Beach Week

Okay, so it's been a while since we've written, but give us a break... we've been on vacation! It was Carter's second trip to Chincoteague Island, VA a beautiful strip of sand on the edge of the Delmarva Peninsula. We get together with my mom's family for a week of fun and singing each year.
Carter retreats from the scary ocean, way up sand mountain.
He might not be saying much yet, but his penmanship is excellent.
Next to me is my youngest brother Sawyer, then the other two are Freeman and his fiancee Kate who are planning to marry this fall. We got to meet her for the first time this trip! Freeman got super lucky... she is going to be a great addition to the family.
The bike we rented had a Carter chariot attached. "Onward, driver! My banana yogurt awaits!"
Beach hug for daddy!
This is too much fun!

Carter was afraid of the ocean the first day, but on the second would sit and let the water wash up on him a little. He also let me take him out in my arms. The third day he wanted to crawl out into it and we had to hold him back.

Take me out there! I want to ride a porpoise!
Carter practiced his walking on a nature path. He took his first few consecutive steps this week, but still doesn't seem to be in any hurry to start walking regularly.
The Tabony Brothers Trio giving a rare concert. There's always singing at a Hunter Family Reunion but it's rare to see me up on stage.

Well that's it for the pictures. We're super busy around here now that we're back. Not helping things... the transmission in the Mazda is acting shifty (ha!) so we're looking for a good used minivan. Hopefully the car will hold together till we find one. Talk to you next week (I hope)!

On Deadline-Latest from Babyland

Hey everybody! It's getting close to the middle of the night, but Cierra seems to think this thing has to go up on Thursdays or we risk losing subscribers. So we'll see what I can remember at this late hour about the last week. Also contributing to the tone of this piece... I've enjoyed a glass of wine this evening. Not just any wine, a wine I bought for less than 3 dollars. Yes, that is for a full size bottle. I'm detecting notes of huckleberry and overtones of mushrooms and worm castings. Wine this good usually comes in a box... a pine box. Ahh.... see, I'm not even sure what that means. Okay, I don't usually buy wine this cheap, but I needed some for cooking and I hate to waste good wine in the crock pot. I prefer to buy some deadly swill and see if I can ruin a bunch of expensive food with it.

On to the news of the day. A couple weeks back we had a photographer take a bunch of photos for us at a local park to mark Carter at around one year old. Here are some of the standouts!

Sadly, we didn't pay her enough so she took all the color out of this shot. We have all the pigment on layaway. Next week I should have enough for the blue.

Carter is very interested in the guitar. This may be the impetus for me to finally do something more with this thing than sit looking at it with my mouth hanging open. But if I know myself and my capacity for not doing complex tasks over long periods of time, I will probably find a way not to learn.

Carter loves to pluck at those strings, though. He'll probably learn before I do. In fact, he put more time into it today than I did. I had to cook some chicken for dinner and needed an activity to keep him happy. So I just put the guitar on the floor and listened to the music. I've labeled Carter's first composition "Dischordia". But as long as it's going on, I don't have to worry he's getting into anything too terrible.

Walking, walking, walking! Carter may be too scared to take his first steps yet, but he loves walking around with our help. He can do it for longer than our backs want to, that's for sure. So it's a good thing we've got one of those walking tools with wheels for him to lean on and push around the ground floor. Too bad our family room is three steps down. He'd avoided it for so long until today that I really thought he knew to stay away from there with his cart. Nope. I was standing in the middle of the room, trying to email Cierra a particularly cute video of Carter when all of a sudden he comes trucking into the room, pushing his cart out into midair. The cart careens down the stairs, and Carter, like any good captain, goes down with the ship, landing facedown on top of the smoldering wreckage. Okay, this is a lot of dramatic license. Actually he just sprawled across the top of the cart and didn't even bump his face, thank goodness. Of course, I rushed over and picked him up in a panic. He let me have it with one good scream and then followed it up with a very serious sounding "Eh?" It's almost like I understood he was saying "So I probably won't be doing that again."

Here's what he will be doing again... eating strawberries! That's it for this week... peace out until next time!