Birthdays

We've had a couple birthdays around here so I blog about them before we have more. Abbi celebrated last month and we had a fun day. We started the day by opening a few gifts (by request of the birthday girl and by suggestion of her brother) and then we went to the Draper temple open house. I thought that would be a memorable thing to do on her birthday. The kids thought the bus ride was the best part. The baptismal font was their favorite room. Carter even loved walking through the temple and it really wasn't that crowded since it was a weekday morning. That evening for her big celebration we went to Chuck E. Cheese with her 3 favorite girl cousins.
They had a fun time there. And of course she was excited to open more presents and eat cupcakes.

Abbi is finally 5 and on her birthday she shyly asked me, "Do I have to get shots today?" For the past year she hasn't wanted to turn 5 because of the shots you have to get to go to kindergarten. There have been many tears shed over this subject. I informed her she didn't have to get shots that day and it was a relief to her. But we're going to have to face that one day in the near future.

The past 5 years have gone so fast and it was like yesterday she was my pretty little baby girl in the hospital with a bright green bow (the hospital put it on her and I requested they change it to a more girly color- who puts a bright green bow on a newborn girl?).
But now she's all grown up, won't wear certain clothes because she doesn't like them, takes forever to find clothes she likes at the store (reminds me of me years ago), and definitely likes any clothing with sparkleys on them. Abbi is a sweet girl that often lets her older brother has his way because she's okay with that. She's a very independent child and has no problem doing activities on her own. She loves art projects, etc. We have drawings all over the place from her. Abbi loves preschool and being with friends. She's even looking forward to kindergarten this coming year (once we get past those shots). She's already reading books from preschool and has impressed me by how well she can do. Abbi definitely is the little princess around here and loves all things girly.

So this past week we celebrated Carter's birthday. He turned 2! Where did those 2 years go? Although he could really care less what we did that day we wanted to do something special. Zac and Abbi had the day off school so we took the kids to the farm. We always need a good trip to the farm during spring anyway.
But this year Carter was more into it and loves seeing all the animals and even feeding them (if we could get him to keep his hand there long enough).
Carter even got to ride a pony this year.
Afterwards we went to Carter's favorite Noodles & Company (okay, so maybe that's mom's favorite) and the kids always love the mac & cheese there. Yum! (Doesn't he look so cute eating his mac & cheese?)
Then it was home for a nap and that night we celebrated with elmo cupcakes (or pancakes as Carter called them) and exciting presents (what do you get a 2 year old that's the third child in the family?). Carter loves songs and he loved singing "Happy Birthday" with us. He actually prefers to sing it "Happy Birthday to Carter" instead of "Happy Birthday to you" and he really gets into singing it. He's still saying "Happy birthday to Carter". One more kid that loves birthdays.

Carter is the sweetness in our family (yet he did just hit the terrible twos). Carter loves songs. I mean he really loves songs. He can sing all the words to several songs- I love to see the temple, Popcorn popping, I am a child of god, The abc song, and many others. And it's about the cutest thing you've ever seen (although I am biased). He also knows all his letters and can tell you which letter is which. He somehow picked that up from watching Super Why on PBS. Thank you PBS. We were amazed the first time he did it. Carter also loves books. He could read and read books and never stop. He goes to bed every night reading books. He has several of them memorized and can read them to you. Carter is a talker. He jibbers and you can't really tell what he saying but he has something serious to tell you. He also says a lot of things that make sense and communicates pretty well. He even has a knock knock joke he tells all the time (Knock, knock- who's there?- Ewho) Yet he's quite shy around people he doesn't know. That may be a challenge in years to come. Carter loves outside and could spend hours exploring out there. He's glad for the nice weather and wish it would stay. Carter is just an easy going sweet child.