Haunting or Happenstance???

So this story starts last Saturday when I laid down in bed and I heard this strange sound. It sounded like footsteps on our roof. Or maybe someone walking in our attic. Well I just kind of brushed it off and assumed it was probably mice or something. I had seen a couple mice in our garage over the past few month.

So if that wasn't strange enough, 2 days later my treadmill stops working. I just bought the thing a couple weeks ago and then on Monday I went to turn it on and it wouldn't work. Weird.

So this morning at 4:45am we were in bed and we heard a loud pop. It woke both of us up and we wondered what the heck it was. Right after that we heard something that sounded like a "tic tic tic." It sounded like water dripping so we assumed a pipe had broken or something. Well I got up to investigate and when I walked into the bathroom, the glass door on the shower was shattered into a thousand pieces. There was a hole in the middle and it looked like it radiated out from that. It looked like it had been shot. The "tic tic tic" that we heard was the glass as it continued to shatter in different directions. OK now I know we have a ghost. I don't really believe in hauntings and stuff but, it makes you wonder. AnywaysI put on some gloves and removed the rest of the glass. It was very strange. I had never heard of anything like that happening until I got to work this morning and started googling "spontaneously shattering glass."Come to find out that it is actually a fairly common thing with tempered glass. It is usually caused by temperature change. We left our windows open that night but it didn't get that cold.

I will let you guys be the judge. Are we haunted or is it just a coincidence? The world may never know.

Disney World

Check out Preston's pose. I think he was trying to be a pirate.

So this is a few weeks old but it happened to be one of the best vacations that we have ever taken. We were invited to go to Disney World. Two families were going down during intercession(it is a week that the kids are out of school. They do this so that all the stupid kids can stay in school and catch up) One of the families, the Browns, own a vacation home in Orlando that is about 30 minutes from Disney. It was a really nice house with a pool, a 62 inch plasma, and a game room with Wii and PS3. It was nice to go on vacation and not have to pay for lodging (Thanks the Browns).

So we were down there for 5 days and three of those days we just hung out at the house and went to church. On Monday we went to Animal Kingdom. That was really fun. We went to several of the shows. Lion King was our favorite. The kids really liked the park but I think they all liked Magic Kingdom better. The next day we went to Magic Kingdom. They kids loved it. We watched the show that they do in front of the castle. We went on as many of the rides as we could. Madison and Preston loved Splash Mountain. I was a little surprised b/c I thought the drop at the end would freak them out but they did really well. Jackson was a trooper. He is potty training and for some reason we didn't put him in a pull up either day and he stayed dry until the end of the both days. Around 7 o'clock each day it was like Old Faithful. I guess we can handle one accident per day considering the situation. Anyways it was a wonderful vacation and we had a great time.

Madison rode Everest with me. On all the big drops she kept saying, "I'm going to puke, I'm going to puke, I'm going to puke!!" She didn't and at the end she had a really fun time.All the kids loved Small World.Garrett even approved and smiled for the camera. Here are the kids sporting their new hats.

A Quick Update

So, Bryce has been super busy lately and has fallen behind on his duties of updating our blog. Now, ya'll get to see why he writes about our family life and not me, but I agreed to bail him out this time because there are some pretty significant things going on at our house!

First of all, Jackson became a bigger boy a few weeks ago. We finally ran out of excuses (and money for diapers) and decided to potty train the kid. He's so cute in his little underwears and is extremely proud of himself. In fact, a funny story: One day, I was in the shower and he comes running in with his little bowl to his potty shouting, "I did it, I did it!" Sure enough in the the bowl is little poops. Before I can stop him he dumps the poops into the bathtub (I wonder if that's what he really thinks that was the same as dumping in the toilet, or if he just wanted to get a reaction out of me) and runs from the bathroom, still super excited. Of course, I hurry to get out of the shower so that I can wipe his bum before he sits on anything. (You mothers can already see what's coming, right?) When I get out into my bedroom the first thing I see is a piece of poop in the middle of the floor . . . great. I walk out the door into the kitchen . . . another poop. I follow this trail all the way to the living room where Jackson is trying to put his potty back together. Aahhh, what a typical two-year-old. He tries so hard to help out and ends up making a bigger mess for Mommy to clean up.

The next thing going on at the Carter household is that Garrett (that's our baby that you may have read about. Yeah, he still alive and well) is growing fast. The kids have really loved having him around and want to include him in many of their activities. Games, reading, singing, dancing . . . you name it. Anyway, here's just a couple of cute shots of the kids getting their own "Garrett time."

You may be interested to know that Preston thought up the nickname "Garribou" for our baby while watching the part on Baby Noah where they talk about "Caribou".

Jackson calls Garrett anything from "Gawett" to "Gary" or "Garo".

Me, I prefer "Gar Bear." And guess what I found out awhile ago? A lot of people that name their kids Garrett end up calling them "Rhett" for a nickname! That awesome, huh?! I may get a Southern Scallywag after all!

Christmas Bells

So another wonderful Christmas has come and gone. It is funny to think of where we were last year and the uncertainty that we faced with graduating school. Despite the new location and the change in circumstance one thing is still the same, the Christmas Spirit. Even in warm weather we still felt the holiday cheer in our home. Since we live all the way out here I know a lot of family members want to see what the kids got for Christmas. Well here goes. Madison got an American Girl Doll. For those of you that don't know...trust me, if you have little girls, you will find out all too soon.Preston got an oldie but a goodie. Simple hoop.Jackson got a slide. Now hopefully we can prevent him him from snapping his neck.Garrett didn't get much. We just gave him a bath.Amy got a 16 Gb I-pod touch.I got the Mac-Daddy AR15. Saaaweet. I actually got it before Christmas but Amy made me swear not to tell until after Christmas. She also got me tickets to Sean Hannity's Freedom Concert this summer. Uncle Curt must love us a lot of dollars worth because he got us Guitar Hero-World Tour with all the equipment.
Here a few more pictures of the hardware...for your viewing pleasure.

Garrett Mont Carter

Well we are now a family of 6. We have officially outgrown your typical 4 door sedan. Garrett Mont Carter was born this last Thursday @ 12:30 PM. Amy was induced @ 8:30 am and four hour later it was all over. He weighed in at 7 lbs 12 oz. He was the smallest of our babies. Maddy was 8.0, Preston was 8.8, and Jackson was 9.9. So little Garrett is the runt so far. He was 20 1/2 inches and so he was long and skinny. You can see from the pics that he has little chicken legs. Anyways, Amy came home on Saturday and everyone seems to be recovering normally. It is such a blessing to these little miracles in our home.

The past couple of weeks

Amy and I have been horrible about taking pictures this year and Thanksgiving was certainly no exception. We we able to snap a few over the past few weeks so here they are.

The week after Thanksgiving we had a family reunion with my mom's bros and sister. All we there except for two of my cousins. Lance and Caetie came out from Missouri and Drew flew in from CA. This was the first time in 2 years that we had all been together. It was a good time.

Here are some pics of Madison and Preston getting their yellow belts. We are proud of them and they really seem to love it.

Here are a few pics of the cousins.

Preston and Andersin were the best of buds.

Tae Kwon Do

So after being inspired by such box office titans as Kung Fu Panda and the original Karate Kid,the kids decided that they really wanted to learn how to kick some booty. Check this video out for a little trip down memory lane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bs5CfDPsw0

We have decided to put the kids into a Tae Kwon Do. We looked at a few schools in the area and settled on the Major Tae Kwon Do Academy (http://www.majortkd.com/). This school was more expensive than the others but, we paid the year up front and it ended up being a lot cheaper than the other schools. There are only like 2 other schools in Atlanta that are accredited by the World Tae Kwon Do Federation. They teach Olympic style Tae Kwon Do so, if Madison or Preston ever wanted to go that far in it they would be accredited. We have been really impressed with it but, there is a slight language barrier b/c their instructor is Korean and his English isn't always clear. The kids love it though. On their first day they were taught how to break a board. They will be testing for their yellow belts this next Saturday so we are excited.

So I really think that if if Preston keeps with Tae Kwon Do he will look like Bruce Lee. He just has that skinny physique.