A Lovely Saturday

My family started the drive back to Arkansas on Saturday morning, leaving us to our own devices for the rest of the weekend.

Yesterday, we joined and explored the Atlanta Botanic Garden.

(which Carter heartily enjoyed)

(due, in no small part, to the holiday train they have running around the great lawn...)

Then we had lunch that made us each very happy, though in different ways (Carter - corn dog and mac n' cheese, Me - smoked tofu, Thomas - world's tallest burger)

And then, after Carter went to bed, Thomas and I lounged in front of a fire (it's finally cold enough at night!) and caught up on TV.

An excellent Saturday.

Thanksgiving

My, mom, dad and Mimi came in from Arkansas. Park, Ashley, Anna and Sam came for dinner. Cart Cart and Nonna joined us for dessert.

Family assembled at our house for thanksgiving dinner.

I got in some good snuggle time with Sam.

Carter debuted his new Christmas pajamas (along with Mama Helen's boots) after dinner.

First full Fowlkes family photo with the new addition!

Ben, Rebecca & Miranda

Our friends Ben, Rebecca and their beautiful girl Miranda came for a visit on Monday night. We didn't get any pictures of Carter dragging all his toys into the kitchen for Miranda to play with. We didn't get pictures of Miranda and Carter in their pjs, reading stories. We didn't get pictures of the two kids eating a really good dinner together.

But we did get pictures of Carter directing Ben in several yoga poses. It was so nice seeing our San Antonio friends here in Atlanta!!

Kanuga

We went up to Kanuga in Hendersonville, NC this past weekend for a retreat with our church. The weather was nice, and we had a good time, though we were missing Cart Cart and Nonna. This year was decidedly better than last year, at least with regard to the amount of sleep we got!

We're hoping more Fowlkes will be there next year!

Painted

The paint job on our house is complete! Thanks to our readers for all your great suggestions. I can guarantee you that we seriously considered all options, which is why we were still sneaking up people's lawns holding swatches up to their houses the day we had to hand the paint chips over. Here's where we landed on the colors.

And, since this blog replaces my memory, I'll list the colors we used, in case we need to get more paint later (Sherwin Williams - Herbal Wash (SW7739), Sommelier (SW7595), Pure White(SW7005)).

Classic Carter

That's my boy. Camo pants and glittery shoes, with a ball, a book and a big grin.

Help, Please!!

Our house desperately needs to be painted. We have hired painters and they start on Monday. That's the easy part. But we don't know what color to paint it! Surely some of our loyal blog readers are better at this than us?! Help?!

Here's what we know:

• Everything white is staying white.
• We have cherry wood blinds that you can see through the windows, so the colors need to coordinate with the white trim and cherry blinds.
• Our house looks really small from the front, and is set pretty far back from the street.
• There's a house painted a terrible yellow color two doors down, so I think we can't do yellow or we'll clash.

A little help for your home-design challenged friends? Please?

Here are some pics of our house (from before we bought it and when it didn't need a paint job so badly!)

Posting Frenzy

I've been in a posting frenzy this evening, so you have 4 new posts below, including the last of the posts from our Arkansas trip. The day after we got back from Arkansas, I went to NYC for the week. Now I'm headed to Seattle tomorrow, so I wanted to get these posts up!

This weekend has been absolutely beautiful in Atlanta -- sunny and warm -- and we made the most of it. Yesterday was a 5K, a swimming lesson, a festival, erranding, a birthday party, dinner and theatre for Thomas and I and playtime with Cart Cart for Carter. Today was a playdate/lunch with friends, erranding and a playdate/dinner with different friends. I actually can't believe we fit it all in. I think it's safe to say that all three of us had a great weekend -- and that all three of us are exhausted!

P.S. Sorry to all the Arkansas friends and family that we didn't see while we were stay-cationing there. We missed you, and I promise we'll be back for a more proper visit soon!

Chomp-n-Stomp

On Saturday morning, Thomas ran a 5K at the Chomp-n-Stomp festival. He ran the same race last year (and Carter wore the same sweater). This year, the cop leading the race missed a turn, so the 5K ended up only being about a 4K, but it was still exercise before 9am, so he was happy enough. Later in the day (after a brief swimming lesson interlude), we went back to the festival for chili, where Park, Ashley, Anna and baby Sam joined us for an absolutely beautiful day!

Halloween

We spent Halloween in Hot Springs Village.

Carter wore the lion costume that my mom made, and my brother wore, when Patrick was a kid.

Since Carter was going as a lion, and since my mom has a friend who had costumes to loan us, we decided to dress up as a family (except for Patrick and dad, the grumps :).

Kirstin shows her appreciation for being strongly encouraged to costume...

Instead of going door-to-door, we went to a "trunk-or-treat" event at my mom's church. The cars park and people give away candy out of their trunks.

Magic Springs

Halloween was a beautiful day in Arkansas, so we got to play outside. Mama Helen and I took Carter to Magic Springs, an amusement park in Hot Springs. Carter wore his Super Why costume as his lion costume would have made it too hard to ride the rides.

Carter's favorite ride was the roller coaster, which had some good speed for a kiddie coaster. He did NOT care for the swinging pirate ship ("my tummy hurts!").

Mid-America Museum

Since it rained so much when we were in Arkansas, we had to find indoor activities to keep us occupied. One such adventure was a trip to the Mid-America Science Museum in Hot Springs. We explored the exhibits and did the flight simulator (which Carter LOVED!).

But I don't know how!!

Carter's latest strategy for getting out of things he doesn't want to do is to claim he doesn't know how to do whatever it is we need him to do. Two cases in point:

At bedtime one night, Thomas tells Carter to lay in his bed. Carter responds by saying "I don't know how to lay in my bed!" and demonstrates by attempting to do a headstand in the bed.

Another day, Carter wants to put on his "running pants", which are actually shorts, and it is too cold to wear them. Thomas tells Carter he can wear the sweatpants that he already has on, "they're great for running!" Carter responds, "I don't know how to run in sweatpants!" and demonstrates by orchestrating an overly dramatic fall, "See!?", he says.