Pre-School Snacks

Alrighty, folks... This here is a massive attempt to catch up on some blogging... I've been a working, traveling fool and have had VERY little time to even see straight, much less take photos and blog about the "World's Cutest Kid." So TONIGHT is the night for some blogging marathoning.

Hope you have fun reading and catching up with me!

First up, a fun little post about Carter's fashionable wardrobe choices, some lovely artwork from school, and even some before-school snacking shots.

We'll start with Carter's "Space Man" look. Another great hand-me-down from Liam, our kiddo sports the celestial look as good as any professional! Here are some shots of some pre-school milk and Cherrios:

Occasionally Carter won't obey the rules and sit down to snack (which yes, is one of the phrases he knows how to say - "Sit down!"), so he'll pick up his snacks off the floor so he doesn't get busted:
Next, some of that "lovely" artwork from school... Apparently the stick-random-things/foods/spitwads/etc. qualifies as "art" these days, so I'm enjoying capturing (but not saving...) his creations. This one is a fish with some goldfish crackers glued to it:
I kept it on the fridge for a couple weeks before I snapped a photo of it and you can see the lovely grease plume that took off on the page (hahaha!):
Another glue-crap-to-the-page - this one is a cereal bowl with some Cherrios:
Anyway, I guess whatever is fun at school is good enough for me!

Here are a few more shots of some of his modern fashion choices. Plaid shorts (this is Carter's accusatory pose...):
Innocent and, yet, trapped in these silly shorts:
Some more morning snacking:
Guess he was a little tired and decided to lay back down and catch a few more zzzz's before we went to school:
Yet the tasty snacks kept drawing him back:
Another day, more snacking. This next shot (if you click on it, can see better) really shows off his morning hair style. We call it the "Fresh out of Bed Look":
He doesn't mind... As a matter of fact, all that really mattered that day was shoving more Cherrios in his cheeks:
All smiles, of course:

And that folks, was an exciting post about clothing and snacking. Keep reading, the next post is bound to be JUST as fun! :)
~kerrie

Changin' Our Look

Maybe I'm restless, maybe I'm just looking for some change, regardless (or "irregardless" as some people say...ahh! That's SOOO not a word!), The Greenie Times has a new look. Might notice it changing a few times before I figure out what I really want... Bear with me, I'm feelin' indecisive lately!

Have lots of news and photos to post, just need the time to sit down and do it... This weekend for sure!

Hope you're enjoying the scorchin' heat!
~kerrie

Great Greenie Garage Sale

After my trek to Farmington for work, Matt and I started prepping for the Great Greenie Garage Sale! It's been AGES since we did some purging around the house, so we really went through our stuff. We had a TON of "treasures" and decided to try our hand at a garage sale instead of our usual just-donate-it-to-Goodwill approach.

I won't lie, it's a LOT of work to have a garage sale, but in the end, it was nice to have more room in the house, garage, and shed, and it really was nice to have a small stack of cash in hand at the end of the day.

Kristin came over to watch Carter and our pals Jennifer and Brett came by and kept us company during the entire sale. THANKS to all of them! It's nice having such good friends, eh?

Here are a few photos (and I hit something funky on the camera settings, so they're in black and white) at the beginning of the sale:
TONS of clothes (just as many on the other side of the ladder too):
More "treasures" inside the garage too:
All in all, we got rid of the majority of our stuff. Everything left was loaded up this morning and trucked over to Goodwill. And it only took one trip, so BONUS!

After the garage sale, we hot-footed it over to the park for Carter's school picnic. This is the second year in a row that we've participated and the weather was just as nice as last year. We chowed on some hotdogs, some chips, and even got a grape snowcone (which Carter loved sticking his hands into...). It was nice, too, to see all of his teachers outside the school (they just LOVE Carter) and it's great that the school puts on a picnic for all of the families each year!

Few photos from the picnic:

We were right behind the bouncy things, so Carter was more interested in watching the kids jump than he was in smiling for the camera:
After the picnic, the Greenies all took a much needed nap and then went out for some Thai food for dinner (just HAD to spend that hard-earned money we just made!). All in all, a wonderful weekend, a wonderful week, and tomorrow, well, we all head back in to work... Fun time is over!

Hope you had a safe and fabulous Independence Day and got some R&R in the sun too!
~kerrie

Visit to Oklahoma - Part 2 (Central)

For Part 2 of the Greenie vacation to Oklahoma, we drove out to see our pals Chris and Renae in the Oklahoma City area. We had hoped to stay MUCH longer, but I got called in to attend a meeting for work on Wednesday morning. And the meeting was in Farmington, NM, which is about 3 hours NW of Albuquerque. So we only got to spend the day with Chris and Renae... *shucks

We DID, however, get to have an awesome meal (thanks guys!) and we got to spend some time with their kiddos, Hannah and Micah. Hannah is a total ham and is one of the most beautiful little girls that I know (we refer to her as Carter's future girlfriend...)!

Here's Hannah hamming it up for the camera:
A shot with Carter (yes, these photos were taken just before bed time...since we ended up driving back overnight on Monday):
Chris and the kiddos (and Chris looks AMAZING! He has lost FIFTY pounds and we're so proud of him!!!):
Carter and his new pal, Mugsy:
A shot of Micah being totally, totally cute (and this was our first time meeting Micah and he is SUCH an adorable little guy! And growing up so faaaast!):
Ok, ALL of them look cute, eh?
Renae, one of the sweetest, most kind gals I've ever had the pleasure of meeting:
Carter and his girlfriend, er, Hannah, playing in the "kitchen":
Hannah on this crazy animatronic dinosaur:
Awwwww, Micah is SUCH a cutie!
A mother's love, you can just see it in her expression, eh?
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this next photo!
Chris, Renae, THANK YOU for being such wonderful hosts! Next time I promise our stay will be a little longer!

And that's all folks! It was fun to catch up with our family and friends and to have a quick little get-away vacation. Too bad it couldn't last longer than it did, but frankly, I'm not too sad that we had to come back to only 40% humidity...
~kerrie

Visit to Oklahoma - Part 1 (Eastern)

The Greenies took a little time off for the Independence Day holiday and went to eastern Oklahoma to visit Matt's sister (Becky) and niece (Nicole). Since we drove overnight, Carter slept most of the 11 hours and was ready to play when we got there at 4AM (make that 5AM CST)...

Here are a few shots of Becky and Nicole with Carter:

On Saturday night, we took everyone out for an Italian dinner at Pete's Place (which is actually in Krebs, OK) and had some tasty Choc Beer (I had the peach beer which was T.A.S.T.Y.!!!). It's a cute little restaurant that is set up like "home," and we got to sit in a little room all by ourselves. Which was nice, as Carter wasn't as distracted as he usually gets in a busy restaurant!

Matt's buddy Wes also made the 2-hour trek (thanks Wes!!) to visit with us for dinner and then we all went back to Beck's for some conversation. Here's a shot of the boys:
We didn't actually light any fireworks on the 4th, but we DID have a little excitement as we went for a walk around the ranch. As we were pushing Carter's stroller, one of the cows started following us. I was starting to freak out a little (remember, I grew up in the city...), as Mr. Cow was about 3 feet behind me! And he was licking his lips and staring at me like I would make a good lunch!

When I turned around, there were 3 MORE rogue cows following us! Then I was REALLY freaking and Matt kept saying everything was going to be ok. And THEN, the ENTIRE HERD was following us (so that's like 10 cows!)! They must have thought that we were pushing some kind of "cow food" in our stroller and were eager to be fed (and here I thought cows were herbivores...NOT meat eaters!)!

Beck and Nicole were watching us out the windows and Beck drove up quickly to "rescue" us. She put the cows in the pen and we were able to continue on our walk. (And later, both her and Nicole said that they'd never seen anything like that before! Lucky us!!)

For fun, here's a shot of the rogue cattle being herded by Becky:
And here they are safely tucked in the pen:
Carter really enjoyed being on the ranch and got a kick out of seeing the cows, horses (and even a baby foal...that would spread it's front legs out to bend down to eat grass....oh so cute!), kitties, and Red, the shaggy red dog that would pretty much eat anything! While inside the house, Matt and I would point outside and say, "Look at that!" and Carter would come running and want to be held up so he could see too! The cows and horses typically would just run free and would often be just right outside the window, much to the delight of Carter.

Anyway, back to the 4th walk... Here're a few shots from our trek:
A shot looking up at the house (which sits atop a mountain and was made by hand by Beck's family):
And the house (we call it the "Log Mansion"instead of the Log Cabin...because it's HUGE!):
And finally, coming in from the humidity and heat:
Just check out that sweat on Carter's forehead! I tell ya, we sure don't miss the humidity in Albuquerque!!!
And finally, a quick little video of Beck and Nicole dancing with Carter to the "Happy" song. It's a cheesy little song that Matt and I made up and it puts a smile on Carter's face EVERY time we sing it. Pretty simple and YOU can sing it too (we just sing faster and faster as the song goes along):

"I'm H-A-P-P-Y!
I'm H-A-P-P-Y!
I'm H-A-P-P
H-A-P-P
H-A-P-P-YYYYYYY!!"




It was a great trip and it was nice to just chill out and relax for an entire day! However, on Monday morning, we packed up and hit the road to see our pals in the Oklahoma City area. More on that in the next post.

Beck, Nicole - thank you for a wonderful time!
~kerrie

Tea Time!

I think I'll begin today's blogging marathon with a few photos from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Central New Mexico annual banquet. You see, at the end of each fiscal year (June), the gals gather to thank all of the officers for their hard work, induct the new officers, honor the science fair winners, and well, catch up on some girl talk.

For the last 5 or so years, the annual banquet has been held at the St. James Tea Room and we have a tasty, tasty "full English tea." I won't lie, the first year I went for tea, I was a little skeptical. Ok, make that COMPLETELY skeptical! But now, I look forward to it, as the food is AMAZING, the tea is terrific, and the conversation is wonderful. One of these days, I hope to take my mom there, as I know she'd love it!

Well, this year, the SWE gals had a "hat contest" to spice up the banquet. I bought a few flowers and ribbons and such and was just going to hot-glue everything to a wide-brimmed hat. Well, when Matt saw what I was about to do, he immediately said that I was missing the most important item of all...!!!! So off we went to Hobby Lobby to buy it!

Matt was a great sport and helped (ok, he did ALL the work...) make me a terrific hat. See:
And just what WAS that "most important item of all"? A BIRD!
Apparently, in Matt's mind, all ladies that drink tea have fake birds stuck to their hats. We got a great laugh out of it and it was fun dressing up for the tea party.

And speaking of laughs... Carter has started with this hilarious laugh that is a cross between Fat Albert and well, the Devil. We tried to capture it on video and here's what we got - the wacky laugh is toward the end of these 6 seconds:



It cracks us up pretty much every time!

Up next, a few blogs about our vacation to Oklahoma!
~kerrie