Random Pictures from the Past Few Months

Being mischievous on the fireplace. All dressed up to go to the boat. Granddaddy bought these shoes before Carter was born, so we squeezed his chubby feet in the one time.

We took a vacation to Cedar Key a few weeks ago. Here are the pictures from there...
Playing at the beach

Digging for treasure at Manatee Springs

Watching the sunset and throwing rocks into the water

Taking a walk through the nature trail in 105 degree heat!

Daddy and Carter eating watermelon. Carter had watermelon juice from head to toe.

While at Cedar Key, we went searching for sand dollars. We took a boat trip across the inter coastal (hence the life jacket on Carter) to a sandbar off a natural bird sanctuary island. Then, we swished out feet through the sand in about knee deep water searching for sand dollars. We found six of them. Two of the sand dollars are about six inches across!

Daddy and Carter at Manatee Springs. This is the face Carter makes when we say "smile". Hopefully, this will fade by two year pictures :)

Too Much To Do

I have really been slacking on these posts, and I say I will try to do better. It is hard keeping up with this blog. Now that we are home for the summer, we are trying to get little things done around the house while keeping Carter engaged in fun activities. I will try to post some pictures by the end of this week. Keep your fingers crossed!

Free Babysitters

Steve and I have been very busy these past two months, and Carter has spent three weekends with his grandparents Meeks. Here are the bad habits I have to undo when he returns...My parents feed him Chef Boy-r-dee out of the can and let him drink Diet Coke...Give him way too many Oreo cookies...
Take him to the toy store and get him addicted to $300 power cars (which they don't buy him)...

Put glasses on him, so now he wants his own pair....

And somehow, manage to have him fall asleep in his stroller-something Carter won't do for Steve and I anymore.

In all honesty, my parents are great babysitters, and do it all on their very tiny living space in the boat with three dogs running around. This is quite a task since Carter NEVER stops moving.

They do feed him on a plate, but he is addicted to Diet Coke thanks to Granddaddy. He only gets a couple cookies a day, but he drinks a lot of chocolate milk at their house. He is addicted to driving fast cars and has learned all the buttons on the Mercedes my parents drive. And, we can't find sunglasses to fit Carter's head because it's too big! Carter loves the boat, and we hear how he wants "Dada take big truck to boat" almost every day. I know he is completely spoiled with them, but that's what grandparents are for, I guess. :)

Gatorland

Over our Spring Break, we wanted to take Carter to Sea World. However, when we got close to the theme park, it took over ONE HOUR to drive half a mile, and we never even made it to the entrance. We could only imagine the amount of people that would be in the park that day, so we nixed the idea and headed to Gatorland.

All those things in there are alligators. This is a normal scene from any lake near us. Well, maybe not as many, but we do see them all the time. For example, whenever we cross the Lake Jessup bridge, we count how many alligators we see in the lake and on shore. My highest count has

been 12.

This is what an alligator will do to you if you mess with it :) This was too cute for us to pass up. Carter and Daddy with the alligators. It was 68 degrees out that day, cold for Florida in April. However, the next day I was wearing shorts and it was around 80 degrees.

Carter is going to be an alligator wrestler one day. They actually have alligator wrestling at Gatorland, but Carter wasn't in the mood to watch it. I've seen the show before, and they do not tape their mouths shut. It's pretty wild.

Our family outside the original entrance. Carter climbed all over the teeth and had a meltdown when we moved him out of the way so other people could take pictures. Ahh, life with an 18 month old.

A Month of Strawberries

March has been the month of strawberries our family. In the beginning of March, we went to the Strawberry Festival in Plant City. I have always wanted to go to this festival, so Steve took me for my birthday. It was not quite what I expected, but it was a fun (and cold) day. We started off at the 4-H show of cows. Once Carter got over his shock of how big the cows were, he loved listening to them "moo". Then, we went over to see the roosters and the rabbits. Carter perfected his rooster sound as he listened to all the roosters crow. He "cocka-do-do" all throughout the roosters and the rabbits.

Next, it was time for the "big truck", as Carter calls it. It amazes me how large those tractors are. He looks so tiny next to the wheel!

Grandaddy put Carter on one of the tractors. We had to pry him off of it so other kids could get on. Does he have farming in his future?

After we all filled up on corn dogs, strawberry shortcake, fried Snickers, fried Reese's Peanut butter Cups, fried Oreos, and bacon dipped in chocolate (yes, you read that correctly), we headed over to the pig races. These were a "snort"-pun intended. Carter liked watching them run around the track, and he especially liked watching them jump into the water and swim.

Finally, it was time for the concert. We saw Rodney Adkins perform. He was a great entertainer, but not great enough for Carter. I got to sit in my seat for about 5 minutes before Carter said "walk", and took off for another row. Luckily the concert was not sold out, so Carter and I sat in the very back and watched. Well, I tried to watch and keep Carter from eating rocks and falling off the chairs on his head.

Carter's opinion of the concert. Even food did not keep him occupied for long.



This weekend, we went strawberry picking about 45 minutes from our house in Sorrento. Steve and I have never done this, and it was really fun! We picked strawberries with Carter for about 20 minutes, when he decided that smashing them between his fingers was more exciting. I can't believe how big and juicy the strawberries were! We picked so many, I am making two desserts with them today, and we will still have some left over.

After picking strawberries, we cooked hot dogs over a fire on the property. Steve is the master hot dog cooker. Then, we gorged on a strawberry milkshakes and strawberry shortcake.

We are probably going to go strawberry picking one more time this month. The weather has turned nice again, between 70-80 degrees, so we are spending as much time outdoors as we can before it gets over 90 degrees. It was nice to be together as a family since Steve is working so much lately with umpiring baseball. I'll do my best to keep you updated more frequently.

Carter Being "Nice"

Right now, Carter is going through a hitting phase. One child at his daycare hits and kicks when she doesn't get her way, and so Carter is picking up on it. Fantastic! :( So, he has carried the hitting over to the dogs. Chance and Wrigley are very tolerant and patient with Carter. So, we are trying to teach Carter to be "nice" to the puppies. This is Carter being "nice". He gently pets the dogs and says "Nice" as he does it. It is rather cute, although the look on Wrigley's face is telling me that he doesn't have food so he shouldn't be touching me! Now, Carter is petting everything (including mom and dad) and saying "Nice". Maybe he will start being "nice" to the kids at daycare when he doesn't get his way :)

First Hair Cut

It seems that I only post about once a month. Life has been crazy here. With both of us working, and Steve working a second job, there isn't much time for blogging. I finally get about one hour to myself at 8:00pm, and the last thing I want to do is sit in front of the computer. I will try to be more frequent though.

This weekend, Carter got his first "official" hair cut. I have cut, more like butchered, his hair up until this point, but now it was time for a real one. We have tried for two weeks to get his haircut. One weekend he was sick, and the other weekend there was no time between planned events.

The hair on the back of his head was so long, and I don't know how to cut it. He also has his daddy's double cowlicks. Lucky boy. It went much better than expected. He only whimpered a little with his bottom lip stuck out, which he is famous for with those that know him. And, he got a sucker, which he got two licks of before I panicked and took it away.

Trying to figure out what she just put on him. She was very good. She gave him a brush and a water bottle to hold, although after a few seconds, he told Daddy "All Done" in a sad voice and handed them back.

Not so happy about this!

Look at how long his hair is over his ears and on the back of his head. She probably cut about 3-4 inches off the back. It was long from his cowlicks down. I kept the back of his neck short. His bangs were in his eyes, and he had to look up to see anything.

Almost done...Such a handsome boy with Mommy!

Florida Winter

So we have been having some pretty cold temperatures here in Florida. The other morning, we woke up to ice. We only get ice here about twice a year, if that.

My husband, who is from Alaska, was a little worried because we don't own ice chippers for the windshield. (I didn't even know they made ice chippers). All it took was to turn the defroster on for a few minutes, and the ice melted. I took some pictures for all of you up North to see. Yes, there is ice in the pictures.

Steve's truck with ice on the windshield and hood.
Ice on my Explorer.

One lonely bush outside covered in ice.

At least this year Steve remembered to turn off the sprinklers. During our one freeze last year, Steve ran the sprinklers that night. We had a lovely ice kingdom in our front yard, and some few dying plants. :) Today, it is about 65 degrees and we are in jeans and sweaters. Can't wait for it to warm up!

Carter's Trip to the Zoo

Carter received some Christmas money from his grandparents, and we chose to purchase a year's pass to the Central Florida Zoo. We took Carter there this past weekend, and we all had a great time. I can't wait to see the changes in his reactions throughout the year as he becomes more aware of the animals.

Here Carter is feeding the "nice" goat. Carter got scared by the goat after he feed her and tried to eat all the animal food himself.

This is a Zebu. Still not sure what a Zebu is, but it looks like a cross between a cow and a horse. This Zebu was small. The other Zebu's head was up to my shoulders! There tongues were very slimy and their noses were very snotty (kinda like Carter).

This is the "mean" goat. We weren't fast enough feeding him, so the goat decided to repeatedly ram the fence with his large horns. We quickly left to feed the "nice" goat and the zebus again.
These are spotted leopards. The one on the ground kept pacing the fence. We think he wanted Carter for a light snack, so we kept our distance.

Maude and Mary are the two elephants at the zoo, and they have been together since the 1970's. Carter didn't really care about the elephants, but he spent 20 minutes climbing up and down the steps of this wooden picture. He should have been hired as the official elephant section greeter because he said hi to about 20 people as they passed by.

Merry Christmas

Our families traveled in different directions this year, so we celebrated Christmas three different times. Here are our favorite pictures from the past couple weeks. Merry Christmas!

Carter at the Polar Express exhibit at Sea World.

Uncle Ryan and Aunt Kelly gave him a motorcycle for Christmas! Vroom-Vroom! (Sorry it's sideways. I couldn't figure out how to turn it around.)

Grandma and Bob (Granddaddy's new name) Meeks gave him a climbing set. His favorite thing to do is stand at the top and "stomp, stomp, stomp".

Wrigley decided the climbing set looked fun too.


We should have just bought Carter boxes.

This animals sang "Jingle Bells" everyday for at least 3o minutes.

Can't wait to pack them up soon!

Carter seeing the tree on Christmas morning.

It is much better to sit on the presents to open them.

Merry Christmas

On Saturday, we went for our annual picture with Santa. We have tried to prepare Carter for this day since Thanksgiving. Carter can point out Santa anywhere, loves to say Santa's name, and can even say "Ho, Ho, Ho". Steve even took him to the mall a few times to just look at Santa.

I guess nothing can prepare a one year old for actually sitting with Santa. The funny thing is, as he sat in Santa's lap, he yelled "Santa" in a frantic voice. Another memory to add to his scrapbook. :) Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Day

One thing Steve and I are thankful for is that Carter is a good eater. He eats breakfast at home, breakfast again at daycare, double lunches, 2 snacks, and dinner in one day. At daycare, the teachers made a "Thankful Turkey", and Carter's feather said he was thankful for extra food. So, we were very excited about his first "real" Thanksgiving this year.

The Wagganer's and the Meeks' families got together at our house to celebrate. We had our traditional meal full of casseroles, bread, and of course, turkey.

Carter did not want any of those casseroles or that bread. He wanted TURKEY! I think he probably at 4 pieces of the turkey breast himself!

We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family. We are looking forward to Santa this month!