A whole lot of random

Muny turned 90 last week, and Sunday was her birthday party. Everything was so nice and so many people turned out! I am bad at estimating, but it felt like there were at least 100 people! Donna and I served the cake and punch - since I got there a little late, she nominated me for cutting the cake. Here it is before I destroyed it :) The custom napkins said, "Happy birthday, Muny!" Muny with her two granddaughters - Donna and me.

Carter recently got a haircut. By this, I mean I let go of his "baby boy" haircut and now he looks like a big boy :( It's really cute, and Wendy did a great job of not cutting it too short and big boyish, but it still makes me sad!
Carter has been talking about Karate for a few months now, so we decided to sign him up for some sort of martial arts. The Karate place near us doesn't accept students until 5 years, so we investigated and found that the Taekwondo place takes students at age 4. That sort of made our decision for us :) He will be turning 4 in about a month, and the director said that some students aren't ready until they are closer to 5. He let us come in for an evaluation, and he acted very surprised at how mature/coordinated/exceptional Carter is. He said he's definitely ready, although he was fully prepared to tell us to come back in 6 months before we arrived :) He said he gave him a variety of instructions - visual, verbal, and anything in between - and he did great! Look out, Chuck Norris!

Carter has been to 2 private sessions and next week he will go to a group session, which will end our trial. After that, we will probably sign up for regular sessions, but I was really shocked at the price. This is an expensive sport - 2.5 or 3 times the price of soccer per month, not including extras (uniforms, stripes on belts, testing, etc). But, Carter really likes it so far, and we think it will be great for focus, discipline, balance, coordination, etc.

Carter does a lot of pretending, and last night he went to bed and said that Shark Boy and Lava Girl were sleeping in our guest bedroom. When I went to wake him up this morning, I couldn't find him anywhere! Well, he was on his top bunk (under all the extra pillows and blankets). He said Shark Boy and Lava Girl were sleeping in his bed so he had to move up there. Ha!

Here are my babies in 2 of the several fall outfits I've made them. I LOVE fall!

Yesterday, we went to the pumpkin patch for our annual tradition. We tried to go last Monday but we got there and Alan decided it wouldn't be much fun on a boring weekday. So, we decided to go with 9,000 of our closest friends on the day of the Fall Festival. Yay.

Charlie did a lot of running around when we finally got to the pumpkin patch area (past the corn maze, festival area, games, activities, barn, petting zoo, horse rides, zillions of people waiting in line for the hay ride, etc).

He also did a lot of falling. In the red mud. In the outfit I made him. :(

Carter carried his own pumpkin all the way back through the pumpkin patch, to the tractor. He stood in line holding it forever, waiting on the next hay ride.

It was definitely a fun, but tiring day! After we got home, I sent Alan back out to the store. We cooked dinner for Mac and Pandi (she just had surgery on her feet). They had asked us early in the day to cook enough and stay to eat with them and watch the Auburn game. Well, it wasn't much of a game, but you know what I mean. We got home after 9, and I still had to finish my SS lesson. Today after church, we ate lunch with Samantha and family (the lunch lasted until almost 2:00, thanks to poor service), and then we had to go home and get ready for our pictures that were at 3:00 in Mt. Laurel. After pictures, we had several errands to run, plus dinner. Whew! What a tiring weekend!