Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Hodge Podge

Just a few random pictures from last night.

Karsten fell off his bike a while back and ever since then, he hasn't wanted to ride his bike.  We've tried a bunch of different ways to encourage him to give it a try, but the best motivation was that my dad got a bike and told Karsten he needed to practice so they could ride together.  Suddenly, Karsten was willing to give his bike a try.

We think he gets scared when his bike shifts from side to side between the training wheels.  After going back and forth a few times, he started to trust that he wasn't going to fall over.


Pretty proud of himself for riding his bike.  Now if we could get him to ride outside of the garage. :)


While Karsten rode his bike, Liam mowed the lawn.  Very helpful to Scott.  :)


Getting the trash to the curb is hard work!

Monday, May 27, 2013

Garden Update

Our garden continues to grow.  So far we've enjoyed baby spinach and strawberries.  Our strawberries don't rival the strawberries at the strawberry patch, but they were pretty tasty.

Our snap peas, tomatoes and squash continue to grow - hopefully we'll have a good harvest of them in a few months!


Sunday, May 26, 2013

Summer Fun

Hose fights are a great part of summer.  Scott used to say that he wouldn't water in the backyard when Madison was around because she will get soaked - well, that list has expanded to include Liam.  As soon as Liam sees the sprinkler, he runs toward it.


Excuse his hodpodge outfit - he's sporting his PJ bottoms with a tshirt.  A perfect naptime outfit.

Once Liam was wet, he realized it could be fun to get Karsten wet as well.


Let the games begin...


Casually watering the grass before he flings water at Karsten.


It was impossible not to laugh while listening to him giggle.


We love summer!




A few action shots...




Soaked!


When it was Karsten's turn to play with the hose, there were lots of screeches of protest from Liam.


But then Karsten started to spray Liam and he was happy again.  What a fun evening!

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Strawberry Picking

I'd seen several people post on Facebook about strawberry picking, and we had so much fun at apple and blueberry picking, this seemed like a lot of fun.  We decided between two local berry patches then headed out on Saturday morning.  We had gotten a tip that it was best to get there early, so we arrived around 9am.

They showed us which row to pick in and we got started.  We showed the boys how to pick them, choosing only the red strawberries, they were doing great until the gal in the next row asked Karsten if he had eaten one yet.  Once he realized he could EAT the strawberries, he ate one, put one in his basket, ate two, one in basket, and so on.

Searching for the perfect red strawberry


Yummm, the first taste. The strawberries were so juicy which gave him sticky fingers.


Can I eat this one mom?
 

These are tasty!


So many strawberries to choose from!


Liam did a good job of finding the red strawberries; however, he grabbed them with a bit too much force and had strawberry mush in his hands on more than one occasion.


Still eating strawberries while we picked.




When Liam got bored with picking, he thought he should try to carry the box we had picked.  Thankfully we thwarted this.


After a while, we tried to stop Liam from picking (aka squashing) strawberries.  We would hand him the berries we picked and he would put them in the box for us.  This worked for a while until he started throwing the strawberries into the box.


Notice the small number of berries in the bucket.  I bet there are more in his tummy than in the bucket!


After 20-30 minutes of picking, we have a full bucket and box of strawberries.  We should have stopped earlier; however, we kept spotting yummy looking strawberries that we couldn't resist.


Then Liam discovered how tasty the strawberries were.  Check out that strawberry juice!


I'd say strawberry picking is a hit.


Pretty sure we'll be back next year.


Liam liked the strawberries so much that he would pop the entire thing into his mount - the top and all.  Silly boy!


We were all covered in strawberry juice when we left.




A fun morning strawberry picking!


I thought I could get a few cute pictures if I bribed the boys with more strawberries. I'll let you be the judge of the success of that plan.








We ended up picking 19 lbs of strawberries.  Looks like I need to find a lot of strawberry recipes!

Friday, May 24, 2013

Comedy of Errors

Yesterday was an adventure. I was on a conference call and my cell phone rang - it was Gail.  That's never a good sign, usually it means someone is sick.  I put my call on hold and answered my cell.  Gail said that Karsten was ok but a shape sorter bucket had been thrown and hit him in the lip.  His lip had a good size cut but seemed to have stopped bleeding.  She said she didn't think he needed stitches, but I decided to go see and check it out.

On the way I called the doctor to find out how I would know if his lip needed stitches.  The nurse was kind enough to call me back when I got to Gail's so I could describe how his lip looked.  We (the nurse, Gail and me) decided that he didn't need stitches since it was no longer bleeding.  After eating lunch and having a second Popsicle, he was feeling better - a good sign!  



When I picked the boys up, I was in a hurry because we wanted to get out to the Royal's game so we had time to tailgate.  For some reason, I handed Liam my keys while I was buckling him into the car.  I buckled him in, shut his door and went over to put Karsten in the car when I realized the car door was locked.

I got that horrible sinking feeling you get when you know something is wrong.  I ran over to Liam's side and he was happily pushing the lock button on my keys over and over again.  I tried (unsuccessfully) to get him to push the button right next to lock, in the hopes that he could unlock the car.  All the while, Karsten is saying 'what's wrong Mommy?' and 'why does Liam have your keys' or 'How are we going to get home'.  SIGH.  I eventually came to the realization that Scott needed to bring the spare set of keys so we could get into the car.  I ran up to Gail's front door to borrow her phone and call Scott.  Unfortunately, he was outside watering plants and didn't hear the phone.  DOUBLE SIGH.  I ran back outside and tried the doors again - shockingly, they were open.  Liam had pushed the correct button!

We got loaded into the car and headed home to get ready for the game.  While we rushed around getting ready, Liam decided he wanted a drink of water, so he grabbed Karsten's glass and as he tried to take a drink, dumped the entire glass of water on himself and the floor.   We got that mess cleaned up, changed his clothes and hit the road.

We stopped a liquor store for tailgating supplies (and because it had been that kind of day) then really hit the road. After hitting horrible traffic and missing our exit to the stadium, we finally made it to the game.

We got to the stadium, set up our chairs, got the boys situated and went to open our drinks.  No bottle opener!  JEEZ!  Luckily this was an easy problem to solve in a parking lot full of people tailgating.  Success.

The entire afternoon was really a comedy of errors - at least we were able to laugh about it!

Thursday, May 23, 2013

A night at the K

Tonight we headed out to Kauffman Stadium to enjoy a Royals game.  While the Royals started the season (And pre-season) strong, they were currently on a downward slide - perhaps we could bring them some luck!  We were worried it would be a hot evening; however, it was quite the opposite.  We brought hoodies for the boys and wished we had brought jackets for ourselves!

We tailgated in the parking lot for a while before the game.  The boys were excited that we brought their little chairs, but there were so many things to watch that they had a hard time focusing to eat.


The people in the car next to us were nice enough to take this picture.  They got a kick out of the boys - they were nurses at Children's Mercy so they seemed to love kids.


Game time!  The Royals played the Angels.


Unfortunately, the Royals weren't playing very well!


We were in the last row of our section which was perfect because I didn't have to worry about what the people behind us thought of what the boys were doing or if the boys were bothering them.  This also gave the boys a chance to watch people when they got bored of watching the game.


Taking pictures also provided entertainment. :)  Karsten was having a great time!




Two of my favorite guys!
 

Unfortunately, we didn't bring good luck to the Royals, because they lost to the Angels. Despite their loss, we had a great night at the K.