I thought I would post a few pics from our weekend before we head out of town again. We are going home for 3 weeks starting Tuesday. We have lived in MO for 4 1/2 years and have never been able to take more than 10 days to spend with family. We are so excited... it actually almost brings tears to my eyes to think about it right now. We are going to see almost everyone on both sides of our family... including all of our nieces and nephews!!! We'll be in Seattle for a week, Northern California for a week, and then back up to Seattle to spend the rest of our time on Orcas Island. It's been a crazy 7 months... so we are really looking forward to taking it easy before school starts and the guys move back in.

Here are the pics...
Carter usually won't keep a hat on his head for more than 2 seconds... but he's really taken a liking to his Chico State baseball hat.

This is where we usually end up in the morning... he is obsessed with playing out front. We tuck the feet of his pj's up so they won't get dirty

His 2nd favorite play area is the back of the car... he would spend an hour in it if we let him.

Carter really needs another hair cut... you could really tell after he got up from his nap today.

I just had to put this one last pic up today. This is how Carter looks through our window at the side of the front door. Please excuse the smudged glass...

Carter loves to go through our kitchen cupboards. The spice and snack cupboards are his favorites. This morning I caught him doing a little reorganizing.

It is so fun watching Carter figure things out. He actually slept until 8am this morning... which never happens. Anyways, I heard him grunting behind our hope chest in the living room after breakfast. I finally went over to see what he was doing and saw this...

I couldn't believe he was trying to put Dan's shoes on.

I decided to help him out since the shoes are so big...

1 is such a fun age!

We feel so blessed to have had a little taste of home on Saturday. One of our favorite people in the world was at our house when we got home from the airport. Luke was Dan's roommate for a long time in college and was also in our wedding. He is traveling around the country with a band from Chico and they stopped here for a little bit of rest and some showers. We missed you Beth!!

Here are three tired guys...

Here are some more pics...

Reading the morning paper...

One of the views from our room...

Main Street at the Magic Kingdom...



I was trying to get a cool pic of Carter in front of the castle... but it was way too hot to get him to coorperate.

Carter enjoyed the Winnie the Pooh Playground...

We stopped for all the water features...

We each rode one roller coaster. I rode Space Mountain and Dan rode this one (you can see him in the last car)...

Sitting down for ice cream on our way out...

I can't believe I am posting while I am on vacation... but Carter's in bed for the night and I had some time. We had an eventful flight with the boy on Friday. He was all over the place at the airport before we left (Thanks for the EARLY morning ride, Amanda!). We had high hopes that he would fall asleep on the plane since we had our car seat...

and he did fall asleep... just as we were pulling up to the gate in Orlando.

We rented a car for the weekend so we could spend some time at the beach. Dan hardly got out of the water the whole time we were there. It's been so hard for him to live in MO after growing up in San Diego... so Saturday was a ton of fun for him.

Carter did ok...


but ended up spending most of the day in this little shelter Dan set up for him.

We stopped by City Walk on Saturday night...


and then walked through Downtown Disney on Sunday.



Dan's conference started on Monday... so we've been hanging around the hotel a lot. It has been so relaxing. We visited the Magic Kingdom today. I wasn't able to upload those pics yet. I can't believe how many parks are in the resort here. It's huge!!

Happy Day after the 4th! I realized yesterday that it was Carter's first time celebrating a second holiday. He slept through most of last years 4th... so it was fun to actually celebrate it this year. We spent most of the day about 45 minutes outside of St. Louis with some of our friends at their lake house. It felt good to get out of town for part of the day.

Carter HATED the life vest. We took a boat ride around the lake and he screamed pretty much the entire time. We tried to put it on him again for a dip in the lake... but that lasted about 30 seconds.

I was able to get some pictures of Dan doing tricks off the diving board... not bad since Carter had his arms wrapped around my legs screaming for me to pick him up.

Here's a picture of one of the channels. It was beautiful.

Here's our boy this morning. Our gate broke in half after about 2 weeks. This probably had something to do with the fact that we had 4 boys slamming it shut about 20 times a day. This is Carter's favorite place to play. We usually find toys on several different steps. He does know how to come down now... but it still makes me nervous.

We're heading to Orlando tomorrow morning for the next 8 days. Dan's school is sending him to a conference at the Hilton Walt Disney World Resort. He is going to have his own room... so we decided to add on a couple days and pay for my ticket. It's going to be strange flying east!!