Fun in Atlanta

Happy New Year! To ring in 2010 we went on a trip to Atlanta! My brother James and his wife Alie recently had a baby girl named Mariah and we went there for her blessing. She's the sweetest little girl, and the first female grandchild for my parents, so it was quite the big deal. We had a BLAST out there! My entire family including my grandparents were there, minus my brother Don and sister-in-law Kim who live in Uganda...a little far to travel I guess. We had such a good time hanging out with each other, playing games, and letting the little cousins get to know each other.

Carter playing with his cousin Cohen

We also saw several Atlanta sites, including the Georgia Aquarium, which happens to be the largest aquarium in the world. Personally, I hate fish, so I was looking forward to the mammal population...but when we got there, the beluga whales, otters, and sea lions (basically all the mammals) were not on display. It sucked! We had a good time showing Carter the animals, though, and he seemed to enjoy himself.

Carter and his cousin Cohen looking at the fish and sea turtles

We also went to the World of Coca-Cola where we met the Coke polar bear, saw how they made Coke (which was, of course, why Tyler was so excited about it), and got to try different drinks that Coca-Cola makes from all over the world. The best was an apple drink from South America and the worst by FAR was a bitter soda from Italy...it almost made me vomit.

We also went and toured CNN, which was a little disappointing as we didn't get to see much going on. They didn't allow pictures to be taken, either, so nothing from there. We did spy Chuck Roberts, though. We also took a tour of the Lockheed Martin plant where James works. It was pretty cool to see how C-130's and F-22's (I hope that's right...) were made. Definitely a much slower process than Tyler's ice cream production plant!

Unfortunately I wasn't very good at taking pictures since my mom was there with her camera. We got several great group shots and some of all 3 cousins all together. It'll probably be a few weeks before I get those from my mom, but will post them when I do.

The bad part of our trip was that every single one of us got sick! Carter and I went out there sick already, but just got worse while there. My poor nephew Cohen got so sick with a high fever and other severe symptoms, so they had to bring him to the ER where they found out he had a double ear infection. Carter fussed the entire 5 hour trip back on the plane, and when we got home we brought him to the doctor and found out that along with a major cold and cough he also had an ear infection. Unfortunately, the antibiotics he's on have also given him diarrhea. Ugh. The only good thing about him being so sick is that he's really cuddly! It's such a rare event that I'm appreciating it. He's been pretty miserable for the last week. He's been sleeping and holding his ear a lot...in fact, while I was feeding him lunch the other day he did both in his high chair:

Carter is now 7 months old and is a BIG boy! I can barely carry him around anymore. He's now got 3 teeth and I can see 2 more working their way through. Is it normal to get 5 teeth in 1 month?? Fortunately only the bottom 2 really bothered him...at least I think. All this fussing from being sick could include some for these new teeth, I guess. He is learning to wave "hi" and "bye-bye" and is getting closer to crawling. He's also discovering the secrets of mirrors and that it's not a second mommy and baby in there.


So far 2010 has been a fantastic year and we're looking forward to the rest of it! Happy new year to everyone and hopefully this year will be amazing for us all.

Baby's First Christmas and Coeur d'Alene

Merry Christmas! We had a fabulous Christmas this year. On Christmas Eve we went to some friends' house and celebrated with a few other families and lots of excited kids. Then, on Christmas day, we just did our own thing at home. We had a blast celebrating Carter's first Christmas, and he had fun opening all his presents! We also made a big ham dinner for just the 2 of us. It was really yummy but ended up taking forever to cook and we were starving by the time we ate at 8:00! It was worth it, though, and we have truckloads of leftovers.

All the gifts, stockings, and the tree

Carter was really excited

Such a happy boy on Christmas! He got some "Baby's 1st Christmas" pajamas from his Great-Grandma Suzie. As you can see he sits pretty well on his own now.

Carter with his stocking

Everything he pulled out went straight into his mouth...or, rather, the package went straight into his mouth!

Opening his big present from Mom and Dad

Yay! It's a high chair!

He couldn't wait for the wrapping paper to come off...he HAD to taste it IMMEDIATELY!

Carter was our big present this year

Playing with the cool wooden train that Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Andrus sent

...and in the mouth it goes

Playing on the floor with some of his Christmas presents

Carter and Tyler worked together to try and beat me at Ticket to Ride but failed miserably

Playing with the gift from Great-Grandma Suzie and Great-Grandpa (we re-gave it to him for Christmas!)

The day after Christmas we took a trip out to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to see Tyler's sister Jamie, her husband Patrick, and their little boy Connor. Carter LOVED playing with his cousin! Connor is 11 months and Carter is 6 1/2 months, so they are only about 5 months apart! They became best of friends pretty quickly. Connor gave Carter kisses and wet willies, and Carter loved it! It was fun to get together with them, but it was too short! We had to head home the next morning.

Carter and Connor meeting for the 2nd time. They look so much alike and are about the same size!

We tried really hard to get them to cooperate and take a nice picture together, and these are some of the attempts...

You can see in this picture how really similar they are in size

Tyler, Me, Carter, Jamie, Connor, and Patrick

Carter was fussing so Connor came over, took his binky out of his own mouth, and attempted to put it into Carter's mouth! It was so cute... Eventually he got it in and Carter sucked on it for a minute!! He won't take a binky for us AT ALL! Unfortunately I missed that part for a picture.

Back at home things are back to normal for a few days before we leave for Atlanta. Tyler even put together Carter's high chair and we LOVE feeding him from it so much better than the Bumbo! What a great Christmas present! The only problem we have is that we have NO room for it in our apartment, and it's kind of a pain to have to fold up and put away, then pull out again at every feeding. One day we'll have a bigger place!

That purple food looks sick, I know, but it's banana with mixed berries.

I also was able to again download a video, although let's be honest, none of the videos I take are very interesting. What usually happens is Carter does something so cute, I pull out the camera, and then he becomes more interested in the camera than anything else. So sorry about the non-interesting videos...in this one Carter was emphatically saying "no" and then just did it a little bit when I pulled out the camera.