Epcot

Random at Condo

Jim and Carry

Animal Kingdom 2

Animal Kingdom 1

Slide show mixups

The slide-shows that I put on our blog, come from my online photo gallery. Over the past few months I have been cleaning up and organizing my online photo gallery, and in so doing have messed up the slide shows and video that we had on our blog. So the only way to fix it is to re-share the slide shows, but they won't be in the order they were the last time, unfortunately. Looking on the bright side the pictures and slide shows will once more be on our family blog. Yipee!! Sorry for the confusion.

Great Grandma Carr

Wildlife Preserve Flordia

Everglades FLorida

Vacation: Florida

After a wonderful summer of fun, sun, parks, picnics, and loads of family time, we decided to give ourselves one Grand Finale for the summer and take a 2 week vacation to West Palm Beach Florida. What an adventure. We've been planning this trip for a year. We also had it planned for Christmas/ New Years time. However as we were trying to plan our future, and being unsure of what was going on with Ben's promised promotion, and with the possibility that we'd be moving to Utah, we decided not to take the chance of flying from Utah out to Florida, so we upped our trip by a few months, and ended up saving ourselves a load of money by doing so. So here is our vacation in a few paragraphs, but mostly slide shows and pictures.

So we have learned a few things from our vacation, look for discount deals for Disney World, go for a birthday to get free parking and special awareness, take two other people to help care for the baby, plan out where you want to go at the beginning of each day in the Disney parks, bring a stroller with plenty of food, don't go to the beach and get burned on your back before you go to Disney, get a camera that DOESN'T eat batteries, bring 2 pairs of walking shoes so you don't have to buy a pair of shoes once in Orlando, don't try to do everything at the parks, there's no way it can be done in 1 day, have 3 drivers to drive the 12 hour trip from Raleigh to West Palm Beach, pray that you don't hit rain storms or traffic when you drive in Florida at night, don't pack junk food when you drive 12 hours, eat real food= less potty breaks, saving up money for the trip before you go on the trip, allows you a budget to stay in without hassle, relax before and after you go to Disney...of course there are other things, but you get the idea. ;)

OK, so after a very long 12 hour trip that included 3 major thunder storms, and 3 accidents we made it safely to West Palm Beach. The first day there we kept it relaxing and easy by going to City Place to walk around and see the neat buildings, and see a movie. We also visited with Grandma Carr, who highly enjoyed us. Over the first week we went to the beach two times, played at the pool in Ed's apartment complex, went shopping, and hung out at the condo. We watched a load of movies, one each night, it was really fun.

For the weekend of my birthday, we headed up early on Friday to drive to Disney World. It was a wonderful day! We spent a very busy day at the Magic Kingdom. Some of the things we did are: ride Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Stitches great Escape, Mike's Laughing floor, Winnie the Pooh's honey adventure, It's a Small World...Joseph had a lot of fun, became very tired by staying up way past bedtimes and not taking long naps, but enjoyed the whole of Disney. We we weren't going to stay for the fireworks, so we could beat the crowd out to the parking lot, but Ben and Grandpa Ed and Joseph got stuck on the Carousel of Progress, and so we all watched the fireworks. Then we went to eat dinner while the light parade was going on. Had Joseph been awake for the light parade, we would have watched it, but he wasn't. To end the night we went to stay at a 5 star resort in Orlando. It was nice, but not as nice as we thought for a resort. We did get a wonderful king sized bed, mini kitchen complete with fancy china and dishware, and a jacuzzi tub.

Saturday Ben and I spent 4 hours at what was supposed to a 90 minute tour and breakfast for the resort (as it was a timeshare deal, we stay there and get free tickets, if we hear their deal on their condos for sale). Breakfast was OK, nothing special, but the condos were nice, but super expensive. We finally got out and rushed to Epcot. We had a load of fun, Ben bought me a shirt w/ matching hat for my birthday. Joseph figured out how to nap in the stroller better at Epcot. We checked out the different countries, and rode the Mexico and Norway rides, Joseph had fun on both. We got stuck on the Mexican ride right at the end, so it took like 10-15 minutes before we could exit. Riding the rides once, and listening to the songs once is plenty, but listening to the songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...well you get the picture. We stayed for the beautiful Lazar light and water and fireworks show. It was really cool. Poor Joseph was once more asleep, so he missed it again.

Sunday was our last day in Disney. We went to the Animal Kingdom, which was really neat. We rode the new Yeti ride, and had a blast. Daniel and Grandpa Ed rode it twice. We found out that if there is the option for single riders its the fastest lane if you don't have the fast pass tickets. Ben and I got soaked on the White Water Rapids in Asia. We walked through a zoo where we saw giant bats, tigers, hippos and more. We rode a real safari and helped chase poachers from the elephants. We saw lions, hippos, the rare Black Rhino, ostrich, giraffe, Okapi (a rare animal that looks like a horse, zebra, giraffe thing. We had a blast. Joseph got spoiled as we bought him a Winnie the Pooh, to go along with his Tigger and Piglet. The Animal Kingdom closed early, so we were able to get home at a decent hour. What a weekend, and we still had 1 week left in Florida.

So for the last week, we visited the beach more, hung out inside or at stores as it rained a bunch, and went to the Everglades for an Air boat ride. The air boat ride was cool, it made a load of noise so we had to wear ear plugs. But the coolest part of the boat is that it glides right over the grass and plant life in the marshes. We got to see a couple of "wild gators", out there, but the pictures aren't so good, because our camera kept focusing on the grass between us and the gators. Oh well. When we got back we walked around their wildlife refuge and got to see Timber wolves, raccoon, black spotted leopard, Florida's panther, a brown eagle or hawk, we can't remember what she was, a ball python, and a water dragon. We then went to a special reptile part of the zoo and saw giant torti, Reticulated python (my favorite), a Croc and loads of different sized gators. Even a giant gator 12 feet long. She was HUGE! To top off our adventure, we got to hold a baby gator. That was the coolest part!! What a wonderful vacation, but it was really nice to come home, and get back to reality.

Outer Banks Trip

Joseph playing

Painting fun

Pool fun

Random Reunion Pics

What Did you Do all Day?

A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog.
Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing.
In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door. He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened.
He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out of the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scumming soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.
As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in bed in per pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, "What happened here today?" She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?"

"Yes," was his incredulous reply.

She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it."

Enjoy the laugh!!

Bubbles

Family Pictures

Hula Hooping

Soccer

Rennie Refuge

Since our Carr family will be moving soon, we thought it would be a great idea to give each of our families something that they can enjoy while we're gone. For Ben's mom, we sneaked up to her place one Saturday and spent the whole day fixing her a land mark so people can find her place much easier. We got the whole family in on our secret so they'd keep Rose away from the house all day. Thankfully it worked out well, because it took way longer than we thought, plus we had to revise our initial plan a couple of times as time and space ran out on us. Check out the results!

Labor Day Stalder Reunion

After a stormy Sunday night, it was surprising to see bright, hot sun, cool breezes, and happy attitudes when we woke up on Monday. After a slow morning of sleeping in, we were ready to start our day off. We quickly packed up and headed up to Mom and Dad's. It was great! We started playing soccer at a local church field. Though the teams were lacking in people, it was totally fun. Joseph found out how much he loves to kick the ball, get in the middle of everything, and decided that he doesn't like water poured on his hot head to cool him down.

After a quick break of cooling off in the ice box...err rather the pool. It was a blast trying to get each other in the freezing pool, without getting in ourselves. Joseph even got in the pool and enjoyed it.

To warm up after the pool, we ate a typical Brazilian lunch: sausage and black bean soup on rice, fresh pineapple, jello salad, and a milkshake lemonade. To allow us time to digest our yummy, filling lunch, we decorated our T-shirts, and wrote Josh a letter out of sticky letters. It was a lot of fun, trying to spell as many words as we could without resorting to using a marker. However, we could only get so far, until all the vowels were gone. So Josh'll have a very brightly colored and funny letter to read when he gets it. This was also Joseph's nap time, so when we woke up right before our next activity, it was great timing!

Next up Botchie Ball. This was so much fun, though if you don't stretch before and after you play your arms, shoulders, and upper back muscles are SUPER DUPER sore. Travis won by far. Though each of us succeeded in botching up his high score. After a unanimous vote of moving onto dessert. Travis willingly accepted our vote of him as winner in favor of the food.

After a quickly disappearing dessert, we headed out to the Secret Garden for picture time. After a time, the youngest members of our family decided it was time for something new. We trouped onto the deck for some family unity games of hula hoop. First up was the human circle where we passed our bodies through two different hula hoops circling us in opposite directions. It was a lot of fun to see how quickly we could accomplish this task. After the Human circle, came Show Off Time. Which consisted of anyone who thought they could or rather everyone who couldn't hula hoop, prove that they couldn't hula hoop. That evolved into Dare Devil show down, to see who could run through the hoop before it fell. It was a great laugh!

After a rigorous ab workout, we decided to target our brain waves. Mom set up tissue paper for each of us, and using a collection of colored and scented bubbles, we painted our master pieces. It was a ton of fun! We painted the deck, our hands, fingers, feet, T-shirts, each other...we decided to stop before something terrible happened. It was really cool. The only sad part was Joseph really wanted to blow the bubbles, but we didn't want him to go home with a green, blue, red, or brown mouth. Poor kid, but Uncle Bart helped us out. He brought out normal colored bubbles, but special kinds. He bought some silicon bubbles so Joseph and all of us got to catch the bubbles, and try to wipe off the plastic leftovers from our hair, shirts, and shoes.

After a very long, fun, and hot day it was time to quit and eat some grub. Not literally, otherwise we'da...anyways. We were starving. So while the "Men folk" occupied themselves with some basket ball, I got to keep Joseph and Mom company while keeping Joseph from thinking about basket ball, since he was too young to join in. After dinner we had a wonderfully uplifting lesson from Mom, to put the finishing touches on such a GREAT day! She topped her meaningful lesson with a sweet surprise: Chocolate Fudge Brownie. It was the best ever!!

To see the full account of our day, look forward to the slide shows that are coming!

Week Long Adventures

Sunday August 24th at 3:00 Ben drove us from the church to the air port, where we joined the many people there saying "good bye" to their loved ones as they dropped them off curbside, at the Continental terminal booth. After Ben joined the throng of people going into the terminal, I drove off with a sleepy boy to go home and take a nap. A little after we got home, Ben called to say he got to his gate within 15 minutes, so he had 2 hours of sitting ahead of him, waiting for his plane. What fun...

Joseph and I had a whole week a head of us without Daddy...what can we do to stay busy...hum?

Monday: walking, breakfast, swimming, lunch, mutual nap, pick up winter clothing for Joseph, dinner, play with Grandma Rose, clean, bath play time, bed for Joseph, Mommy gets "me time"!!

Tuesday: no walk, no swimming (it rained all day), breakfast, play indoors, go to library, lunch, mutual nap, play indoors some more, read books, dinner, clean, play in tub, bed for Joseph, Mommy gets "me time"!

Wednesday: no walk, no swimming, breakfast, play, indoor picnic lunch and B-day celebration with play group, mutual nap, play, go get food, dinner, play, clean, bath tub fun, bed for Joseph, Mommy gets "me time"!, watch Princess Diaries

Thursday: late morning walk, breakfast, shower, play, lunch, mutual nap, go late B-day shopping with and for Grandma Stalder, go play with Stalder Uncles, dinner, play, play, watch movie, Mommy and Grandma sew clothes, bed time for Joseph, Mommy goes to bed, Joseph wakes up at 1am vomiting, Mommy cleans up, helps Joseph feel better, back to bed for all,

Friday: wake up again super early to give Joseph medicine, Mommy helps Joseph feel better, back to bed until 7am, help sick Joseph get better, take a hot shower bath, eat breakfast, go get sick food to help Joseph feel better, take a nap, eat lunch, play a bit, clean, clean, clean, nap, Mommy get's "me time", dinner time, play at park (to burn off fever), watch movie, bed time for Joseph, Mommy get's more "me time", watch Ella Enchanted

Saturday: Joseph wakes up through out the night, Mommy sleeps in while Joseph plays, breakfast, clean, play, watch Nelson boys, lunch, mutual nap, shop at Target, play at Toys R Us, eat Wendy's for dinner, dinner at Pullen park, ride the chu chu train at Pullen, bath for Joseph, bed for Joseph, watch Holes

Sunday: Joseph wakes up through out the night, Joseph wakes up early, TV and play time for Joseph, Mommy sleeps in, church time, lunch time, mutual nap time, GO GET DADDY!!! YEAH!!! Daddy is home now!!!!!

What a fun and busy week. It was a bit rough to be a part for so long, but it was a great experience.

WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN'T LOOKING

WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN'T LOOKING

A message every adult should read because children
are watching you and doing as you do, not as you say.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you hang my
first painting on the refrigerator, and I immediately
wanted to paint another one.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you feed a
stray cat, and I learned that it was good to be kind
to animals.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make my
favorite cake for me, and I learned that the little
things can be the special things in life.

When you thought I wasn't looking I heard you say a
prayer, and I knew that there is a God I could always
talk to, and I learned to trust in Him.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make a
meal and take it to a friend who was sick, and I
learned that we all have to help take care of each
other.

When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you give of
your time and money to help people who had nothing,
and I learned that those who have something should
give to those who don't.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you take care
of our house and everyone in it, and I learned we have
to take care of what we are given.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw how you
handled your responsibilities, even when you didn't
feel good, and I learned that I would have to be
responsible when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw tears come
from your eyes, and I learned that sometimes things
hurt, but it's all right to cry.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw that you
cared, and I wanted to be everything that I could be

When you thought I wasn't looking I learned most of
life's lessons that I need to know to be a good and
productive person when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn't looking I looked at you and
wanted to say,'Thanks for all the things I saw when
you thought I wasn't looking.'

Live simply.

Love generously.

Care deeply.

Speak kindly.

Leave the rest to God.

Daddy and Ball

Now that Joseph is officially 18 months old, he is starting to pick up more words. He knows a ton of words and phrases, and can say a handful of words...and just to Ben and me a few phrases. We didn't take away his pacifier until after the doctor said it could impair is speech. Well since we don't want that, and since the only reason we let him keep the pacifier was because he is still teething, and most of his teething was awefully painful, so we cold turkey'd his pacifier.

So what words does Joseph know how to say: Ball, Daddy, Mommy, Light, Milk, Bottle, Doggy, Kitty, Thank you, balloon. What phrases have we heard him say: What is that?, Where is it? Who is it? Where is the ball? Of course there are a few others, but we can't think of them right now... What words does he say most often: "Daddy and ball. Everything is daddy and ball, in some variation or other.

Its very interesting how that happened, but somewhat frustrating too, because we want him to say other words too, even if its words he knows how to say, but now all of a sudden, out of the blue he won't say anything but daddy and ball...oh well. He's still just so cute!

Fire Trucks

The other day after dinner, we all went on a family walk up the street. It was a muggy evening, but beautiful sky, and weather. As we were walking up the street, on the side walk, we heard a fire truck siren coming closer and closer. I turned around to see which way it was coming from. It was coming towards us. So Ben turned Joseph around so he could see the truck. Right as it passed us, the driver honked his horn as I was pointing to the truck so Joseph could focus his eyes on it. It was so cool. Even though they were rushing to a fire, they took the time to honk at us, while we watched them pass by. What a nice thing to do.

3rd of July celebration with friends and family

Joseph dances

Daddy and Son Time

Mommy and Joseph

Random with Joseph

Mommy's Surprise

Lake Jordan Father's Day

New Toy Slide Show

Grandpa Ed and Grandma Carr's Visit

Back in April Ben's Dad and Grandma came up from Florida to visit with us for the weekend. It was a lovely time. Daniel spent the weekend camped out on our couch so he could visit with his family too. We all met them at the air port, where they got a kick out of how big Joseph had grown from the last time they saw him. After a very fun time at the rental car shop, we drove everyone over to the Ramada Inn, where Ed and Grandma Carr would be staying. We had a very enjoyable time just talking and catching up on what has been going on in all our lives. We showed Grandma Carr and Grandpa Ed the toys they bought Joseph for Christmas. It was fun to all be kids again as we played with Joseph's toys. The best part, is for once Joseph didn't mind someone playing with his toys either. He was the center of attention, and just LOVED it!! Each night we went out to eat, where the family was able to watch Joseph eat like the big boy he is. It was very cute to watch him flirt with the pretty waitresses. He'll be a heart breaker soon enough, we just didn't know we'd have to worry so soon. I mean no one tell us these things in the lamas classes, nor in the parenting books. But that's ok. Grandpa Ed got a kick out of it. With loads of fun all day long, there comes a time when all must by done. And thus we had to say good bye, until we see Grandma Carr and Grandpa Ed once again.