Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror who the prettiest of them all? Why of course you Miss Sydni. 

 I love watching babies interact with themselves in mirrors, so adorable. 

 She is diffidently a Mama's girl she keeps her eyes on me even when she is looking in the mirror.

 And of course the thing everyone else is doing is much more fun, and he had to join in on the fun. 

 Who is going to win, I take my bet on the 2 year old, but love the interaction they giving each other as of late. 

Erupting Snow

Such a stark contrast between last year strong winter that brought lots of snow and cold temperatures, to this years almost no snow and nice and warm temperatures. So needless to say we have not had much of an opportunity minus a time or two in December to play in nature's snow, so we had to make our own snow. We called our snow erupting snow, we were able to make our own snow that was even cold from everyday ingredients, we used shaving cream, baking soda, glitter, and eventually vinegar. Carson had so much fun, I ended up taking hundreds of pictures to capture the moment of excitement and joy, but I will try to keep the pictures to a minimal as much as a Mom can do when she has such an adorable boy!

The snow amazing, it was naturally cold, making it very realistic and it was fluffy and powdery enough to be able to mold it into small snowmen. 

 He started out a bid timid not exactly sure what to do or even if he wanted to get his hands dirty, he is funny that way,  slowly but surely he started to dive in. 

 It was a great sensory play activity, he loved molding the snow in his hands and letting it break up and fall through his fingers. 

 Then he let all the smiles, laughs, and giggles loose!

 I let him play with the snow for about 20 minutes and then I surprised him with some magic. I gave him a squirt bottle full of vinegar and let him have at it, making it magical snow. Though I ended up spraying the snow mostly, he of course had to give his go at it. 

 Squeezing with all his might. 

Oh Ahh....

Who thought fluffy dry snow was fun, but wet snow was even better, though I didn't intend of letting him lay after the vinegar, but couldn't say know when he was having so much fun. 

I think little hands are so cute! 

 Mom?

 Look at me!

 And if I didn't think he was already all boy, he decided to get even more messy :)

 We had a lot of fun bringing snow into the house, if we don't get much snow the rest of the season, we will have to try some of the other variations of indoor snow play. 

A surprise visit

On Martin Luther King day we received a surprise visit from my parents and little sister Rachel, and boy was Carson ecstatic! It was fun relaxing visit, at one point we decided to head over to the pool to take a short swim, unfortunately it was closed for cleaning, so we decided since it was a nice January day we would go to the clubhouse park instead. 

It was such a gorgeous, warm, and bright day for being the middle of January a certain little girl started to get sleepy and started to dose off, love this little princess.

 I have not posted all the pictures of Rachel going across the monkey bars, but when I flip through them it is fun to see her move through all the monkey bars, she is pretty good at them as well. Just don't fall and break your wrist like I did about your age. 

 This picture actually surprised me, for the fact he didn't want to go down the entire length of the slide because there was water at the bottom, odd because he normally does not pass up a chance to get wet. 

 I remember a time when I thought slides where just the coolest thing since slice bread and now it is fun to watch my own son feel the same way about them. He has such a cute smile.

 These are the types of shots I can capture now with my camera, with the old camera he would be long past my view before the camera took the picture. 

 Longing wanted Aunt Rachel to follow him up the stairs and eventually she did. 

 Coming down. 

The no care in the world smile, all that matters is having fun, wish it could stay this way for him years to come. 

 Two beautiful ladies enjoying a shot of Vitamin D :)

 He saw Aunt Rachel go up these, so naturally he has to attempt it and he didn't pretty well, but then got a bit nervous and turned around. In due time my little guy in due time. 

 This by far  his is favorite slide at the park, the blue tunnel slide. We got some adorable shots of him with a perfect color of the bright blue for the backdrop. 

My parents didn't know this, but this day was a particularly hard day for me and a visit was needed from two of my favorite people, I had actually thought about driving up see them that day. Thanks for taking the time out of your trip to stop and visit us, we very much enjoyed it. 

A House Full of Boys

Every few months I get a taste of what it must have felt like day in and day out for my Grandma Payne having 5 boys. A house full of boys can be stressful for me at times, feeling like I am always cleaning up, or trying to keep them quiet so the children can sleep, but I allow our nephews to come over because I know they enjoy it very much! This time around we had six boys over Michele's boys Christopher, Nicholas, Jonathan, and Benjamin and Cynthia's boys Connor and Ethan, and boy could I tell a different aroma was in the house. 

I am not sure how they even walked in our small computer room with all of them crammed in their like sardeens, but I guess they didn't mind they were having fun. 

 At one point I walked in their and they all had their headsets, I felt like I was once again in a call center, but this time in my own home!

It is fun to see how excited Carson gets when the boys come over, he just adores his older cousins. 

Well Dad took a break from playing with the boys he took a turn as judging the gymnastic competition. 

Ready?

He is getting great air.

Looks like this is going to be a pretty flawless jump. 

He not only is good at the end table jump, but he has also mastered the freestyle coffee table jumping.

 Once again that is some nice air Carson

 The crowd goes silent, is he going to land it?

 A perfect 10, Carson is the winner!

As you can tell he fit right in with the house full of boys, he is all boy! 

Snowman Thank You

One thing my parents always taught me was that a handmade thank you can go a long ways. I came to realize this while on my paper route as a child, when ever we received a tip we always made a hand written note to thank our customer, it felt good, but to a teenager I could see I started to get more and more tips, just by a simple hand written thank you. At times I have had to write a few hundred thank you cards at once, but I always find joy in letting the giver know their gift personally was appreciated, I am not a fan of those generic thank you cards especially for wedding gift and baby shower gifts, the personal ones are always better. And of course you can never start teaching a child too young, so Carson and I sat down to make thank you cards to our family who generously made our Christmas bright. Carson helped me glue these little snowmen and women together, but his favorite part by far was making the finger print buttons, he loved putting his finger in the ink. It was a fun experience teaching my child that we should always thank when we are given something and who says you can't have fun while learning, we sure did. 

Our cute family of snowmen and women. 

 The gentlemen

 The ladies, these were improvised on the spot because I ran out of stickers to make the hats, so I used scarfs for bows.