catching up

On Sunday the boys wore matching shirts - it was funny that 4 other sets of brothers wore matching shirts that day too! I think we're all enjoying this early spring weather

Ryan likes to stand and he'll walk if you hold his hands and walk with him. Not quite pulling up all the way - very wobbly - but we're getting there

the boys being silly on the way to Lake Blackshear - we had Monday off and spent the afternoon

there - MUST go back and go caing!

A nice windy day and so relaxing

Backyard Fun

Saturday fun

spring?

Look what's coming up in the backyard ?

Handsome

Cheesy!

time to swing!

Ryan's 1st Birthday Party

Ryan turns one on Monday, but we celebrated today with a party and had LOTS of kids and adults. We all had a great time!

Tammy appliquéd this shirt for our Valentine baby:

The rite of passage:

Ryan's First Birthday Cake

In the Carter family, we have a tradition of homemade, home-decorated birthday cakes. In 30+ years of my mom baking birthday cakes for me, we never had a store-bought cake. (One advantage of a birthday near Christmas was that Mom would bake me a birthday cake when I came home for Christmas break.) One of my favorites was very simple: a chocolate cake with a tuba on top.

Pete preferred cookies,

and one year Laura got a hedgehog cake!

It's one of our fondest memories of Mom. So, every birthday, we carry the tradition on, making memories for our boys.

Jacob's first birthday cake was Noah's Ark

His second birthday was a car,

and his third birthday was Curious George.

Last year Jacob had a swingset cake.

Ryan LOVES the toy farmhouse he got for Christmas (especially since it makes a lot of different noises - Ryan specializes in noises), so we decided he would like a farmhouse BIRTHDAY CAKE.

We started with a field made of cookie (too bad Uncle Pete Carter wasn't here to enjoy it with us)

(the red-tinted icing tasted horrible)

The "thatch" roof was made out of Golden Grahams. Yummy. :) The hole in the field is for the pond (made of blue Jell-O; see the last photo).

Getting the path ready

The silo is a stack of 6 Ding-Dongs!

The finished product:

The heart on the door is for our Valentine baby!

I think Grammy would approve. :)

Two new videos

Jacob had to learn his phone number for school, so I thought it might help if he knew what the number was for. I pulled out my phone, and together we dialed our home phone number. Hit "Call," and, viola, our home phone rang! Then we tried calling Mommy on her phone (since she was at the grocery store).

So a few days later I asked him if he wanted to call some other people. Here's his phone call with Grandma (he dialed the number himself).



Meanwhile, Ryan is really trying to crawl, but he hasn't quite figured it out yet: