For all of you blog friends...

This post probably won't be too interesting for you but I wanted to at least document a few (ok, a lot) of things that we did this year. The year is almost over and I didn't write much of anything that we did over the summer. So I will update my blog on that and a little bit of what we have been up to recently.

Summer 2009

Camping - This past summer was so much fun. Carter was walking and running around everywhere. Mark bought us a fabulous camping trailer for the grand total of $1,200. It is plenty big for us and was kept in really good condition. We took it camping to Bear Lake, The Uintas, and Mark & Carter took it to their first Father & Sons campout. We got our fair share of camping in and it was great.



The Zoo - No summer is complete without a trip to the zoo. We went to the Hogle Zoo with my family and Carter loved it. He really seems to likes animals. He also loved the Carousel, The Train, and the Kettle Corn. He was really independent and made sure to cause quite a ruckus in the gift shops. My favorite exhibit was the new baby elephant that had just been born a few weeks prior to our visit.

Swimming - We did tons of swimming all summer long. Carter loves the water and is not afraid to jump in with no help whatsoever. Scary! We swam at North Shore aquatic center, had the VIP treatment at the Marriott Hotel during Mark's conference, swam in the yard, and drove all the way down to Draper to check out the new Cowabunga Bay (better for older kids).

Weber County Fair - We went to the Weber County Fair (as we always do) and had a lot of fun. Carter's favorite thing was the petting zoo. It was fun, cute, and dirty. As part of the fair festivities Stephanie Rodarte and I ran our 1st 5K run together. We had been running all summer and figured we should sign up for a race to help motivate us. Our time was around 29 minutes which I was happy with. After we went to the fair we went to dinner at what one of our favorite restaurants - Karen's Cafe on 25th St. Their salmon special is awesome and that is usually what we get everytime.

Fall 2009

I love fall. I was excited for it to come but also couldn't believe it was already fall time again.

Anniversary - Mark and I's anniversary was on October 8th. I had a whole big post dedicated to our anniversary but it got erased and I didn't have time at the moment to redo it. Mark took the day off and we spent the day taking Carter to the Treehouse Children's Museum. He loved it, and I loved watching him. It was fun to watch him discover new things. Later, Mark and I went to dinner at Red Lobster. We each got the Ultimate Feast (which I have been craving ever since!). We enjoyed our dinner then rented a movie. It was a great day. I can't believe we have been married for 4 years!

Black Island Farms - We went with our friends the Johnsons & Rodartes to Black Island Farms in Syracuse. It was so much fun. It really represented good old fashioned fun. There were slides, a train for the kids, a corn box, and animals. Carter loves being outside so he was in heaven. We also couldn't keep him off of the slides. He is a little daredevil and had no problem going down the big slides.

October fun - We carved pumpkins with my family and our friends the Deckers at our house. I don't think carving pumpkins is as fun as it was as a kid. Maybe it is the mess to clean up afterwards? I don't know. Still fun, but not as fun as I remember. The company was fun though. We enjoyed pizza and root beer floats. Of course Carter thrived with all of the attention he was getting. Oh, and we picked out our pumpkins from Carlos' fruit stand which is where we usually go. I took tons of cute pictures of Carter with the pumpkins but I accidentally erased the pictures on my camera. Dang it! I was so mad. Luckily my mom has some on hers but I haven't gotten them from her yet. We also had pumpkins from our own pumpkin patches. One of the pumpkin patches Mark planted and we had about 3 pumpkins grown from it. The other pumpkin patch just randomly started growing in our front yard and we got 13 pumpkins from it!

Halloween - For Halloween this year Carter was a dinosaur. I wanted him to be bam bam from the Flintstones but the costume wasn't that cute and it was expensive. So we opted for the dinosaur. He liked his costume though and it kept him warm. Carter got a practice run on trick or treating by going the day before Halloween at my work. He got the hang of collecting candy really fast. The only problem was that he wanted to eat it all as he went. (Typical kid) On Halloween we went to the ward trunk or treat and saw all of our friends. Afterwards, we went over to my parents and hung out for a little while. I decided that Halloween is much more fun when you have kids.