The C&C Burkman Family Blog:

Happy Birthday Carter!!

2008-08-07T22:01:00.001-06:00

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that one year ago, I was watching Carter be delivered. Looking back at all my many accomplishments over the last 365 days wouldn't make for a very interesting blog and might be a bit depressing for me, so we'll just focus on Carter's big day.

To start, Carter got his first birthday card AND present opportunity after breakfast this morning complete with video proof. But first, here's how he's felt about today in general:

The Birthday Card:

His First Present:

Carter also got to eat his first birthday "cake". We tried to be a bit healthy, so he got a pumpkin spice cupcake. Of course we covered it in wonderful, sugary frosting; negating the healthiness altogether.

At first he was a bit apprehensive and didn't know what to think of the frosting.

But once we helped him try it

We think he was pretty okay with things

And if you haven't had enough multimedia in one post, here's a slide show of the whole cupcake adventure.

Eat, eat, eat...

2008-07-23T22:00:00.000-06:00

That's exactly what Carter was all about at Lamb Days. Well, that and staring. Lots of staring at everybody and everything-

He found part of a hot dog bun in a bag that Cindy set on the ground. Leftover food in a bag? You betcha.

Carter also got his first real stab at ice cream and, of course, he had no problems eating it as fast as possible.

And lastly, Mollie and Josh have 3 cute kids and Carter loved being around 'em. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't even know about Lamb Days. So here's a fun little slide show just for them.

LAMB DAYS!!!

2008-07-21T22:13:00.002-06:00

In what is becoming a tradition, we spent our weekend in Fountain Green, Utah, for Lamb Days!! What is Lamb Days you ask? Or perhaps, where is Fountain Green? Both good questions.

Fountain Green is in the middle of nowhere, Utah, between Nephi and Manti. Lamb Days is a weekend event where people from all over the county get together for two days of activities and fun. Mutton busting, lamb judging and auction, sheep shearing, and lots of lamb to eat are probably where they get the "Lamb" in "Lamb Days".

Don't believe me? Here's a few pictures of lamb getting prepared for lamb-burgers. People line up for these a few hours before they're ready.

They were good, too!

We spent the day with our good friends, Josh and Mollie. Since there were just too many fun things going on, I can stretch this weekend into 2 or 3 more posts!

If you can't handle the suspense and want to see some more pictures, head over to our flickr page here --> Click me!

He Walks!!!! (kinda)

2008-07-07T15:50:00.006-06:00

Carter decided to wait till people were gathered for our niece's baby blessing to try taking his first steps. Don't know if it was the sleep deprivation or what, but he went for it and caught us totally off guard.

Sam, being the quick-witted guy that he is, had the video camera out in a hurry. The actual steps happen right away but there's two minutes of video here for the family members who want a more complete experience and want to see Carter sign "more" while he's trying to walk. Good stuff.

Carter says:

2008-06-11T10:12:00.001-06:00

Happy Wednesday!!!

Movies That Make Men Cry

2008-06-08T00:46:00.003-06:00

Found this blog post from sportingnews.com while I was sittin' around doing nothing tonight. (nothing better than taking an hour to do nothing at all. Wish I had time to do it more often).

Top-25 Movies That Make Men Cry **25 movies now.***

It was a good enough topic that Cindy and I spent quite a bit of time going over the movies and agreeing/disagreeing with the author's comments. I'm not a huge movie-crier, but he did a good job pickin' out the movies that had me at least a bit misty-eyed (which is all of em except #20,18,10,9,6, and 3. Mostly cause I haven't seen 'em).

So, if you have a few minutes, click the link and enjoy the list. Feel free to comment and agree/disagree if you'd like. If not, well- fine then.

Oh, and to make sure this post isn't void of a picture, here's carter in his walker, reading a magazine, and wearing my hat. The hat was a new addition, but he loves running around the house while holding a magazine, talking to it, and tearing it to pieces. Simple pleasures...

Visitors!

2008-06-05T19:55:00.001-06:00

Look who came to visit!

Josh, Mollie, and their 3 boys were in the Orem area, so we got have lunch with them and visit for a while.

PLUS:

Elliot was in town before he headed out to Armenia for his 2 year stint with the Peace Corps.

Needless to say, it was great seeing old friends, even if it was only for a bit.

Swimming, Swimming.

2008-06-01T00:44:00.001-06:00

Carter went swimming for the first time while we were down in Arizona.

There's some pictures of me and my polar bear skin that I omitted so that people won't flee from the blog in terror, but Cindy looks great, as usual, and Carter's cute.

Oooh... new layout.

2008-05-31T14:00:00.000-06:00

Well, we're back from our trip to Arizona. Truth is, we've been back for a bit, but haven't updated anything on here cause we're a combination of busy, tired and maybe just a little lazy.

Also, the look of the blog changed just a bit. Nothing says blog commitment like a new layout, right?

Anyway, to get right to the point, picture time!

** With the new layout, comes picture integration on flickr.com. Click on any of the pictures to jump over to the picture set and to download the original if you're so inclined. Plus, there's more pictures there.**

First off, Arizona and bubble time with Brigham and Reagan-

Phototime with the cousins (this was Brigham's idea... good thinkin!)

In Arizona

2008-05-02T10:04:00.005-06:00

We haven't updated in a while... so here's a picture of Carter and his crazy-blue eyes:

We're in Tucson until Monday for a baby blessing for our newest nephew, Chase. Plus we get to visit Cindy's family and friends and get out of Utah and its ridiculous, 80 degree one day, snowing the next weather. Driving 12 hours with a 9 month old wasn't ideal, but Carter was a champ and we made it.

Here's the quick version of our goings on:

Summer classes just started up for me. I'm taking 16 credits at UVU and 4 credits of institute religion classes. It's gonna be a busy couple months.
Cindy's working and staying busy in the primary presidency. She still finds time to keep our house in order and decorated, me on track with school and work, and be a great mom for Carter.
Carter is crawlin around like crazy. He just figured out how to sit up on his own and pull himself up to standing. This means we get to start baby-proofing because when you combine standing with a knowledge of how to open drawers, there's problems to be had.

We'll be here in the Tucson for the next couple days. So if we know you and you want to visit, then so do we! If we don't know you and you want to visit... well, that's just creepy.

Arizona!!!

2008-04-17T10:10:00.004-06:00

For those of you who don't know, I absolutely love Arizona. I lived there for 3 years while I went to College at EAC, and I had the time of my life. I haven't had the chance to go back since I moved to Utah in Dec. 2002 which has been hard. Now, I have 2 brothers who live in Tucson with their families, which means two more excuses to visit Arizona more frequently.

In a few weeks, on of my new nephews is getting blessed, so Chris and I are taking this wonderful opportunity to visit family, visit Arizona, and visit all the friends that I can while we're there. It's weird that most of Chris' college friends live close by so we are able to spend lots of time with them which is nice. But for me, all my close college friends live in Arizona. Needless to say, I never get to see them. The last time I saw my best friend Amanda was at our wedding almost 3 years ago. (Shout out to Amanda!!)

Anyway, I have been counting down the days and can't wait to be back in Arizona soon. (especially since it snowed here 2 days ago.) Unfortunately I've lost contact with a lot of my old friends, so if any of you read this, email me (cindyburkman at gmail dot com) and hopefully we can plan a way to hang out while we're there.

Carter's big night.

2008-03-18T06:04:00.000-06:00

Well... in true St. Patrick's Day spirit, Carter had a bit too much of the hard stuff last night before bed as this incriminating slide show will clearly show.

There's captions on each picture to provide better insight into Carter's milk-induced downfall.

Don't worry, he's getting the help he needs so don't judge him too harshly.

Hope your St. Patrick's Day was as exciting as Carter's!

Carter says...

2008-03-17T20:45:00.014-06:00

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!!

Webcam!

2008-03-10T09:45:00.000-06:00

4 months or so ago after talking with my parents, we decided to try out webcam technology and see if would actually be something we'd consistently use. Unfortunately for us, both Cindy's and my parents live 12+ hours away, so having them interact with Carter was either by phone or having them talk to photos (didn't work so well).

So, long story short, webcam works great and I honestly feel like it's bridged a gap for us. Cindy's parents have one now too and it's wonderful to talk to our parents AND see them at the same time. More importantly, Carter gets to see them and interact with them. The bonus to all of this is that's it's really easy to use and doesn't cost a thing if you have an internet connection and a web cam. Quality's good, too.

So, when our niece, Cadence, was over, we got Grandma and Grandpa Cannon on the webcam and they got to talk with them.

As you can see, Cindy's parents are absolutely mesmerizing. So much so that Carter apparently decided to stop closing his mouth for a bit.

Here are a few more pics from that day cause pictures are fun:

Sleepytime

2008-03-09T15:03:00.001-06:00

Cute Picture moment

2008-02-27T16:52:00.005-07:00

The last post didn't have any pictures. That's no fun. So, while you could have visited the flickr site to see these, here's a couple pictures of Carter being cute.

One Resolution Down....

2008-02-25T15:25:00.003-07:00

One of my resolutions for this year was to get a bit more organized with sharing photos online. Since there are a billion and one different places out there just begging me to use their services, I was a bit hesitant to start investing any energy into a site for fear of hating it completely and swearing off web album stuff altogether.

I've semi-committed to Flickr.com. It's popular, easy to use, and they'll host all my photos at their original resolution (I'm weird that way... don't want anybody changing my files without permission, which is why Picasa got the boot).

So, for your bookmarking enjoyment, here is the link for all things photo-related:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/burkmans

New photos will go there all the time, but blogworthy photos will still go here. For now, this site is publicly available, but I'm going to end up making it most of it private sooner than later.

If you want 100% access, we just need to be flickr buddies so let me know. Our username is burkmans.

Tagged!

2008-02-15T23:15:00.001-07:00

So my sister-in-law Jessie tagged me with this a while back, but I didn't know what some of the exact questions were and wanted to wait until I did. Well, a couple of my other sisters-in-law, Lori and Cassie, did this same little questionnaire yesterday, so I am finally doing it. :)

See if you can guess our answer before you read it.

1. What is his full name? (I assume they're asking about Chris)

Christopher Louis Burkman.

2. How long have you been married?

2 years, 6 months, 3 days and counting.

3. How long did you date?

This is a tricky one. I guess we technically dated about 4 months (including our engagement) but the whole process was a little over two years start to finish.

4. Who eats more?

Chris could definitely eat more but we usually eat about the same amount.

5. Who said I love you first?

I did although Chris tries to claim this one for himself (even though he knows it isn't true)

6. Who has more speeding tickets?

This is easy: Chris! I haven't had any (knock on wood)

7. Who is smarter?

I'm smarter but I know better than to admit that (it'd hurt his feelings) so Chris is DEFINITELY smarter.

8. Who is more sensitive?

Chris is a crybaby, but he doesn't like people to know. So, I'm the more sensitive one. Chris is too manly to be sensitive.

9. When there is a fight who usually wins?

Depends on the fighting style. In boxing, Chris has the edge (longer arms) but if we're thumb-wrestling, I'll win every time (Chris has stubby, sausage thumbs and I have monkey fingers; it's not even close).

10. Who does the laundry?

Maria.

11. Who does the dishes?

Again, Maria.

12. Who sleeps on the right?

Maria. Just kidding. Facing the bed, I sleep on the right, cats on the left and Chris on the floor, but he usually sneaks into the left side of the bed after I fall asleep.

13. Who pays the bills?

Nobody really does. Repo-man will sooner or later, I'm sure. But when we absolutely have to pay, Chris takes care of it.

14. Who mows the lawn?

Good question, probably somebody in our HOA. We haven't lived here long enough to actually see the grass... just snow. Stupid, stupid snow, so we may not even have grass.

15. Who cooks dinner?

Since Carter hasn't mastered this one quite yet, Chris does most of the cooking cause he's obsessed with it and he's home during the day. I'll throw something together when Chris is feeling too lazy, which actually ends up being like 4 days a week. So, in conclusion, we both cook.

16. Who drives when you are together?

Chris usually drives because he's a baby and gets carsick too easy.

17. Who is more stubborn?

This is 50-50 but Chris usually wins an argument cause he just keeps at it if he's losing, adding all sorts of tangents that don't have anything to do with anything. I get so riled up that I end up quitting the argument by ignoring him altogether.

18. Who kissed who first?

Chris kissed first. Her name was Kristi. It was sometime in the 90's. But if you're talking about me and Chris, we usually start kissing at the same time. If one of us isn't kissing, it kinda ruins it.

19. Who asked who out first?

Chris says that I used to bug him about when he was going to ask me out but I don't remember that. First official date, Chris asked me.

20. Who proposed?

Chris did... over Memorial day weekend in Portland, Oregon.

21. Who has more siblings?

I do. 3 brothers. Chris has a brother and sister.

22. Who wears the pants?

Buster has fuzzy pants! (I'll get a picture to put here. It's like puss in boots but with fuzzy pants.) These days it seems like Carter wears the pants too since he dictates our sleeping schedule and pretty much all aspects of our lives.

Now I'm supposed to tag somebody. So, if you're reading this and want to do it- great. If not, whatever.

Also, it's way more fun to do this when your spouse is sitting right next to you piping in with sarcastic quips.

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T08:17:00.002-07:00

So Valentine's day has never been a big holiday for me. I always considered it just a day to spend money on frivilous, meaningless junk, however, I always felt so good getting little valentines, notes, anything, from anyone on Valentines day. I guess it doesn't take much to remind someone they are loved and appreciated.

I'm intrigued by the history of the weird pagaen holidays we celebrate each year and thought I would share a little information I found about the history of Valentine's day.

"February 14 is Valentine's Day. Although it is celebrated as a lovers' holiday today, with the giving of candy, flowers, or other gifts between couples in love, it originated in 5th Century Rome as a tribute to St. Valentine, a Catholic bishop.
For eight hundred years prior to the establishment of Valentine's Day, the Romans had practiced a pagan celebration in mid-February commemorating young men's rite of passage to the god Lupercus. The celebration featured a lottery in which young men would draw the names of teenage girls from a box. The girl assigned to each young man in that manner would be his sexual companion during the remaining year.
In an effort to do away with the pagan festival, Pope Gelasius ordered a slight change in the lottery. Instead of the names of young women, the box would contain the names of saints. Both men and women were allowed to draw from the box, and the game was to emulate the ways of the saint they drew during the rest of the year. Needless to say, many of the young Roman men were not too pleased with the rule changes.
Instead of the pagan god Lupercus, the Church looked for a suitable patron saint of love to take his place. They found an appropriate choice in Valentine, who, in AD 270 had been beheaded by Emperor Claudius.
Claudius had determined that married men made poor soldiers. So he banned marriage from his empire. But Valentine would secretly marry young men that came to him. When Claudius found out about Valentine, he first tried to convert him to paganism. But Valentine reversed the strategy, trying instead to convert Claudius. When he failed, he was stoned and beheaded.
During the days that Valentine was imprisoned, he fell in love with the blind daughter of his jailer. His love for her, and his great faith, managed to miraculously heal her from her blindness before his death. Before he was taken to his death, he signed a farewell message to her, "From your Valentine." The phrase has been used on his day ever since.
Although the lottery for women had been banned by the church, the mid-February holiday in commemoration of St. Valentine was still used by Roman men to seek the affection of women. It became a tradition for the men to give the ones they admired handwritten messages of affection, containing Valentine's name.
The first Valentine card grew out of this practice. The first true Valentine card was sent in 1415 by Charles, duke of Orleans, to his wife. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. Cupid, another symbol of the holiday, became
associated with it because he was the son of Venus, the Roman god of love and
beauty."

So Happy Valentine's Day to Chris, Carter, and our family and friends.

Figured it out... I think

2008-02-06T14:01:00.001-07:00

We got a video camera for Christmas. It's official purpose is to capture cute Carter moments so we can have them for ever and ever and ever. We've done well to capture some moments already, but I haven't put them on our computer yet... until now!

Our blog is becoming more media savvy and now we have streaming video! So, to start off this new chapter in our sporadic blogging life, here is Carter getting tickled:

Yum, Yum.

2008-01-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

Started Carter on baby food. Here's how he likes it so far:

Long Overdue Part Two:

2008-01-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

Man, I was pretty slow getting this updated. I'll save the explanation for why for another time. I tried taking pictures of the inside... they just didn't work out. So, here's the inside of somebody else's place, which looks just like ours, for now; until we decorate and all that.

First, the kitchen: This has got to be like 3 times the size of our old one which is just fine by me cause I like to cook and the extra space really helps

Next up, the dining area/nook thingy. It's attached to the kitchen as any good dining area/nook thingy should be.

We have a laundry room. I feel spoiled. This is a definite improvement over a laundry "closet" attached to our kitchen:

Having just realized that I am not finding any online pictures of the bedrooms or front room, I'm I'm going to just have to make my camera work. So... there will be a part three to all this even if you're not interested and it will arrive much, MUCH sooner that this one did.

Part One: The Outside!

2007-12-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well, here are the pictures of the new place we bought. They're not actually of OUR place because I haven't taken any pictures yet. I need a wide angle lens to actually get shots of the bedrooms that aren't just the corner of the walls. Anyway, here they are:

First off, here's the exterior of one of the units. Ignore the green grass- it's snowing here. I don't want you to feel misled; it's actually quite cold and I don't care for it.

Next up:the floor plan. Once again, this is ALMOST what our place looks like. You need to flip it to get the full idea.

Here's a porch. This isn't our porch, but it's close. OUR porch has a little wall so it feels more enclosed. I like it better, but didn't take a picture of it yet. This picture was online, and online is better than standing outside in the cold taking a picture of a door and a concrete slab.

The BIG, Exciting News!

2007-12-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

So I thought it was probably time to let everyone know what Chris meant when he said "Man... life is busy at the moment. I won't go into details just yet cause I don't want to jinx anything. I'll just say that the absence of posts is for a good reason and leave it at that." I thought that was kinda mean. I would have been so curious. So, here's the story.

The weekend right before Thanksgiving we started talking about owning a place to live. We've been renting for two years and plan on living in Utah for at least 2-3 more years. Though we have casually talked about how nice it would be to own a place before, this was the first time we felt strongly that it was a good idea to start seriously looking, actually prepare to buy our own place, and act sometime within the next 6 months or so, no hurry.

That was Sunday. Monday we talked to my boss to get some advice about the market and homes vs. town homes, etc. The following day, he told me he found an amazing deal on some condos and that we needed to check them out. So we did. At first I was so shocked at how quickly this was happening; I wasn't sure if this was the place for us. The only problem was because it was such a good deal, they were selling fast and there were only a few left. So, we looked at them again the next day, and the next day after that.

Thursday night we received a strong confirmation that this was a good thing and we needed to move forward with it. We started the process Saturday, November 17th and closed Dec. 6th and moved in Friday, Dec. 7th.

So, the big news is that we finally have a place of our own!!

Our last place was around 800 sqft or so, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom. Needless to say, we had grown out of it about 3 times over. Poor Chris (who works from home) had to have his office set up in the dining room/kitchen. Our new place is the perfect size for us: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1340 sq ft. and an actual laundry room, not just a closet off the kitchen. Anyway, we are so excited and love our new place. It took us a while to get used to the fact that we don't have to ask anyone for permission to paint or do anything.

I found some pictures of it online. Chris will put them up on a different post so this one doesn't get tooo long. We are almost completely finished moving in, which is nice since I have surgery this Thursday and will be out of commission for 2 weeks. We still need to decorate for Christmas though...

The History of Chris & Cindy, according to Cindy

2007-12-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

Thank you Ginger for this cute little questionnaire

1. Where did you meet your husband?

We met after sacrament meeting in the BYU 136th ward. It was on mother's day because I gave a talk that Sunday, and I had a nasty black eye. I'm amazed he talked to me. :)

2. What was the first thing you said to your husband?

I don't remember, probably thank you, or nice to meet you. He either said he loved my talk, or someone introduced us.

3. Where was your first date?

Well, we saw a movie together, a big group of us, but it wasn't really a date setting so I don't know if that would be considered our first date (we saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), or if it would be when we got horchata's late one night and hung out at the park.

4. Where was your first kiss?

It was in the back yard of this really cool house for sale, overlooking Provo. This was the first time I had ever initiated a first kiss. Poor Chris had to wait for me to get over post mission shell shock. Thank you for being patient honey.

5. Did you have a long or short engagement/courtship?

It was pretty short. We were engaged in May, married in August, but we had met 2 years before. I left on my mission a few months after we became friends and we wrote while I was gone.

6. Where did you get engaged?

We got engaged in Portland (or was it Vancouver), anyway, it was on top of a hill that looked out over the city. It was beautiful, but freezing. I didn't know he was going to propose, I thought we were just hanging out, freezing for fun, so I kept saying how I was ready to go. Poor Chris.

7. Where did you get married?

Mt. Timpanogos Temple in American Fork Utah.

8. How did your reception go?

Perfect! It was in such a beautiful garden, with amazing food, and we had so many friends and family there to enjoy it with.

9. The Honeymoon!

That's a funny story. We went on a cruise to Alaska, and on our fourth day, (it was our stop in Skagway) we missed the boat. Yes, that's right. We watched as our ship sailed away, so we had a wonderful excursion as we made our way back to the boat. We flew on a tiny little plane, slept in an airport, flew on another plane, tried to get into Canada without our passports, got on a ferry and hung out in Victoria. It was actually really fun. I think that little trial was such a great experience for us and a funny story to tell our kids.

Who's turn is it next? YOURS!! I would like to know how all my friends met the love of their life.