I wish you could all live with us all the time and hear the things that come out of Carter's mouth. He is seriously the funniest kid...though totally stubborn. He has started talking with his hands and it kills me. Here are some of Carter's usual phrases...please picture hand gestures with each phrase..."You guys, I've probably got an idea..." followed with "Is that a good idea?". He likes to tell me the entire plan for the day, which would go as follows according to him, "So, first I think we should go to the store, come home, eat lunch, play cars, take a nap, wake up, then play some more cars, and then go to two stores and look for cars and then come home and go to bed." When I put him down for a nap he usually tells me, "I'm probably going to wake up at 10:30, okay." For some reason 10:30 is the time for everything for him.
I should have written this for ever ago, but seriously, about a year ago he was saying prayers before bed and in the middle of his prayer he stops what he's saying, looks down at his wrist and says, "Oh man, it's 10" and then something about having to go to bed. We died laughing.
He also is very sensitive to us being mad. The other day I was mad about something and was talking to Joel in a heated sort of way and Carter says, "You guys, I don't think we should talk like this. We shouldn't talk mad to each other." So I apologized and said he was right and then (you have to picture this) he looks down at the floor and shakes his head and says, "Sorry, I just said that." Joel and I just cracked up.
Now for his little temper and stubbornness. When he gets in trouble, he yells back at me, "You can't say that to me!" or "Whatever mommy." or, picture this again, he looks at the floor shakes his head and says, "Just forget about it." This kid has always been one to punish himself...when he was just over a year old he would send himself to his room and shut the door. Not kidding. Now, when I tell him he is going to get spanked, he says, "No, I will spank me." and then he spanks himself. Is that funny, yet crazy?
You also probably know of his love for cars...well he now can point out and name so many cars as we are driving around. It amazes Joel and I. We will be driving down the road and he will say, "PT Cruiser" or "Volkswagen bug"...sometimes we will ask him about cars that pass by and sometimes he says, "Sorry I missed it." The cars he knows best, which we for some reason have tons of in this area, are PT Cruisers, Mini Coupes, Honda Elements, Scions, Volkswagen bugs, and Golfs. He also knows, "mommy's car", "Nini's car", "the missionary's car", and "the Monnier's car". He doesn't know the make or model, but he gets it right every time. The missionaries in our mission all drive Toyota Corollas and every time he sees a Toyota Corolla he says, there's the missionaries car. Nini and Poger have a Nissan Titan and Carter spots those everywhere and calls out, "I just saw a car like Nini's". It really is amazing to us. We even just saw a picture in the newspaper of a car that had crashed and was totalled and Carter looks at the picture and says, "There's a Honda Element." and sure enough the caption said it was a Honda Element. I love it when he gets really excited about it and says, "Did you see that Mom? I just saw a Mini Coupe!!!"
He messes up his pronouns at times, which is kind of funny. The other night he was whining to Joel and saying, "I want Mommy, I want Mommy." Joel asked him why he wanted me and he said, "Because I love she." Sweet. Well, I've dragged this on enough now. I just wanted to share some of the funny things that Carter says. He sure keeps us laughing and amazed.
I'm thankful for family at Thanksgiving! Obviously, I have problems getting things done, but give me a break it was Christmas which is totally stressful though such a wonderful time...blah, blah, blah...So here are some pictures from Thanksgiving. Ben, Whitney, Joel, and Kadin came up and we had a great Thanksgiving together! This is what meal time looked like everyday...three times a day. Is it just me, or are these the cutest kids ever?! 
The boys were so excited for the new beds they have at Grandma's house, complete with Lightening McQueen sheets. Though they had to sleep in the storage room where it was freezing...no worries, we put about 30 blankets on each kid. 
They loved Uncle Ben's stories before bed...even my Joel got a kick out of them. I can't help but smile when I see this and wonder what Ben was saying. Carter has now started telling us stories before bed and they are hilarious. I tried to get sweet Kadin in this picture, but the angles weren't working for me, so the best I could get was the corner of the pack-n-play he was sleeping in. 
This is where you would find Mason most the time...doing laundry with Grandma. He loved it and it wouldn't matter where he was or what he was doing, as soon as he heard the door to the laundry room open (which he could hear from anywhere in the house amazingly) he took off running, so happy, to find Grandma and help her out. Unfortunately for me he took this new fun thing to do home with him and I now have to let him help me all the time. He's a good help though and he's so cute about it. 
Carter and Joel really had such a good time together. They loved playing with Grandma's trains and have missed each other since then. Mom and Whit made a delicious Thanksgiving dinner...well as delicious as you can get for Thanksgiving food. I dislike almost every dish that is served at Thanksgiving. They did a great job though. I did contribute one dish, which is almost the only dish I like, fluffy sweet potatoes, a recipe from Cami (Joel's sister). I'm not a sweet potato fan, but these are seriously good. Nobody liked them two years ago, but this year, hmm, strangely, everyone seemed to eat them up (except for Whit, who was true to her dislike of them). I am so grateful to Ben and Whit for making the trip up. It was really such a wonderful time together. I miss them already and look forward to our next gathering...only with Doug and Jackie too. Family is awesome!
