Behind Again

Here I am....behind on blogs again.  Life is just catching up  to us lately and we have been so super busy, both at work and at home.

Two weekends ago, Chad went hunting with his Dad and his brother and Riley spent the night with Kate & Liz, so Carter and I found ourselves at home by ourselves.  Carter was pretty weirded out by this and kept asking where "IE" and "Daddy" were.  Here he is after his 4th banana of the day....pretty happy......

But then we went on a walk in the wagon and he was just bored or super confused through most of it.  We stopped by his friend Holden's house, a block away, and the boys acted like they were too cool to even be excited about seeing each other!  Frustrating!!

Carter's been in rare form as of late.  First I thought he might be teething, but now I think it's just his age.  He's learning his boundaries and most of the time his boundaries really upset him.  He gets cranky on a dime if he does not get his way and has really learned how to throw a fit, which mostly means he goes limp and sobs.  And he has a HUGE obsession with bananas.  I think he would eat 20 a day if we would let him!  Potassium overdose anyone?

Two Sundays ago he was having a "Papa Only" day, which meant the only person he wanted to have anything to do with was his Papa.  This meant that after church, when Riley asked to go to the Pumpkin Patch and Carter sobbed when Papa tried to put him in my car, that Carter ended up going to Papa's house to nap and I took Riley to the Pumpkin Patch by myself.

Riley & I had a great time at the Pumpkin Patch, although it was really crowded!  We picked out 5 more pumpkins: 4 for home and 1 for my office and I think Chad thinks we have our own pumpkin patch on our porch.

Riley also discovered these cool little scarecrows and so we got two: 1 for him and 1 for Carter.  They are guarding our new flowers, which I'll tell you about in a minute.

As soon as Riley & I got home from the Pumpkin Patch we started carving and decorating our pumpkins.  They look really good and my favorites are the ones that I used these adhesive stick ons (sort of like temporary tattoos) on.  But our whole "patch" looks great and we've added 2 more small pumpkins from school to the bunch, so we're up to 10 on the porch now!  I know.....it's a bit overboard, but Riley's so excited that I just find myself carried away!

The other big thing going on right now is that Chad & I are trying to re-finance our mortgage, which meant we had to have our house re-appraised.  We had someone come out last week and give our yard a little pick-me-up and here is our front and side yard before they came out:

And here is the front yard after!  They planted some really pretty flowers on either side of the sidewalk and they are so pretty!  There is something (squirrel?....raccoon?....) digging tiny holes in  the mulch beds so my neighbor told me put sprinkle chili powder on them.  I did and it seemed to work, at least for last night!

We just got word today that our appraisal was good and we will move forward with the re-finance, so we are really proud and excited about that!

Last week Chad went out to Dallas Opera one night and so we invited Kate, Liz and Zachary to eat dinner with us at Pappas Burger.  Carter was in rare form during dinner and spent his entire dinner sitting in my lap, but you wouldn't know it from these smiles after dinner!

Last Wednesday, the boys spent the night with Grandmommy & Haha and they had a fun picnic at Tillery Park!

I went and rowed a quad on Wednesday after work and I did so well that I get to move up a class in boat this week.  The evening ended even more perfectly when I came home to Chad cooking a steak dinner and then we laid in the hammock for an hour or so after dinner.

In other news, Riley is doing really well in school even though he hates going because it is so hard and he does not like writing his letters.  He got his first "good" written by his teacher on  his L letters that he wrote last week.  We just keep encouraging him, but everyday and every night he tries to get out of going to school.  It's going to be a long 13 years if this continues through high school!

Also, last week my cousin Jill gave birth to her daughter Madilyn Leigh.  She is such a cutie! I went up to see them at the hospital on Thursday and we tried to take the boys up on Saturday, but Madi was getting her hearing tested so we didn't get to stay long.  We look forward to visiting them at their house sometime in the next few weeks.

This weekend we were invited to a fun Dia de los Muertos party at the Hayes' house.  The kids got to wear their costumes and I had a cute little conductor and Buzz Lightyear at my house!

Surprisingly, Carter did not take his conductor bandanna off once!  Amazing!  At the party they had an altar where you could leave photos of your loved ones and of course 2 pics of Jake went up there!

But we really just had a super fun time spending the evening with friends and watching the kids play!

We have a lot more fun activities coming up in the next week, so hopefully I'll be able to stay up to date with blogging!!  I'm doing my best!