March 2013

March felt like a really long month, but I think it's because we did SO much!  Last March we had really warm temperatures and were able to play outside almost the entire month, this year, however, it has still been chilly!  Most of our March was spent indoors with a few nice afternoons here and there.  (Be prepared for a long post, but there are lots of cute pictures!)

We started the month off celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday on the Maryville College Campus at an event they had for kids.  Dawson made this cute Cat in the Hat hat and Carter got a Thing 2 wig/hat.  I was able to get a picture of Dawson in his, but Carter thought his was for tearing instead of wearing, so no picture of him.

 

On March 2nd, Dawson and Carter's friend Charlie had his 3rd birthday party at Pump it Up (an inflatable play place), and both boys had a blast.  This was Carter's first time on an inflatable, and he loved it!

Here are Dawson, Charlie, and all the bigger kids

at the party!

 

Dawson had fun letting Carter ride in the back

of his Gator (while I held him) around the backyard

one afternoon.  Carter loved it and would

squeal and sign "more" when Dawson would stop.

 

One warmer Sunday afternoon we let the boys play in the sandbox.  This was Carter's first time playing in the sand.  They had a blast!  Carter quickly learned not to eat the sand, yuck!  Now he loves getting in there!

 

We dyed Easter Eggs the ENTIRE month of March-seriously, we did it three or four times.  Here is Dawson dying eggs one of the times.  He really enjoyed doing this!

 

While we colored eggs, Carter say beside us in his high chair and played with plastic Easter eggs.

 

Here's Dawson with the finished product!  Last year we made an egg for Carter even though he wasn't here yet, so this year in addition to making eggs for Carter and Dawson we made one for Nora Kate!  Her's

 

Carter started taking one step, but we decided that wasn't officially walking that he needed to take two to be walking.  We knew he was on the verge of walking any day, so we took him to Stride Rite to get his first pair of *real* shoes.  He measured in at a 4.5 wide.  The sales associate called his thick, wide feet "fluffy" haha!  Sounds just like his big brother at this age.  We picked out this cute pair of shoes for him at the Stride Rite at West Town Mall.  Then that afternoon (March 16th), at 11 months and 3 days old Carter took his first steps in his new shoes in our backyard!  He walked from me to his Daddy.  All of us including Dawson were so excited and cheered and clapped for him!  It was sweet to see how excited Dawson was for Carter!  :)  Since then Carter has really taken off, now he's taken 18 steps in a row that I've counted and more that I've missed counting.  Just in the past couple of days he is starting to get where he prefers to walk rather than crawl.  He's really steady and fast on his feet.  I can't believe we have a walker!!!

 

Attempting to measure the feet of our little wiggle worm!

On March 17th we celebrated St. Partick's Day!  We all wore green and since John had to leave to go out of town on this day, we went over to Lolly and Pop's house for lunch.

My sweet leprechauns!

Carter's first St. Patrick's Day!

 

 Lolly and Pop gave the boys their Easter surprises early, which was great because it gave them something to do the first week John was out of town!  Here they are going through their Easter baskets...Dawson really wanted to help Carter!

 

BUT Carter was happy to do it on his own!

 Here's Carter having a blast at Tumble Bears Gym!  For a long time he was content to be held or in the Moby while we went to this playdate once a month, but now he wants to play too!

 

John had to travel to Greensboro, North Carolina (a little over 5 hours away) for TWO WEEKS for work this month.  We knew that would be absolutely too long, and since the boys and I didn't have anything keeping us in Tennessee we decided to pack up, drive over, and join him for the second week of his time there.  I was unsure how the drive would go with just me, Dawson, and Carter in the car, but they did AWESOME!  I could not have asked for better travelers.  Dawson is really at an awesome age because he understands that we are going somewhere fun, even though it takes a long time to get there.  He was also such a help and entertainment to Carter in the backseat.  Seriously, it could not have gone better.  Since I was unsure how the drive would go I made arrangements for us to stop in Asheville (a little less than half way to Greensboro) on the way there for lunch and play time at the house of our friends, the Whites!  It was perfect!  We stayed about two hours, Cassandra had lunch for us, we got to visit, and best of all Dawson and Carter got to play with Thomas and Henry and get out some energy!  When we got in the car they were full and ready to nap!  Coming home we drove the 5 hours with just one stop for fast food for lunch, and the boys did great too! I was really impressed, now I'm wondering where I can take them next!  :)
When we first arrived in Greensboro, Dawson said he was going to give John the biggest hug he had ever given before!  So sweet!  I know he missed John the first week he was gone!  After we got to Greensboro, we took the boys to Celebration Station for some entertainment.  Dawson had fun playing games with Daddy!

 

And we even played a little putt putt!

 

Sunday, our second day in Greensboro, was rainy and cold, but it was one of John's two off days so we headed to the mall where Dawson got to build a bear!  He loved it!  It's name is Little Bear, and he's slept with it every night since!

 

We also let the boys get out some energy in the mall's play area.  This was Carter's first time in a mall play area, so we had to get a picture!  He had fun and was not intimidated by the bigger kids at all!

 

Our third day in Greensboro, John had to work.  The boys and I decided to check out Greensboro Pump it Up, an indoor inflatable play place.  Dawson had a blast and was not still a minute!

 

Carter enjoyed the inflatables AND this cool baby area they had for kids his age!

 

 The fourth day in Greensboro, was John's other day off so we had a few really fun things planned!  First we went to the Greensboro Natural Science Center.  This is a small children's museum, small zoo, and small aquarium all in one!  We all had a blast!  Here's our baby bird in a nest!

Dawson and Carter both had fun doing some grocery shopping and putting them away and cooking in this little kitchen!

 We all thought this giant dino was pretty cool!  Dawson asked us if he was real and if he would bite.  :)

 We told him no, but then we took this picture!  :)

 In the weather area of the Natural Science Center there was a room on tornadoes.  It was up to date because it even included the day of tornadoes that I think we will never forget when we lived in Alabama!  We had to take a picture of this portion of the wall!

In the zoo/animal area of the science center they had all kinds of animals from sheep to wallabys!  You could actually go inside the wallby area  and walk around with them!  It was amazing how close we got to them!  They are really fast jumpers, and it was so neat!  Unfortunately, I didn't get any good wallby pictures because we were too busy watching them jump around us!

 There were a couple of peacocks that just roamed around the property of the science center and we thought it was really cool!  Dawson wanted his picture made with this one, but this is as close as he would get!

 After a morning at the Natural Science Center, we hoped to continue making the most of John's day off so we headed over to the Greensboro Children's Museum in downtown.  It was AWESOME!  I wish we had a good children's museum here that was close...if it was like this we would be there all the time.  There was a huge play area for crawlers and toddlers.  They had a great tunnel that Carter enjoyed among other things. 

 The Children's Museum had a real fire truck, police car, tractor trailer, and air plane that had been made safe for kids to play in.  The kids could climb up and play in all of them.  Here's pilot Dawson taking us all for a flight!  Carter was the co-pilot!  (To exit the awesome plane, you had to go out the emergency escape which took you down an tunnel slide.  We all had fun doing this!)

 For our 5th day in Greensboro, John was back at work so I took the boys to another indoor inflatable play place called Safari Nation.  They had six inflatables, two of which were just for kids three and under so Carter had fun in those!

 One of the inflatables there was the biggest I had ever seen.  It had three huge slides and two different bounce areas.  Dawson immediately climbed up and began sliding down. I think it was his favorite!  Every picture I got of him on this was a blur though because he was going so fast!

Our 6th and final full day in Greensboro, we went to visit John at the store where he was working there.  Then we went in a few stores and shops that I had been wanting to stop in all week!  I found a cute little fabric shop where I picked up a couple pieces of fabric to make things for Nora Kate and a new fabric to make more bowties for the boys!  This was probably the least exciting day for the boys, but they didn't seem to mind because in the afternoon we went back to Celebration Station to use up the tokens Dawson had left from our first visit and to play putt putt one more time!

Then on Friday morning the boys and I packed up and drove back to Tennessee.  John got home the following evening since he had to work Saturday there before coming home.  We were both really skeptical about our tagging along on John's work trip because he had to get up and leave the hotel every morning by 3am which also meant he had to go to bed really early.  With all of us in the same room, we were not sure how this would go.  Also, I was really worried about Carter wanting to play on the hotel floor (gross!) the whole week.  Thankfully, we were able to find a lot to do so we didn't have to stay in the hotel room much at all, and the boys were worn out for going all the time so they didn't have any trouble going to bed a little earlier than normal.  In fact, they both did so well being in the same room that we have decided to go ahead and move them into the same room after Dawson's birthday, rather than waiting until closer to Nora Kate's arrival.  After riding all the way home in the car, when I carried Carter into the playroom he was so happy to be home!  He walked around everywhere!

The next morning, there was a community Easter Egg Hunt at Springbrook Park, so we decided to go!  Here are the boys in their matching Easter shirts before the egg hunt!

 

Dawson and Carter both got to hunt eggs in the same age division which was nice!  Here's Dawson saying CHEESE before the hunt began!

We invited Grandad to go with us to the Easter Egg Hunt!  Here they are waiting on the egg hunt to begin!

 On Easter morning the boys woke up and checked out their Easter baskets! 

 Here are both boys with their Easter baskets after unloading all the goodies!  We even let them have a couple of treats BEFORE breakfast!

 Then we got ready for church!  Here are several pictures of Carter in his little seersucker Easter suit!  Happy 1st Easter sweet Carter!  (The rocking chair he is sitting in was mine when I was little.)

And here are my two handsome boys in their seersucker suits ready for church on Easter morning!

 

I thought this one was cute of them talking...wonder what these boys are planning!?

Then we got Aunt Em to take a picture of us all in our Easter attire after church!  (It's a wonder she's willing to take a picture of our family after taking our Christmas card pictures for us this year, hah!)  Easter 2013:  Dawson 3.5 years, Carter 11 months, 20 weeks pregnant with Nora Kate.  My how our family has grown since our last Easter picture!

One more picture that got out of order of the boys in their matching Easter shirts.  It's hard to tell from how they are sitting but they have a bunny and their names on the shirts!

 

Our March was SUPER busy, but it was a lot of fun!  April is looking to be just as exciting!  We have Carter's birthday party scheduled for April 13th and then we're planning to go to Alabama at the end of the month!!!