We didn't get much time there but it was fun to see everyone and get away from "real life" for a while.

It was soooo cold outside but the kids really wanted to play in the snow so we took them to sled in the mountains in Idaho. I guess it was a mistake. It was another big drive to Magic Mountain and the kids lasted a whole 10 seconds out in the windy, snowy outdoors before they were begging for us to take them back to Grandma and Grandpa's. We went down the hill on the sled 1 time each and then took off the snow clothes and went back. I'm sure the other people that were happily playing in the snow were laughing as they watched our truck with California plates drive away after our 2 minutes of snow time!

Sadie really loved playing with her Uncles because they would do whatever she told them to do. Most of the time they played house and Sadie was the mom that would put them in time-out every couple of seconds. (Do I do that?) Braden clung to me like the world would end if I left him at the beginning but after a day or two he decided he could handle the other kids on his own. When it was time to say good-bye he gave everyone 2 or 3 hugs each at least. We were sad that we couldnt visit many friends because it was a short trip but glad we were able to see the family.

Sadie's Christmas crafts

Sadie gave us a cute plate with her hand print on it for Christmas. She made it at preschool. She also made the little Christmas tree at school. She loves to do crafts and helped me alot this Christmas. She helped me to cut and tape the wrapping paper on the presents and helped me make Christmas goodies. Sadie also loved creating a gingerbread house with Jason and I. She was very meticulous in arranging the candies on her house.

See Carter Family Elves

I just made a total elf of myself. Check it out by clicking the link below.
Carter Family Elves

Is it Christmas yet?

We are getting very excited for Christmas over here, especially Sadie and Braden. We picked out our Christmas tree at the end of November, which was probably the first time we have been early for anything in our lives. Sadie and Braden love looking at the houses with the Christmas lights, singing Christmas Songs, making gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses, etc. Sadie wakes up every day asking if it is Christmas today and "Did Santa come last night?" She has a lot of faith that he will bring her a puppy on Christmas. We will see.
It was funny when we made gingerbread cookies with Sadie's friend Maile. I let them smell all the ingredients as we put them in. The molasses, ginger and cloves didn't get a good reaction, but when we put in the cinnamon, Maile said, "Finally a refreshing smell!" A couple times they were sure the gingerbread man was running away but we always caught him before he got very far. :)

Thanksgiving, Family and Stiches

A Trip to the Jelly Belly Factory with Glenden and Patty, Rocio, Patty's sisters Betty and Lorena and Lorena's baby Illan.

Glenden and Patty (Patty is 5 months pregnant expecting twins!) The last couple weeks we have been able to spend time with family we don't see often. My mom and my sister Mary came 2 weeks ago and spent 4 days with us at our house. They brought some yummy food from the farm and from their personal garden. Jason's brother Chris came from Utah to help Grandma Barney in her travel back to Aunt Jill's house. Then my brother and his wife came to visit her family from the Bay Area and us. We were able to throw a baby shower for them while they were here, as she is expecting twins.


(p.s. Chris, there was no copyright on this picture, right?)

We had a yummy (as always) Thanksgiving Dinner at Nana and Papa Carter's house where Jason's Aunt Pam and Uncle Dee were there, along with 2 of Jason's siblings, Jennifer and Nathan and their families. Sadie and Braden had a great time playing with cousins, but there was a little too much rough-housing and Sadie ended up at the hospital getting stitches. She fell off a little tykes truck that Madison, Noah, Sadie and Andrew were playing on and landed on her chin. She only needed 2 stitches so hopefully there wont be too much of a scar. It was sad when she was on the table wrapped up in a burrito wrap so she couldn't thrash around and 2 people holding her down so she could get the stitches. She was yelling "Why are you doing this, I want to get out of here!". The good part about the experience is that we have a new hospital close by and it was so nice not to travel into Concord and wait for 6 hours for help. We were in and out in an hour or so. Close up of Sadie's 2 stitches in her chin

Little Peanut

The Jason and Amber Carter family has a new little member. We are all excited for this new addition. Sadie talks about the new baby very often and always insists it is a girl. Braden has no clue about the situation just yet. Right now its about the size of a peanut but looking healthy and happy as we saw on Ultrasound today! We saw a little heartbeat and moving arms and legs. Its about 9 and a half weeks old and has a due date somewhere around June 17th. On January 21 we will hopefully find out out if it is a girl or a boy and that everything has developed normally. What a miracle life is!

Sadie's new favorite alaphabet song

Starring Kermit the Frog!

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween although I'm sure we will be dealing with the aftershocks of Halloween for a while to come. Sadie got candy at Pre-School, then we went Trunk-or-Treating at the Church, and then we did the Trick-or-Treating on Halloween night. Last night I let them both eat some of their candy after Trick-or-Treating and they were so WIRED! I couldn't believe it was so bad! Braden was practically running circles and kept falling over like he was drunk! Big mistake with the candy. Oh well. We only have a HUGE bowl of candy to go and then we won't have to worry about that anymore. :)

The Princess

I told Sadie, "stand up straight for the picture". Apparently, she thinks leaning back further makes her look straigher... :)

Sadie saw her Princess candy bag empty today because I put all the candy together in a big bowl. She told me, "Don't take my candy out of my Princess Bag, I LOVE my candy!"

The Dragon

Braden liked the costume (as long as the hood wasn't on) and trick-or-treating. But mostly he loved his candy. His new favorite word (all day long) "Treat! Treat!"

What you can't see in this picture is Braden was screaming and crying because he HATED the hood!

California Aesthetics

I have been working on getting some pictures of Jason's work online and I looking for any suggestions and/or comments on if it is ok and if there is anything I should do different. I paid for a website but apparently it takes more knowledge than I have to get it up and running because I couldn't figure out how to make it look good and make it work. So I did it on a blog. CalAesthetics.blogspot.com. Check it out if you get a chance. I'm still trying to get more pictures up but unfortunately Jason isn't always consistent at bringing the camera to the job.

Fall Season Fun

Playing with leaves

Playing at the Jumpies at the Pumpkin Patch

Carving Pumpkins

The Pumpkin Patch

We went to the Pumpkin Patch yesterday. The kids have been so excited about pumpkins, so they really enjoyed the pumpkin patch. Sadie carefully picked which pumpkin she wanted while Braden was more interested in all the young girls. Every time he would see a girl a little younger than him he had to go up to her and touch her hair and give her a hug. It was so funny. They also liked seeing the animals at Smith Family Farm. Braden's favorite part was the ride behind the tractor to the patch. Here's some fun pictures of our day:

The Puppies Have Names!

For the longest time we have been trying to get Sadie to name her stuffed animals but she always insisted on calling them all "baby puppy". Just recently she gave all of them names and when she talks about them she uses their new names. So we have Grey, Bows, Spot, Lady, Hearts, Daddy, Braden, and Ugly. She has been crazy about her "Baby Puppies" for the longest time. She still takes them everywhere and lately their new home is usually in a pumpkin basket. Except at night she takes them all with her. Its so funny when she wakes up in the night running into our room with 5 puppies in her arms!

Executive Assistants

It's hard work for our assistants at California Aesthetics. Click on the video to see Sadie and Braden hard at work.

Notice the papers and files stacked up behind them. It's going to take a while for them to get caught up!

Photo Albums

I just wanted to share with everyone my favorite way to "scrapbook". Nowadays with digital cameras, you have a ton of pictures stored in your computer and may not have a printed copy of them. Well, with this program a friend introduced me to, you can create a book on your computer using a free program called Picaboo. You don't have to upload the pictures to the Internet like with Snapfish or Shutterfly because the program is downloaded onto your computer. You can choose from 1000s of digital paper options as the background, or use your own picture as the background. Then there are probably 230 different layouts for your pages, whether you want one picture on the page or 10, or if you want to type something on the page. Its pretty cool. Then once you get the album finished on your computer, you upload it to Picaboo.com's printing center and they print it out for you with either a hard bound or paper back book. Sadie loves looking at her picture book and I know if I had to cut and paste and decorate each page by hand, I never would have got it done. So, I have links to the books I made if you would like to look at them, click on the links on the left under my profile. I am still finishing up Braden's baby book but I have a link to view what I have got done so far. If you see spelling mistakes, let me know!

A streak of bad luck?

So, I'm pretty sure its not me because this unlikely chain of events all started since I met Jason. I think he has bad luck. I mean, how do you miss 2 flights to the location of your wedding, get a flat tire on the way to your own reception and have to walk to the reception - late and not even showered and dressed yet? Not to mention the tanning bed burn Jason got just before the wedding or the highlights he got that ended up looking like orange carrot top with out the frow. Or the car accident that 2 of the groomsmen and one of the bridesmaids was in that totalled the rental car they were in the day before the wedding. But it doesn't stop there.
How many people have a major fire in their house.... twice? And how strange it is that one was Sept. 14, 2004 and the next was Sept. 15, 2006. I wonder what will happen Sept. 16, 2008??? The first one the cause of the fire is unknown. The second was spontaneous combustion of some oily rags used to stain a fence at our church.
Well, I guess the stolen tires, stolen stereo equipment (that happened last week), stolen truck, and stolen identity (twice) is the result of negligent cops and increasing crime rate. But how many people have had all of these things happen? And we aren't that old either!
I think its odd that the boat that we bought turned out to be a lemon and the company that we bought it from was committing fraudulent deals and registration scams. (We did get it straightened out... the company gave us a new boat last year)
If you tally it all up, it seems to be quite a list. Is it just me, or does this seem a little unusual?

The Backyard Project

Our backyard project is slow but coming along. I didn't take a before picture, it would have been to embarrassing. To describe the "before" though, it was basically a big cement patio (obviously poured by amateurs, it looked horrible!) with a portion of the patio covered with an very ugly overhang. It had the same kind of roofing the old shop had on the farm... I don't know what it is called. It's that clear, corrugated siding stuff. Anyway, after we took that down, the yard seemed so much bigger and cleaner. Also, the other main thing our back yard consisted of was a lot of weeds. No landscaping at all.

Well, we still haven't done the landscaping but we have the trenches dug out for irrigation above the retaining wall along and the side yard area. We had the cement covered with flagstone (silver mica) but we still have to grout it. The next step for the patio is to put up a white arbor and we want to put potted flowers and ivy around it to grow up it. We also took out all the weeds and put a playset in. We have rubber bark to fill in the area around the playset but we have to wait until the grout is done. It's so nice to have somewhere for the kids and their friends to play outside now. If we ever finish it (you know how home projects go) I will post an updated picture once the landscaping and arbor are up!

The Flagstone Patio and New Playset!

The Swings

The Rock Wall

The Slide

The Chalkboard

The Ladder

The Ships Wheel

The Playhouse

Highlights

Here's some pictures my friend Kelly took of the highlights of this year:

Kids say the darnest things

It's so fun when kids first start learning what everything means and how to say different things. Sadie is constantly saying the funniest things, but most of the time I forget to write them down and then later on I can't remember what it was that she said that was so funny. I thought I would post some of the the funny things she has said:


"Did we get these clothes from the Old Lady?" (Old Navy)

"You look scary, Mom! Put on some make-up!"

Sadie had been very sick and dehydrated earlier this summer. We took her in to get fluid IV's and the nurses had to poke her multiple times to find an vein that did not collapse because of her dehydration. As they tried different spots on her arms and hands she cried "Don't poke me! No, don't poke me!" It was so sad because she didn't understand why I was letting this happen to her.
Soon after she was better I had some errands to run and I told Sadie that one of the places we needed to go was the post office. Sadie exclaimed, "No, Not the poke office!!! I don't like the poke office!"

The other funny thing she said soon after she after she got home from the hospital was when she finally felt better and felt like eating again after a week of being sick. I made sandwiches to eat for lunch. We sat down and Sadie started the prayer, "Dear sandwich...." I took it as a sign that her appetite was finally back!

One time I buckled her in her car seat too tight and she exclaimed: "Ouch! You're hurting my penis!"


Then there's the times when she has pointed something out that shouldn't have been said out loud...

We were at the waiting room at the doctor's office and a bigger lady that was sloppily dressed sits down next to us. Sadie looks at her and says "She's a mess!"

Another time at the waiting room at the doctors office...."Mommy, what's wrong with that black baby?" The baby had been crying and she wanted to know why, but the way she phrased it....


It seems that waiting rooms are a good place for kids to speak their mind, and it's always uncomfortable because you have to play it off. It's not like you can just walk away!


Words that Sadie has created:

tomorning: a combination of tomorrow and morning. It means sometime in the past.

oovie: movie

This one was a favorite last year. She hasn't said it in a long time but it was so cute...
EE-yar: meaning "Uh-oh"

The Insane: A dance move Sadie created and named.

Do you think I'm in for trouble?

So, Sadie and Braden play together really good. Sadie loves to play with his cars and push toys with him and Braden will play "house" with her. I think it's cute. But today Braden wanted to play "dress up"....

Should I be worried???

Labor Day Weekend

We get visitors!

My cousin Sharon and her 2 kids came from Idaho to visit for the weekend while Jason took the boat out to Lake Tahoe with the boys in our ward. I was so glad to have company! Sharon and I grew up on the farm together and have always been very close. It was fun reminiscing and hanging out with her again. Our kids are close in age so we thought they might have a good time together. Lan and Sadie are 9 months difference in age, and Rylie and Braden are 5 months difference. We had a lot of fun taking the kids to all the fun places in the area. We went to the Ocean, to the water park, Pump it Up, Chuck E Cheese, took them for ice cream, etc. Sadie and Lan loved all of it. Braden and Rylie were a little harder to please sometimes but definitely had a good time too. Chuck E Cheese was the biggest hit for all 4 having a good time at the same time. They all really liked riding in the mini car/truck together. I wish I had my camera more often, the Ocean was so nice when we went and Sadie and Lan were so funny to watch as they played in the waves!

The kids together: Rylie, Lan, Sadie, and Braden. Notice my kids look like midgets compared to Sharon's.

So this is what it would be like with 3 car seats in a row... someone is always within arms reach to tease and touch.

Lan got the back seat to himself. But that doesn't mean he couldn't reach Sadie's seat to tease her. Sadie is too fun to get a reaction out of... how could he resist.

Lan took Sadie for a ride in his monster truck at Chuck E Cheese

They just look so cute in that truck!

Talking more and more...

Braden has been learning a lot of new words. Words like Uh-oh, car, boat, bottle, thank you, amen, and MEEEE! When I ask "Who wants dinner?" or "Who wants to take a bath?" or "Who wants (fill in the blank)?" Braden and Sadie both answer "Meeeee!" with one arm raised. Which then usually ends up in a fighting match with one pushing the other saying "no me!" and then the other pushing the first one back. It surprises me the things that they can argue about with Braden's small vocabulary. But they find a reason....

Camping!

We went to Lake Hogan again last weekend and it was a great time. The kids got super dirty (again) and we had a lot fun with our camping buddies. Mostly the Morleys, the Thompsons, the Alvies, and the Larsons. We had lots of good camp food (the Alvies and the Larsons treated us to dinner after a day on the boat). And we did lots of swimming, boating, wakeboarding, and tubing. We even got Glenden and Patty (my brother and his wife) to join us in camping one night and go on the boat for a couple of hours. Patty hates camping and the water as well. We have only one more trip scheduled for the summer and then fall and winter are on their way. It went by way too fast...

The Carter kids and the Alvies kids

Ryli and Sadie - cookie monsters
Braden and Cade - the mechanics

Braden the dirt ball

Cooling off in the water


The Thopmson's boat
Braden kicking back on the boat