Baby Swing

Carlysle's baby swing has been sitting back in our office for months now and she has never really shown any interest in it. Well lately, I have been working in the office during most of the day so she seems to spend quite a bit of time in there too. I guess out of boredom she "discovered" the swing and climbed into it by herself. I thought, "Hey, why not". If it keeps her entertained, I'm game. And yes, it does still hold her and it still swings her. Probably because she only weighs 21 pounds, which is barely over the legal limit for riding forward facing in the car. I don't know why but she has to have an armful of "stuff" with her at all times, including while "riding" in the swing. It doesn't matter if she is currently holding two stuffed puppies, 5 books, a cup of milk and a baby doll. If one of those books hits the floor, she wants it back immediately.

Edventure

Ok, I'm way behind on posting pictures and these are from our trip to Edventure back in February. Joey's sister, Sarah, was visiting and we wanted to get together and take the kids to do something fun. She has a daughter, Charlee, who is two and half and our newest addition to the family, Max, who was born in October. This was my first time seeing little Max. What a cutie! Jeff and Sarah sure do make some cute babies!!

So Joey's Mom (Mimi), Sarah, Charlee, Max, me and Carlysle all met at Edventure for an afternoon of fun......and chasing kids! That place is incredible. The best was Carlysle's reaction to "Eddie", the HUGE boy that is several stories high that you actually can climb through. He is in the foyer as soon as you walk in. She seriously stopped looked up and said "Whoaaaa". We had a great time and I can't wait to take Carlysle back, especially when she's a little older.

Baby Max

This is Carlysle seeing "Eddie" for the first time.

So this was the biggest hit of the day and I have to say it was pretty cool. They had a mini grocery store where you get your own mini grocery cart, then you get to fill your cart with "real" groceries (they've taken the food out of the boxes, cans, etc), and they even have a mini checkout counter where you scan your groceries and it beeps with each product. It is so cool how much it resembles an actual grocery store. The funniest part was when Charlee walked over the credit card machine and pretended to swipe her card. Hilarious! Sarah had no idea she knew to do that. Another example of how much kids take in when you have no clue they are even watching!

This is my child trying to steal a box of cereal. She clearly didn't understand you had to "pay" for items. She just walked in, saw a cereal box she liked and tried to leave with it. Guess we'll have to do a better job of explaining why you can't just take things.

Carlysle and Charlee playing in the snow at Snowville.



Carlysle and Mimi


I love this picture. It's hard to tell but Charlee came over and grabbed Carlysle's hand and was trying to help her over the display in front of them. Too cute!

This is a statue that Carlysle was scared of at first but then decided she would check him out when she realized he wasn't moving.

Soccer Game

Here are some pictures from the soccer game. I was trying to get a shot of the jerseys with our logo on it but I couldn't really get a good one. The team that we are sponsoring are 3 and 4 year olds. I had no idea they start that young. They were so cute and so tiny out there playing. We were only able to stay a few minutes because it was freezing that day and it started to rain.

Confused....

These are pictures taken before we left to go watch the soccer team we are sponsoring. Normally, I would have put jeans on Carlysle to go with the "Lake Murray Pediatrics" t-shirt. However, she happened to be wearing just that the day before when we went to run errands and three people called her a little boy. Although they did say "handsome" little boy....it gets old having to correct people. So I went to Target that night and bought her a jean skirt.





I know what you're thinking....."Wow, she's definitely not going to be an athlete." Yes, I realize she seems very confused about her sports. But in her defense, her Daddy likes to take his golf club out in the backyard and use it to hit tennis balls to Riggs. It may seem lazy but........ok it's lazy.

I should probably add that this picture was not set up. We have a sports equipment closet of sorts and apparently the door was left open. Suddenly, she came walking into the den carrying these exact things and stood at the back door. I guess it was hint that Riggs needed some play time.....and so did she!

Trip to the Mountains

A couple of weekends ago we went to the mountains with two other couples (Kyle and Sara and Justin and Holly). It was labeled as a "Kids-Free Weekend". Sign me up! And I've decided every parent should one of these at least every other month. Sara's Aunt and Uncle own this beautiful house in Brevard, NC. It was unbelieveable!

Ok, so here's the story of the next few pictures. The mountain house where we were staying had a driveway that was about a 1/4 mile long with some incredibly sharp turns and it proceeded up an extremely steep hill. The owners of the house actually have boxes of t-shirts at the house that say "I did the hill on Bear Paw". Bear Paw would be the name of the road and you have to go down it and then back up to get a shirt. Well, when we saw the t-shirts, we were determined that we could tackle that hill. Amazing what people will do for a t-shirt, isn't it? So on Saturday afternoon, we all put on our workout clothes, well except for Holly because she's pregnant and not far enough along to deliver and she would have gone in labor after that hike! Oh and Joey went too but he's taking all the pictures so you never actually see him.

See here we are before we start down the driveway.....all smiles. So naive.

As you can tell from the pictures we were all excited and silly as we started down the hill........that got old about.......oh the first turn. But still not so bad.....in fact I think we were laughing in the face of that hill all the way down.

Again here we are at the bottom of the hill.....still being silly.......still completely clueless about the misery to come.

So of course Joey was the first one back (and in fact ran up the hill....show off) so he was waiting to take pictures of me as I came dragging back.....still smiling......but only for the camera. I was dying!!!

Here are the stragglers, bring up the rear!!

This is the really cool railing that was done throughout the house. It was made from the Mountain Laurel trees that were taken down to build the house and apparently caused a few contractors to quit in the process. Can't imagine why! But it's beautiful!