What's New With The Carter Family

I just love this kid!  Matthew is Jem's longest known friend; we moved next door to them when Matthew was 11 months old and Jem was 16 months old.  They have been best buddies ever since!  I not so secretly joke that Matthew is my second son ;)  Love those boys!

The upstairs "computer room" is one of my favorite places in our house. I always seem to be up there :) If I'm not on the computer, I'm at my scrapbooking desk....and if I'm not busy doing something, then I'm looking out the window. It's quiet. It's calming. It's relaxing. It's just beautiful. No matter what time of day or night, there's some beauty to admire out in those woods. Sometimes I just watch the birds hopping around the trees. Other times I search for the squirrels. But mostly I just like to look out at the trees. Especially at sunset. Sunset is spectacular sometimes! Just take a look at this picture, taken one evening when my boys were at a movie and I was home alone.... I mean, really.....who wouldn't want to stare out there forever? :) Of course you also have beautiful views in the morning too...as the sun starts to rise (from the opposite end of the house) and the moon is still visible. I think I took thi...

Craziness! Late last night, as Brandon and I were watching a show on tv, we hear this weird sound...like someone is throwing rocks at our window! When we go to investigate, we realise that the wind was howling, it was SUPER gusty, and the 'rocks' were in fact leaves and twigs being blown around and landing quite loudly and continuously on our sliding door! After heading up to bed, we lost power....and there was this eerie feeling outisde....it was dark and creepy and windy.... I swear, I wouldn't have been surprised if it were the end of the world as we know it! Fast forward a little to this morning....all calm and quiet.... really, the only visible proof that anything happened last night was the leaves that were EVERYWHERE. Take a look. P.S. I haven't forgotten about Halloween! I promise, it's the next post I'll be making....just haven't gotten around to editing the photos yet :) Stay tuned!

Brandon and Jem decided to go down to the garden and pick some strawberries :) They took Jem's halloween candy bucket, and off they went.... A few minutes later they came back with a bucket FULL of fresh, red strawberries - and then went right back down for another bucketful! All in all we filled three HUGE containers with Brandon's strawberries....and yes, they were as delicious as they looked! Super sweet and soft and full of goodness!

Hip Hip Hooray for progress!!! Looky what Brandon and I set up this past Sunday - the pool! It fits PERFECTLY in the bottom corner of our property, and will be ready to use within a day or two! It's hard to see from the pictures, but it's pretty big and deep! It's 18ft x 9ft, and 4ft deep. Plenty big enough for Jem and a few of his friends! But boy oh boy, who knew it would take two days to fill the thing, and don't even get me started on the $140 we spent on salt (YES SALT) for the saltwater/chlorine generator. Supposedly it is spa quality salt *LOL* and it was 120lbs worth...but sheesh, it's SALT! I swear there will be no splashing of that pool water, not with that precious salt in there! Ok, I'm kidding. Well maybe not. Perhaps just a little splashing. BUT NO WATER WILL LEAVE THE INSIDE OF THE POOL if I have anything to do with it haha! As you can see from the photo, the patio is almost done too! Brandon just has to do the end parts (as the pavers need to b...

Whatever happened to my little boy, you know the one....the kid who hated having his hands dirty? Even if he had a SMIDGE of anything dirty, sticky or foreign on him he would instantly want it off! Well I guess THOSE days are over (and have been for quite some time *LOL*). Here he is playing down the hill while daddy worked on the concrete stairs on the last day of June. It's fun being a boy, don't you think?

Jem was down the hill with daddy today, helping him move dirt around on the most recent terrace level. I couldn't resist grabbing my camera and snapping a few photos! I love seeing the two of them down there together :) Sure, we may not have a beautiful grassy yard for Jem to play in...yet...but there is plenty of mud and dirt down there to keep any boy happy!

Don't you just love God's wonderful creatures? Especially when they are right on your doorstep.....or should I say, at the bottom of your hill? Today we had a visitor - a deer - who had come out on this cold, wet day to have a snack to eat. I quietly called Jem to the computer room (upstairs, overlooking the woods) and he excitedly watched the deer munch away. I couldn't quite get the picture I wanted, so I decided to sneak downstairs and outside for a better view. Unfortunately, the minute I pressed the shutter, the deer looked up and freaked out - and within seconds he was scurrying away into the woods. I did manage to get this shot though. Pretty cool, huh?

As you can see from the photos above, the yard project is coming along nicely! This summer in particular, Brandon (with some help from Justin) managed to get a whole other wall built. Doesn't it look different when seeing it from below? When you see it from the top of the hill you have no idea of how much wall there actually is! Although this project has been ongoing for over 3 years, the end is in sight - I swear, if I squint my eyes just so I can almost see a finished yard!

As you may already know, Brandon has been working fairly diligently this summer on our side yard. It is very steep, and in order to be usable we need to construct a number of terraces. He has started on the lower level retaining wall, and it's looking great! As you can probably tell, it is a LOT of hard work...and Brandon is doing an awesome job!