This holiday season we are so thankful to have Carter with us. He brings us so much joy and happiness. We feel very blessed to be his parents. We don't know how we lucked out with such a happy boy. He really is starting to laugh more and we just eat it up. He totally has his parents wrapped around his little finger! :-)

This past weekend was a happy one on the McElhaney (Mike's mom) side of the family. Mike's cousin, Isaac came home from serving a 2 year mission in Brazil. We were able to go to his ward for his homecoming talk on Sunday. He spoke powerfully with the Spirit as he told how he grew on his mission, and how we should be kind to everyone. It was a great talk and it was awesome to see him again. Carter was content with Isaac from the start. We're so proud of Isaac for his service, but we're happy to see him home!

We realized that we haven't told you that Carter can sit up all by himself! He started sitting up for a little while at the beginning of November, and now he is an absolute pro! We set him down all time and he just plays and plays without falling over. He is sitting up really early for babies, but we totally give credit to his Bumbo seat. It helped develop those muscles quickly and he just loves to be independent. The video of him sitting up is coming soon, in the meantime these are the best shots we have currently of his sweet skills.
Also, remember the Halloween contest last month? Well, Carter didn't win, even though he totally should of! Here are the supposed "winners" of the contest.

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place (the only real cute one out of the 3)

Thanks to everyone who voted! We all know you truly was the winner! :-)

Carter has teeth!! 2 of them to be exact! We were so shocked that our little 5 month old boy had 2 teeth break through on Saturday. Christina discovered them after she was done feeding him and she felt something sharp in his mouth. Mike didn't believe her, but once he put his finger in to feel there was no mistaking it. Carter has actually been a little more fussy the last couple of weeks for no apparent reason, but now we think we found the culprit! We can't get a great picture of them since Carter's tongue is usually in the way, but hopefully you can see the two white lines.

In celebration of this new step for our ever growing boy, we fed him rice cereal for the first time on Sunday. (video coming soon.) At first he was really excited about it and opened wide, but after a few bites he wouldn't open his mouth anymore. Christina even tried an later to see if he wanted more, but he didn't open up! He is probably just ready for the hamburgers and steaks so he doesn't want to mess with this baby food stuff.

The Christmas Season has officially begun at the Jenson home! Carter brought in the Christmas spirit by being the cutest Santa Claus ever! Finding this Santa outfit was meant to be since it was the very last one and it was his size. Just when we thought he couldn't get any cuter. :-) We had a fun Christmas party with a bunch of our friends, and Carter and Vivian were the hit of the party.

We had a delicious Turkey dinner and even a present exchange. There were a couple of hot items, like a "poopy" diaper to put on Mr. Potato head for Brian, and a picture of an old-time Granny from DI for Michele, and to top it off a huge white porcelain cat to watch over Andy while he sleeps at night.




Here are some more pictures from that fun night!

We also unpacked our holiday boxes for our first Christmas in Santa Fe apartments. It definitely cheered us up to bring out our little 3 foot Walmart tree that we got 3 years ago. We actually lucked out this year with Carter because he can't go crawling over to it to pull it down on himself, and then next year he'll be a walking, talking boy that will hopefully be good to the tree. Or so we hope. Anyway, we love the feeling of this season and being with family and friends. We couldn't be more blessed!

Oh, how we love Thanksgiving! We had a fun week full of relaxing, eating, family, eating, football, playing and more eating. Since we spent last year with Christina's family we hung out with the Jenson side on Thursday, but we got to see Christina's side on Sunday and Wednesday night. It was super fun to see Mark and his family. We had never met their youngest, Josie, until then and she was cutie. She made Carter and Jared look very little. We never get sick of seeing all the kids together, especially the boys. It's so fun to see them develop together and see their similarities.

We also had the only football game of the year that we ever care who wins, and that is the game between BYU and U of U. Christina decided that Carter has to be neutral for which team until he is old enough to be persuaded. So we made sure he wore his red socks to support his daddy. We should have put him in complete red since the Cougars were wasted by the Utes, but it was a fun game. We also got to see our friends that have a little girl a month or so younger than Carter.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of our Thanksgiving because we forgot our camera, but we did have a fantastic dinner with lots of yummy food. Then on Friday Mike and his brother and dad went up to the cabin, but they had to drive the tote gotes all the way since the gates were locked, but there wasn't enough snow for snowmobiles. It was cold, but they had a great time. Hopefully soon they'll be enough to go snowmobiling!

Carter got his first hair cut! He was cute with his old man's hair when he was born, but it has slowly thinned out to just a patch in the back. It has really bugged Mike for awhile now, and on Sunday the couple behind us asked if we were growing him a mullet. That was the last straw so when Mike got his hair cut, so did Carter.

The Mullet

Our friend Kelly was the one to buzz his hair. (video to come) She watches him on Tuesdays so he totally knows and loves her. He did really good for his first time. He didn't even put up a fuss or anything as she buzzed away his patch. No, we didn't keep any of the little hairs. Maybe when he has a real first hair cut...Anyway, we love how his hair looks now, and it's actually really starting to grow in. It's becoming pretty fuzzy so when we take him out of the car seat or he wakes up from a nap we can't just smooth it back down.

Clean Cut Carter

Yesterday was a special day for 2 reasons. First, it was Dan's 28th birthday, and Second, it was one year ago that we told our families that we were expecting! How fast the time has flown and how incredible our life has changed for the better within that year. Carter has a really sweet relationship with Dan. He will always smile and a lot of times laugh just when Dan talks with him. Maybe it's because Dan is still a kid at heart. For his birthday his brothers knew what to get him...Transformers and a Lego Technic car. Happy Birthday Dan!