Mothers Day Trip

Since Laura does so many little things to make our family happy we thought we would we do something nice for her on Mother's Day.  She wanted to hang out with the kids and do something fun, so after we let her sleep in we went as a family to Carowinds and had a delicious lunch eating off the kid's plates.  (I did do a lot of cooking for Laura that weekend)

Me and Carter waiting for the girls to get off the roller coaster.

Family picture on the observation tower.

Carter seems unimpressed with the view...

Strawberry Festival

After meeting Madison Leigh, we made a spur of the moment decision to go to the strawberry festival in Fort Mill to see what it was all about.  So did 1000's of other people.

As we were walking in, someone handed us a roll of tickets that they had purchased for the rides and we thought, "That's so nice of them!"  However, when we got in and saw the 1000's of people; we understood why as the lines were so long we couldn't spend them all.

Avery did get to try a few rides including this giant slide.

She also got to meet the Bojangles chicken and the Publix dragon.  She said that the chicken wasn't real, because "He had shoes on under his yellow feet."  We all had a good laugh at that because THAT was the reason he wasn't real.

Since it was a strawberry festival, we might as well eat strawberries...right?

Avery wanted to take her picture with these "Real-Life Princesses"......

Laura took this picture at the top of the fun house that she and Avery went through.  You can pretty much everyone is in a line for either food or a ride.

Meeting Madison Leigh

We are out of order of our posts and a few weeks behind, but we were waiting on Sara to post about Madison Leigh before we put our pictures up.  A few weeks ago we went and met Madison for the first time and drug the Rotmans out of the house for lunch.

While we were there, Madison was a sweetheart and a very well behaved baby.

Nothing like that fresh new baby smell.

Such a sweetie...

Carter was unimpressed and spent time with Laura's phone.  He managed to get it unlocked and sent a few texts as well as called Gigi.

The girls had a blast as usual and even got Carter in the action playing dressup.  He didn't seem to mind it as he is excited to do whatever his big sister does.  I can't wait to include some princess dressup pictures in his high school yearbook.

I got to see Madison with her eyes open.  She gave me a few smirks as well, but I let Sara handle the diapers that resulted.

Dance Recital

Avery had her yearly dance recital earlier this month.  This will be her last session of "Daisy Dance" since she won't be full time at Kiddie Academy after August (but let's not think that yet, I don't want to cry today).  She does really enjoy dancing so we will have start some after school activities (but I don't want to think about juggling that either - yikes!).
Avery is the oldest dancer this year.  The girls are wearing fairy wings for the ballet routine and lion headbands for the tap routine.  
First video is the welcome / warm up song.
Second video is ballet dancing to a song from Tinker Bell movie I think
Third video is tap dancing - one girl has to go potty and Avery loses her headband.

So here are the videos!!

    



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The girls were very cute and we are so proud of our tiny dancer.  

Her teacher, Ms. Penny

Carowinds (first of many)

As mentioned earlier, the whole family has season passes to Carowinds this year.  This means we can stop by for a few rides after nap and still be home for dinner and we haven't wasted any money.  The whole family finally got to go and see what Daddy and Avery have been doing without us!

Avery wanted to take me on the Woodstock Express (the only roller coaster she's tall enough for).  She loves it and can't wait to ride the other ones when she's older.

 One time we got the front row!

Carter wasn't too keen on the carousel when the horse started moving up and down.  Good thing he likes people watching from the safe view of the stroller.

Rob likes taking Avery on the Gliders.  One day I'll get to try it....

Carter's First Steps

So this happened a couple days ago out of the blue.  He still isn't very confident in it and would prefer to crawl to get somewhere quickly; but is starting to give walking a shot if we stand him up and he is walking towards the other one of us.

Climbing Bear

This little guy loves to climb.  Up the stairs, on the couch, up to the bed, into the bathtub, over his sister, etc.  There is no wall or obstacle that he won't try to get over.

Here he is climbing the stairs on the swingset.  We have to follow him closely so he doesn't sprint over to the slide and go down by himself.  We need a giant pillow to put on the bottom so that he can do it.

"What do you mean I can't come straight back down?"

 "Mommy, you're so funny!"

Climbing on the firepit...

 Climbing on the couch...  No he isn't reading that book.  It is more of a tool used for more climbing.

Vegas!

While we are getting behind on a few posts and Laura hasn't posted her trip to China yet, we still are alive and doing this blog thing.  Recently Laura's company flew us to Vegas to celebrate them hitting their sales targets.  They put us up in fancy digs and fed us until we poppped.

 We did enjoy "dressing up" and doing adult stuff like staying up past 9:30 and sleeping in past 7am.

They did let us out from the banquet rooms so that we could do some sight seeing so we took a few pictures along the strip.  This one is in front of Paris.

 And the Bellagio.

 A crazy night show at the cocktail lounge at the Wynn.

 We also ate like pigs.  This was our main course at brunch one day at Mesa grill.  That burger is almost as large as Laura's head and after we both consumed an appetizer.  You can see in the background, I didn't wait for a picture to be taken of my food to dig in.

Missing are pictures from our tasting menu dinner at Giada's.  It was 4 courses and included 11 desserts.  That's right...11 desserts.  I wish I had taken pictures, but I didn't want to be that guy.  However, I did take this picture of the Mirage volcano as we slowly rolled our way back to the Wynn that evening.