Carter- Now in HD!

Life is crazy busy around these parts, but the good news is that next Thursday our holiday break begins and we head out of town. We’re headed up to the Northwest for Christmas and will make the grand tour to both our parent’s places. Since this is the last holiday season where Carter flies for free, we’re taking full advantage of the price, but we’ll see if we’re still excited about travelling with a 16 month old after two plane trips and two 7 hour car trips.

It’s been a month since we’ve really posted anything, and since then, Carter’s become more mobile, more aware, more mischievous, and pretty much more everything.

He’s up to 12 teeth including a couple of molars, so we keep our hands out of his mouth whenever possible. Why? Because he has yet to learn the concept of “gentle” biting. He’s got himself a handful of words now and signs 15 or so words as well so communicating is easier.

Carter's obsessed with balls and dogs. Probably in that order, too. He's also developed a healthy fascination with sticks, golf clubs, and any stick-like object that he can wield and use to hit something else. Luckily his rampages are reserved to inanimate, non-living items such as balls, pots, pans and the ground.

Last year, my parents got Carter this wonderful toy plane you can ride on. He loves being pushed around on it, but just recently realized he can walk himself around while riding it (still needs a bit of help but close enough). Taught him what a plane sounds like, and managed to get it on video.

Youtube just enabled HD, widescreen video, which called out to my geeky side. So, these videos of Carter’s plane antics are shown here in high definition. What does this mean? It means that if you’re reading this blog from a slow internet connection, be prepared for a long wait while the video loads. I’m betting though that you’re probably not on a dial-up phone connection so give it a whirl and experience Carter in all his splendor.

Here’s Carter demonstrating how his plane flies: 

 

And here’s Carter showing us that crashing his plane is way more fun.

Updates are coming....

Life has been busy, for sure. Not a good excuse for skimping on blog updates, but we're using it anyway. Should have some time this weekend before finals hit, so I can finish putting some videos together of recent fun-times we've had and tweak some more photos.

In the meantime, here's a fun photo of Carter enjoying pumpkins last month... well, October. Man, that was two months ago. Does anybody else feel like fall came and went while you weren't looking?

I finally have something to say!

I usually have something to say, but I just don't take the time to blog. Well, tonight is different. Carter is asleep and Chris is taking a test so I will take this time to write to my countless, adoring fans.

So, since the next time you hear from me may be in a year from now, I'll try and say everything I've been thinking lately.

Positive Influences: Since I can't say this enough, thank you to everyone who has been or is a part of my life. So many people have made an impact on me, and most don't even know it, but I have been thinking about that a lot lately and just wanted everyone to know that even if you don't know someone, or aren't that great of friends, the things you do and say, can still have a powerful impact on them Chances are, if you are reading this, you have had a positive influence on me.





Halloween: I love Halloween. It has always been my favorite holiday. I would try to come up with some exciting, new, inventive costume each year. One that I could be as creative as I wanted. Of course that changed once I hit Jr. High and High School, and the last thing anyone wants is to be creative! That's what get's you teased.

(This is my friend and me dressing up just for the fun of it. I couldn't find any of my Halloween pictures.)

Well, even though I have still enjoyed Halloween every year, this is the first year in a long time that I've really felt the creative excitement that used to be like a drug to me. I really missed that feeling. I can't wait to have the ability (money) to really decorate for Halloween and make it a big deal. Actually, I guess I can't wait to be able to do that for Christmas too.

I guess I could tell you what it was that made me so excited about Halloween again. We had a Halloween party we went to the other night, and I realized the night before that we needed costumes. They needed to be affordable and pretty easy. I had seen cute costumes where people used wires to make it look like they were in a wind storm and thought that would be affordable, easy, and Chris wouldn't have to dress up as something too weird or embarrassing. But what would Carter be? Well, he is always the force that makes everything a little crazier and more exciting for us, so we thought it would be appropriate to make him...

...our little tornado. Let's just say, I was so giddy while planning and making these costumes. Even if we hadn't had a party to go to, that was a very fulfilling night.

(This picture was taken at the end of the night, I'm amazed anything held up!) After a lot of different attempts to make his costume work (it might be more effective to try this with an older child), I just ended up pining the little animals and trees, planes and cars onto his gray clothes. Surprisingly most of the toys stayed on Carter's clothes. (I loved his hair. I couldn't look at him without laughing.)




Fall: Isn't fall a wonderful time of year? It is my favorite season, no matter where I live. There is a different energy in the crisp air. It's still sunny and warm (this is said more loosely depending on where you live), but you can finally where cute boots, pants and sweaters. :) It's a great time to play a little touch football. And of course, Halloween is in the fall!

VOTE: Elections are coming up. I strongly urge everyone to register, research, study (because nothing is clear cut when it comes to politics. You have to pay close attention to every little word), pray and vote. I think everyone should vote, but it does bother me when little or no research has been done first. That's pretty scary. I thought these cartoons were appropriate for this year's presidential candidates and for the crazy sign stealing that is happening in California over Proposition 8.


Donate blood!: I have tried donating blood many times, but have always been getting over the flu or something. This year, I donated blood. It was great, and I finished pumping about a minute faster than Chris (it took me about 3 min & 40 sec.) So I felt pretty cool. Plus, when I had Carter I found out I am blood type O negative, which is such a weird type. I always thought I was A positive or something, and figured tough luck for anyone that had a negative blood type, especially O. So, I am really in for it if I need a blood transfusion. (If there is anyone out there that is O-, give me your # in case of emergency!) Here are some pretty interesting charts about different blood types.


I love my family!: I have always wished for a close knit family, but have never felt like I've really had one. We have always lived far away from family, and are still somewhat spread out from family. We have some family that lives in Utah, yet it is difficult for us to get together often. It would be wonderful if everyone could live in close proximity to family. We have been blessed to be with certain people in our families for a reason. I would hope that more families can notice the special connection and make the most of it. Time goes by too quickly. So family, I love you all very much!

I tried really hard to find a current family picture with our extended family, or even one with our immediate family. No such luck, but I did find this random funny old picture of my brothers and me. Very nice!







Okay, so I just realized I am writing a book now, and no one will want to read this, so I'll add lots of pictures, plan on writing again soon, and stop writing this blog right now.


P.S. Thank you Chris for helping me post this blog!

Yum Yum!

Carter LOVES food. More specifically, he loves Mexican food. Rice and beans, quesadillas, tortilla chips, and anything any everything similar. Combine that with being able to use his own fork and spoon in his very own bowl and you’ve got the perfect formula for a very happy boy, as the picture below slightly demonstrates.

(Oh, new site layout, too. Turns out all most of the pre-fab ones online are a little too "scrapbooky" for my tastes, so making one was easier. Now to figure out the banner on the top and tweak things a little more and then call it good, for a while...)

Rainy day

It rained today… first time in quite a while. Rained all day- made me miss the northwest. So, Carter got to experience some good ol’ puddle stomping.

He loved being out in the rain, Cindy loved being able to put him in his yellow rain jacket, and I got to take a break from school/work to dink around with Photoshop a bit. Everybody wins!

**More Pictures of Rain-time fun if you click on the picture.**

All better

With school in full swing, life settles down into a nice, comfortable routine of predictability and consistency. That’s what one hopes for at the start of the semester and that exactly what didn’t happen.

For no apparent reason, I decided to get sick right after school started. Symptoms included a fever of close to 104, sharp pains in my left side, sharp pains in the upper part of both lungs and more! Good times, for sure. Plus, I was sick for close to 3 weeks. Awesome!

First they thought it was kidney stones. Nope. They thought I had a pulmonary embolism for a while, too; that was scary. 

After 4 trips to the doctors, 2 rounds at the hospital for CT scans, doctors  finally discovered that they didn’t know what I had. So, they put me on a bunch of antibiotics and hoped for the best. Lucky for me, that seemed to do the trick and I’m back in business.

Cindy’s been great during all this. She helped out double time with Carter, which allowed me to trudge to class and work so I could try to stay caught up with life in general.

Carter’s been great, too. Haven’t had much time to take pictures and all that, but that’ll be remedied shortly. We did find time to visit the Utah State Fair. Carter loved seeing the animals and all the people walking around.

School starts... again

Tomorrow marks another semester of classes. The optimist in me says "One more semester means that much closer to graduation", but the realist has long since silenced that voice and sided with pessimism on this matter so I'm not really looking forward to things starting up again. Oh well, at least I have the opportunity of furthering my education, so I shouldn't be too ungrateful.

Prepping for classes is my new plan for the semester. OneNote 2007 and a tablet PC has helped keep me organized so I'm trying to do the leg work ahead of time. It's kinda boring work though, so I've been reading up on a really nerdy, albeit funny, webcomic, XKCD. I'm a fairly geeky guy and comfortable with the label but some of the humor there is completely over my head. It does provide some laughs, and even Cindy enjoyed a few that I was brave enough to show her.

Yeah... humor's a bit dark/off, but that how it needs to be from time to time.

And, for the majority of you that check this blog for cute Carter/Cindy sightings, here you go:

Happy Birthday Carter!!

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that one year ago, I was watching Carter be delivered. Looking back at all my many accomplishments over the last 365 days wouldn't make for a very interesting blog and might be a bit depressing for me, so we'll just focus on Carter's big day.

To start, Carter got his first birthday card AND present opportunity after breakfast this morning complete with video proof. But first, here's how he's felt about today in general:

The Birthday Card:

His First Present:

Carter also got to eat his first birthday "cake". We tried to be a bit healthy, so he got a pumpkin spice cupcake. Of course we covered it in wonderful, sugary frosting; negating the healthiness altogether.

At first he was a bit apprehensive and didn't know what to think of the frosting.

But once we helped him try it

We think he was pretty okay with things

And if you haven't had enough multimedia in one post, here's a slide show of the whole cupcake adventure.

Eat, eat, eat...

That's exactly what Carter was all about at Lamb Days. Well, that and staring. Lots of staring at everybody and everything-

He found part of a hot dog bun in a bag that Cindy set on the ground. Leftover food in a bag? You betcha.

Carter also got his first real stab at ice cream and, of course, he had no problems eating it as fast as possible.

And lastly, Mollie and Josh have 3 cute kids and Carter loved being around 'em. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't even know about Lamb Days. So here's a fun little slide show just for them.

LAMB DAYS!!!

In what is becoming a tradition, we spent our weekend in Fountain Green, Utah, for Lamb Days!! What is Lamb Days you ask? Or perhaps, where is Fountain Green? Both good questions.

Fountain Green is in the middle of nowhere, Utah, between Nephi and Manti. Lamb Days is a weekend event where people from all over the county get together for two days of activities and fun. Mutton busting, lamb judging and auction, sheep shearing, and lots of lamb to eat are probably where they get the "Lamb" in "Lamb Days".

Don't believe me? Here's a few pictures of lamb getting prepared for lamb-burgers. People line up for these a few hours before they're ready.

They were good, too!

We spent the day with our good friends, Josh and Mollie. Since there were just too many fun things going on, I can stretch this weekend into 2 or 3 more posts!

If you can't handle the suspense and want to see some more pictures, head over to our flickr page here --> Click me!

He Walks!!!! (kinda)

Carter decided to wait till people were gathered for our niece's baby blessing to try taking his first steps. Don't know if it was the sleep deprivation or what, but he went for it and caught us totally off guard.

Sam, being the quick-witted guy that he is, had the video camera out in a hurry. The actual steps happen right away but there's two minutes of video here for the family members who want a more complete experience and want to see Carter sign "more" while he's trying to walk. Good stuff.

Carter says:

Happy Wednesday!!!

Movies That Make Men Cry

Found this blog post from sportingnews.com while I was sittin' around doing nothing tonight. (nothing better than taking an hour to do nothing at all. Wish I had time to do it more often).

Top-25 Movies That Make Men Cry **25 movies now.***

It was a good enough topic that Cindy and I spent quite a bit of time going over the movies and agreeing/disagreeing with the author's comments. I'm not a huge movie-crier, but he did a good job pickin' out the movies that had me at least a bit misty-eyed (which is all of em except #20,18,10,9,6, and 3. Mostly cause I haven't seen 'em).

So, if you have a few minutes, click the link and enjoy the list. Feel free to comment and agree/disagree if you'd like. If not, well- fine then.

Oh, and to make sure this post isn't void of a picture, here's carter in his walker, reading a magazine, and wearing my hat. The hat was a new addition, but he loves running around the house while holding a magazine, talking to it, and tearing it to pieces. Simple pleasures...

Visitors!

Look who came to visit!

Josh, Mollie, and their 3 boys were in the Orem area, so we got have lunch with them and visit for a while.

PLUS:

Elliot was in town before he headed out to Armenia for his 2 year stint with the Peace Corps.

Needless to say, it was great seeing old friends, even if it was only for a bit.

Swimming, Swimming.

Carter went swimming for the first time while we were down in Arizona.

There's some pictures of me and my polar bear skin that I omitted so that people won't flee from the blog in terror, but Cindy looks great, as usual, and Carter's cute.

Oooh... new layout.

Well, we're back from our trip to Arizona. Truth is, we've been back for a bit, but haven't updated anything on here cause we're a combination of busy, tired and maybe just a little lazy.

Also, the look of the blog changed just a bit. Nothing says blog commitment like a new layout, right?

Anyway, to get right to the point, picture time!

** With the new layout, comes picture integration on flickr.com. Click on any of the pictures to jump over to the picture set and to download the original if you're so inclined. Plus, there's more pictures there.**

First off, Arizona and bubble time with Brigham and Reagan-

 

Phototime with the cousins (this was Brigham's idea... good thinkin!)

In Arizona

We haven't updated in a while... so here's a picture of Carter and his crazy-blue eyes:

We're in Tucson until Monday for a baby blessing for our newest nephew, Chase. Plus we get to visit Cindy's family and friends and get out of Utah and its ridiculous, 80 degree one day, snowing the next weather. Driving 12 hours with a 9 month old wasn't ideal, but Carter was a champ and we made it.

Here's the quick version of our goings on:

• Summer classes just started up for me. I'm taking 16 credits at UVU and 4 credits of institute religion classes. It's gonna be a busy couple months.
• Cindy's working and staying busy in the primary presidency. She still finds time to keep our house in order and decorated, me on track with school and work, and be a great mom for Carter.
• Carter is crawlin around like crazy. He just figured out how to sit up on his own and pull himself up to standing. This means we get to start baby-proofing because when you combine standing with a knowledge of how to open drawers, there's problems to be had.

We'll be here in the Tucson for the next couple days. So if we know you and you want to visit, then so do we! If we don't know you and you want to visit... well, that's just creepy.

Arizona!!!

For those of you who don't know, I absolutely love Arizona. I lived there for 3 years while I went to College at EAC, and I had the time of my life. I haven't had the chance to go back since I moved to Utah in Dec. 2002 which has been hard. Now, I have 2 brothers who live in Tucson with their families, which means two more excuses to visit Arizona more frequently.

In a few weeks, on of my new nephews is getting blessed, so Chris and I are taking this wonderful opportunity to visit family, visit Arizona, and visit all the friends that I can while we're there. It's weird that most of Chris' college friends live close by so we are able to spend lots of time with them which is nice. But for me, all my close college friends live in Arizona. Needless to say, I never get to see them. The last time I saw my best friend Amanda was at our wedding almost 3 years ago. (Shout out to Amanda!!)

Anyway, I have been counting down the days and can't wait to be back in Arizona soon. (especially since it snowed here 2 days ago.) Unfortunately I've lost contact with a lot of my old friends, so if any of you read this, email me (cindyburkman at gmail dot com) and hopefully we can plan a way to hang out while we're there.

Carter's big night.

Well... in true St. Patrick's Day spirit, Carter had a bit too much of the hard stuff last night before bed as this incriminating slide show will clearly show.

There's captions on each picture to provide better insight into Carter's milk-induced downfall.

Don't worry, he's getting the help he needs so don't judge him too harshly.

Hope your St. Patrick's Day was as exciting as Carter's!

Carter says...

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!!