Christmas #1

The first Christmas of the year was with the Gibson family in the mountains.  The family rented a house and packed in around 20 people for a weekend of fun and eating.  The kids had a great time laughing, crawling, and being spoiled by their cousins, aunts, uncles, and Grammie.

The sunset and the view from the house was pretty awesome.

Mount Christmas.

Avery was pretty excited to get to opening presents.

Finally getting to open some presents after having to look at them under the tree all day.

Even Carter got in on the action.  He wasn't so much interested in the presents, but REALLY loved the wrapping paper.

 I have never heard him laugh so much or so long as he did when he was pulling on wrapping paper.  Avery would take pieces and tear them apart and he would laugh at the top of his lungs every time.

 Soooooo many laughs.

Party at Monkey Joe's

Last Saturday, one member of Avery's trio had a birthday party.  I took Avery to Monkey Joe's while Daddy and Carter stayed home.  He tried some climbing around of his own so he will be ready for these bouncy house parties soon!

We signed in, got our bracelets, and Avery took off.  She was breaking a sweat about 15 minutes in.  The girls would run to one bouncy thing, jump for about 45 seconds and run to another, go down the slide, and run back to the first one, go back to the slide, and repeat for 2 hours.

The BFF trio did take a photo with this guy for a second.

Avery and Abby going down the slide together.

Sat still for a few minutes for pizza and cupcakes.

Avery and the birthday girl, Hunter.

Eating With Carter

Carter is a pretty good eater, although he recently has discovered self feeding (Thanks Daycare!) and is hooked on snack foods that have to go along with his normal assorted veggie mushes.

He is pretty cute in his high chair.

Avery loves to feed Carter, but doesn't always have the patience to wait for him to finish his bottle.  It is always a great help when she takes care of breakfast for both herself and Carter.  In a few more months, she should be able to change diapers and we won't have to get up at all on the weekends.

Trying to feed himself a few puffs while Laura sneaks in carrots between bites.

 Trying to feed himself Avacados was a very hands on experience.

 Hands are a less than effective tool for eating baby foods, but Carter is still developing his reasoning skills.  Here he is sticking his tongue out at me when I try to explain why it isn't going to work.

 Luckily Charger is ok with cleaning up carrots, so all we have to do is put Carter down on the ground and we are going to save a fortune on laundry costs.

8 Months Old

Carter turned 8 months old a few days ago, so we got some good pictures of him in his room.  This month's new skills is all about crawling.  He went from getting up on all fours last month to moving around the room to you can't turn your head for a second.  Once he was able to move over to a piece of furniture he immediately is trying to pull up on something.  He has only been able to pull himself up a couple of times at school on the crib, but he is desperate to start walking.  We can lead him around the room holding his hands and he will try to walk, but isn't really close with the mechanics of it.

This shot was achieved by putting him on one side of the room and running to the other side, while frantically snapping pictures as he sprinted across the room towards me.

He is a pretty good sitter, but really isn't interested in sitting still for very long as there is so much to explore.

 Sitting in his rocking chair was a nervous experience.  He is very much unlike his sister in that he has literally no fear.  He is not afraid to crawl right off the side of the bed or take a jump from the couch.

  

So I put together a little progression of Carter learning how to crawl.

Game #6

So Thanksgiving weekend was also the last home game of the year.  Avery skipped game number 5 so that she could go to the museum with Gigi and Ru, but since the weather was going to be really nice and the kick off was at 3:30, I wanted her to come to this game.

First up as usual was watching the band and cheerleaders lead the team into the stadium before the game.  If you ask her what instrument she wants to play in the band, this week it was "DRUMS!"

 On Daddy's shoulders cheering the football team into the stadium.

 Of course Uncle David was there for some laughs!

 Stephanie, Joe, and Jude came to the game with us as well.

 Avery was pumped up for the entire game.

 At some point, Avery got a hold of Laura's phone and started snapping some pictures.  First up, Drew, Ashley, and Silly Graydon.

 One of Mommy and Daddy!

 Who can forget the bench?

 A selfie with Mommy and Daddy in the background.

 Avery and her football best friends, Morgan and Macey.

 The gang at the end of the game except for Uncle David.

Avery, Mommy, and Aunt Stephanie waiting on the band to start playing on the way out of the stadium.

 Of course we had to watch the band walk out of the stadium on the way out.

Thanksgiving at the Farm

We are finally unpacked from being on the road for the past two weekends so we have lots of pictures to post from Thanksgiving weekend in Vass.  It is a bit harder to get 5 minutes to blog because Carter went from barely crawling to "I can make it to the other side of the house and start a fire" in just a couple of weeks, so we can't take our eyes off of him.

First thing up on Thanksgiving morning is the "Blessing of the Hounds."  They have a big fox hunt in Moore county where all the horse people get all dressed up with their hounds and go run around the woods.  They get upset if you call them dogs, so don't.  Supposedly they are hunting foxes, but Laura didn't take any pictures of someone in fancy horse gear galloping back holding a dead fox by a tail, so I think it is all just a reason to go horse riding together.  Either way, Avery loves horses and dogs so she had a great time watching the show.

Avery amongst a throng of hounds and small children rocking her halloween costume shades.

 Meanwhile at the homestead, Carter was working on his crawling skills doing laps around the kitchen island.

 Of course Avery had to ride Bucky when they came back from the blessing of the hounds.

 Luckily the weather was awesome all weekend so everyone got to spend lots of time outside.

 Avery, Bucky, and Mimi working on their trotting skills.

 Mommy's little turkey!

 2 seconds later you can see how far he made it from the blanket.

 We had Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Stephanie's house which is just across a horse pasture from Mimi and Papa's.  They have a giant porch and Avery was blowing bubbles to entertain her brother before dinner.

 This is a great picture.  No more comments needed.

 The ladies waiting on me and Joe to make dinner...

 Avery and Jude jumping on the trampoline the day after.

 Me and carter out for a walk trying the backpack out.

Avery got to ride Bucky some more due to the nice weather.

 

Are we a horse family now?

 Carter even got in on the great Thanksgiving leftovers.

 The kids cuddling watching cartoons on Saturday morning.