Carter's Birthday

I can hardly believe my sweet little boy is 6!!! How did that happen??!

His actual birthday isn't until Sunday - (shh...Steve and I are taking him to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner). Today was a special day though. He had a great day at school and then got to invite his best friend Thomas over for an official bday playdate.

School was pretty awesome today. Carter was excited for me to help in his classroom. In truth, I don't really help much - just do some paperwork and organize the homework for the teacher. It's fun to sit in the back of the class though and see what the kids are doing and how they are behaving. ;)

It was "crazy sock day" in Carter's class, so they all wore different and colorful socks. They also celebrated Carter's bday in class. He got to get a special birthday animal on his desk, took special snack for everyone - chocolate chip cookies - and they sang Happy Birthday. He also got spoiled by his teacher. I thought she is so sweet! She gave Carter this bookmark, a personalized pencil - how cool is that, a bracelet (not pictured) and he got to choose a prize from her bday prize bin of stuffed items. I love that he picked this bright pink bear with a heart on it over everything else! LOL. He loves it!

After school Thomas came over! The boys spent a good amount of time playing "Skylanders". I had never heard of this before summer, but now Carter is obsessed. If you don't know, it's a video game. You collect figures to play with. There are a ton of different ones and they all do different things. Carter's grandparents gave us some money to buy Carter a bday gift. We added to it a bit and decided to get the game for Carter. Lucky kid got it a few weeks ago. He has been lusting over getting new figures for the game, but hadn't yet. Skylanders went into FULL force when Thomas brought Carter SIX new ones. Both the boys were sooo excited. The cutest part of all was Thomas giving a little speech saying "he told his mom this is what he HAD to get Carter for his birthday. Carter is his best friend ever". It was so adorable - I actually teared up a little!

I whipped up this cake stopped at the store this morning to get this cute Spiderman cake. I love it! It's only about 4" in diameter, but super cute.

For dinner, the boys were super excited to find out they could make their own pizza. Thomas was especially excited when I told him. He said "wow, is it for real, or just make believe". So cute! I was happy they were so pumped!

Making their pizzas. Another cute story. Carter decided to add sauce to his pizza, and Thomas decided to forgo it. When the pizzas were cooked, Thomas decided he might try a bit of Carter's saucy one. He took a small bite and declared he didn't like it. He decided to try one more bite though. He thought for a minute and decided he loved it! He and Carter ended up trading most of their pizzas. ;)

Thomas making his!

Carter making his!

Berkeley was thoroughly worn out by the activity...

 ...and SO not impressed I woke her to take this pic.

BFF's with the cake!

Ready to blow!

Silly!

Whew! Those candles made a lot of smoke!

More silly!

After dinner, they gave up Skylanders in favor of making a giant fort (and mess) and playing...well, I'm not really sure what they were playing. A mix of Avengers, Star Wars, Nerf guns, and who knows what else. There was a lot of giggling though!

And Steve took a serious beating ;)

It was a very fun day for everyone though! I'll be back with more pics later in the weekend!

Homework

I had to share this - even though it's not my piece of craftiness! Carter's first homework assignment for 1st grade was to complete this poster. It took him FOREVER to fill it all out and then to color it. He was determined to do his best job though. I'm thinking this will be hanging in the classroom a lot of the year!

Scrappy Stuff!

I've been doing some scrapbooking again! I might be back on track!

Plus, I'm not the only one scrapbooking! ;)

This layout was actually 100% designed and completed by STEVE! He did a pretty good job. He wanted a spot to keep all his keepsakes from his bike ride back in June. I had to share. :)

Here's one I made. Carter last September (2011). One of the first few weeks of Kindergarten.

And lastly, here's one I made from pics we took this summer in Calgary. Just my sweet little guy!

First Day of First Grade!

My baby is off to First Grade this morning. How did this happen? I can't believe he is so big now!

Here he is hamming it up for a photo before we left the house.

and a silly pose...always have to have one of those!

Outside silly pose ;)

This years' backpack - Avengers! We had to get the matching lunchbox too. He's also decided to have an Avengers themed bday party.

With his present for his teacher...

At school with his best friend Thomas. They were soooo happy to be in the same class again this year!

Thomas and Carter with Vivian. Vivian was in their class last year, but has a different teacher this year.

Lining up for the Pledge and Announcements. Carter was pretty excited to be the first one in line!

In his classroom - found his desk.

Front view of him at his desk. He's in the front in the far corner. I think I should have turned the flash on for this, but you can still see it okay ;)

He was very excited to sit next to another friend - Brandon. He was extremely excited to find a new box of crayons and a sharpened pencils inside his desk! LOL

I spent the morning catching up with parents at the PTA social. I was there for 2 hours chatting! LOL. Nice to catch up with everyone after the summer though.

Crafty with the Kidlet

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Yikes! I can't believe the summer flew by so fast. We didn't do half the things we wanted to do together. I am a little bummed. Looking forward to next summer already! ;)

Carter is pretty excited to start First Grade. He met his teacher today (I was volunteering at a PTA function, so he tagged along). She is super sweet and made a big deal about introducing herself to Carter. He felt pretty special. He told me he was pretty nervous to go back to school, but now he knows he has a nice teacher he feels better. Aww!

We decided to make a little "first day of school" gift for her. This was a super easy idea I found on Pinterest and it literally cost about $2 to make. We made it in about 20minutes.

Just some $store flowers, cheap pencils, a $store vase and some glue. We added the ribbon and Carter wrote the tag. I hope she likes it!

 

 Carter's tag...

Side view! I decided to add a little band of bling too. Who doesn't love bling? ;)

I'll come back tomorrow with some pics of his first day!

Picnic in the Sun!

Sunday was Carter's Tae Kwon Do Studio's summer picnic. We went and had a blast. I ate waaaay too much and got stung by a wasp. Carter drank waaaaay too much orange soda and got trampled a bit during the pinata craziness. All 3 of us got sunburned. But seriously, the day was great and we all had an awesome time. You know it has to be good to overcome all those odds! It was a nice sunny day in Pacifica at the park. It was fun to see everyone kick back and be out of their uniforms.

This is Carter and his teacher Christina. He has a serious crush on her. He was pumped when she suggested a one-on-one frisbee game. Little did she know Carter can't catch anything to save his life...but they both were good sports and had a good time!

Carter and his friend blowing bubbles. Super nice that one of the parents brought bubbles and other prizes for the kids. They had fun!

They had lots of games - which Carter LOVED! Here he is doing Tug-o-Rope.

Potato Sack Races!

Egg and Spoon Race.

Baton Relay Races. Carter is a REALLY good runner. Everyone was pretty impressed at how fast he can run. He got his team into the finals - and they were the youngest ones. (If you look close at this pic you can see how concentrated he is. Tongue sticking out!)

Pinata! Carter was the lucky one to break it open. However, once he broke it open he ended up on the bottom of the pile to get candy. There were a few tears over the bumps, but he recovered fast!

It was a super fun day. We were there for about 4 hours. Looking forward to next year already!

Getting Creative!

I've had a very long break from anything really creative. It was pretty hard to take, but I just couldn't get into it. All summer long I had intentions to do some general crafty stuff, some quilting, and of course some paper arts stuff. It just didn't happen. Finally I've started to get my groove back.

A few weeks ago I went to a wine and canvas event with my friends Brandee and Leslie. We all learned how to paint this canvas from scratch. I am sooo not a painter, and I know it. I was pretty nervous about how mine would turn out. This was not a paint by number class! All from a blank canvas. I was pretty happy with how mine turned out overall. No Picasso that's for sure, but okay!

Regardless, I had a lot of fun!

This was my first attempt back at scrapbooking after basically 6 months of doing nothing. I almost didn't post it. I just don't like it. I guess it's kind of true - if you don't use it, you lose it. However, in the interest of getting back my mojo...here is it. At least there's a pretty cute face in that pic ;)

Starting to get a bit better with my next project. It's very lumpy with the buttons, so it scanned a bit funky. I like it overall though. Both of the above LO's are made with MME product.

Here we are at Crimson Lake - visiting my aunt and uncle for Canada Day. We had a great time on their boat!

Finally, I feel like I'm *getting* it a bit more. Just a pic of our family. I used it on our Xmas card last year.

I have a few more to finish up, and then I'll post them too!

Last pics!

Well, here we are...after about 6 huge blog posts full of pics, I'm caught up (I think!). Here's a few more pics from our trip to Crater Lake.

Our hotel had a little waterslide, and Carter was sooo excited. Here he is going up the steps.

and coming down! Quite blurry, but still cute! ;)

Carter is turning out to be quite a good little swimmer!

Steve made a bigger splash coming down ;)

If you're ever in Medford and looking for a place to stay I'd recommend the Medford Super8. Yeah, it's not the Ritz, but it was nice and clean. The waterslide was fun, and they had a very yummy breakfast which included toast, belgium waffles, cinnamon buns, yogurt, and more. We also took a bit of advantage of the no tax and cheaper Oregon prices. I got lots of great stuff for Carter's bday party (coming in September) and even some Wrangler Jeans for him for $7! Sweet! :)

On our way back into SF we were greeted with this as we got off the Bay Bridge. Our famous fog. We definitely appreciated the sun and warmth on our mini vacay. Although at 104 the day we came home, it was a *little* hot. ;)

Lastly, here's a better look at Carter's Ranger Badge.

One more week of summer. I am super bummed that school is starting on August 15th. Seems way too soon for me. I'm going to miss hanging out with my little guy every day. He got his school assignment in the mail the other day though. He got a nice teacher, and he's very excited that his BFF Thomas will be in his class. (There are 4 classes in each grade at his school, so only 1/4 of the kids stay together each year).

I've also found my scrappy mojo! I've been to two crops in the last month and got about 5 pages done. Once I scan them I'll put them up here! Check back for updates. I'll do better ;)