Carter's 9th Birthday

Carter's Birthday was on Sunday this year and the lucky guy got to spend the entire weekend celebrating. Since we had such a busy Saturday with his party we decided to take him to dinner on Friday night. Carter is breakfast LOVER so he chose to go to Cracker Barrel so he could get breakfast food. Once again he stuffed himself with adult ultimate pancake meal (4 pancakes with toppings, biscuits, 2 eggs, 2 pieces sausage, hash browns, hot chocolate and O.J) and then ate some of my food too. It is crazy how much food the kid can pack down when he wants to.

Sunday morning we got up early to have breakfast and do gifts. He chose scrambled eggs and coffee cake for breakfast. I have no idea why iPhoto keeps rotating this picture when I save it but I am tired of playing with it:
With his gifts:

Carter's only wish for his birthday this year was the Harry Potter Wii game for years 5-7 and a pair of football gloves. He also got a couple more HP movies on Blu-Ray since we are upgrading all our HP movies, a compass, a HP Lego set, some scout stuff from Allen's mom and a Tim Tebow jersey from my parents.

He's super excited to move up to Bear Scouts and got dressed up in his new gear and wanted a picture taken. His favorite gift was randomly the compass I bought on a whim off of amazon a few months ago. I forgot I had it for him for Christmas and threw it in the birthday gift pile at the last second. He loves that thing! He loves to wear it on his scout belt along with the Leatherman my parents gave him for Christmas. Hilarious!
For dinner Carter chose to have pizza fondue and dessert fondue in lieu of cake. I had to stick the candles in the banana dippers so we could sing him happy birthday.
At 9 Carter is such a fun and interesting kid. He is definitely getting into that "tween" stage and it makes me sad but it is fun to see him growing up to be such a great person.

He loves:

- breakfast foods - especially waffles

- Manzanita Sol apple soda

- Harry Potter series (he has read books 1-6 on his own)

- Riding bikes/scooters outside with his friends

- ALL SPORTS- this is sometimes really overwhelming for us because he wants to play/try EVERYTHING and it just isn't possible. He's a natural athlete and his competitive nature makes him strive for excellence. He is especially good at football and basketball

- Scouting

- Teasing his sisters

- Playing the Wii on the weekends

- Playing on my iPhone when I let him

- BYU football

- Playing the piano - he is getting so good on the piano and it is a joy to watch him love it so much. He is always randomly sitting at the piano and playing a few songs throughout the day.

- Wearing short sleeved shirts. Who knew that my biggest clothing battles would be with my only boy about his love of weather inappropriate clothing. We discuss it every morning and I'm finally letting go

- Music - he loves to listen to his iPod and has really wide musical tastes. One night a few weeks ago I took him to run errands with me and let him choose the songs we listened to on the iPod. It was fascinating to see what he chose - some classical (Canon in D, Beethoven 5th symphony), some country (I hope you Dance), some rock (Queen, Maroon 5, White Stripes) etc. He also acts as our lyrics police and will alert me immediately if a song is inappropriate in any way

Carter remains our kid who would love to try everything. He recently asked if he could take violin and guitar lessons. He wants to play every sport and try all sorts of things. He is very brave and will try just about everything once and usually enjoys it all. He is still very, very competitive and he always has to keep that in check but he is maturing and getting better about not always winning.

Carter is still really spiritual and is always reminding us to pray for little things. If we have a problem in our family he is the first to kneel down and pray. A few weeks ago we couldn't find Addie and Allen and I were frantically looking for her. Carter knelt down and said a prayer and then found her hiding in our closet. He has set a goal to read the entire Book of Mormon this year and is working faithfully on it every day.

Carter is still doing well in school. His teacher this is struggling to keep him challenged so we are doing a lot with him at home. He gripes a bit about the extra work but it doesn't stop us from trying to keep him challenged. He is doing 4th and 5th grade math and continues to test off charts in both math and reading. We are more cognizant of the fact that we have to be careful about finding reading material that is challenging yet age appropriate. It's honestly still a big battle for us to make sure he is learning and challenged in school and it is kind of exhausting sometimes.

We sure love having Carter in our family. He always keeps things interesting and lively. He is patient with having 3 sisters and is good at helping and protecting them. We love all that he brings to our family and feel so blessed to be his parents!