Daddy's Shadow

Karsten is quite the daddy's boy - he is usually right next to Scott whenever possible. When we get home from work and Scott is cooking dinner, Karsten always helps him cook. Scott was grilling something the other night and Karsten was disappointed that he didn't get to go outside and help (becuase he LOVES to go outside and gets quite angry when he can't). He was slightly more happy when he realized he could look out the window and see "Daa-dee". It was so cute!

New Books!

One of Scott's coworkers got Karsten several of the "That's not my _____" books for our baby shower. They are some of Karsten's favorite books - he's especially fond of "That's not my train". Scott recently told her how much he loves those books and told her thanks again for such a great gift. When he got to school a few days later, there were three new books in his mailbox! How sweet and nice was that? What an unexpected surprise!

As soon as Scott got home with the books, we read the new books. Thanks so much Brandi - Karsten loves the books!

Catching up with old friends

My friend Jacque hosted a BBQ on Saturday night for a bunch of friends from high school. We were all in band together and I hadn't seen many of them for years! It was great to see everyone and catch up!

Karsten had a great time playing with all of the kids. When Jen and family arrived, Eden ran up to Karsten and gave him a big hug - I wish I could have gotten my camera out more quickly because I totally missed it!

Little Elam slept the entire time snuggled up with his daddy.


Karsten was fast friends with Larissa's daughter, Emily. Too bad he's not looking at the camera too!


When all of the kids were playing outside, they discovered if they 'fell down' and said 'Boom' Karsten would giggle and giggle. They did it over and over again and he kept giggling which made them giggle even more!


Eden and Jacque's daughter had a great time playing together.


Jacque has this HUGE black dog that's part greyhound and part black lab. The dog is super sweet and great with the kids, but it's still a puppy so it has A LOT of energy. It ran around and around the house and Karsten was terrified of it. When the dog ran past him he clenched his little fists and started to shake until the dog was past him.


After that first time he saw the dog, he stuck close to us when the dog was around.


Scott and Karsten were sitting on the stairs watching the dog - I love the look on Karsten's face and his little finger making it look like he's trying to figure out why that dog is so much bigger than Madison.

Old Settlers!

Every year for as long as I can remember, we would go to the Old Settlers Festival. When I was in school, I was usually marching in the parade with the band - after I graduated, we would go back and hear the band play and walk around the carnival. No matter what we did, we had to have a grange pup - it's tradition! We were worried our plans would get rained out, but luckily the rain held off for a while!

Karsten seemed to enjoy his first grange pup - he ate the whole thing!


After we walked around for a while, we decided to head back to the car because it was UBER humid outside. As we walked through the carnival rides, we saw Kenna, Scott, Hadley and Seville. They were having fun at the carnival with Kelly and her family!

Seville was talking to Karsten and Allie.


How ADORABLE is this? We parked Allie and Karsten's stroller next to each other and we were standing there chatting. We look down and they were holding hands.


Karsten was watching Hadley ride the spinning ride.


When we got home, we asked Karsten if he wanted his vitamin. He went right over to the cabinet where we keep the vitamins and pointed to it. Yay Karsten!


A happy boy - he enjoyed Old Settlers! A great start to a good weekend!

A visit from Elam!

The other night Jen, David, Eden and Elam came over for dinner and to hang out for the evening. Karsten and Eden had fun playing and Elam seemed to enjoy the playmat - at least it kept him happy while we ate!



After dinner we went to the park to play. Karsten's favorite part was the slide - we tried to put him on the swing after a few times on the slide, but he was having none of that. He was only interested in the slide.


Weeeee - he loved it when Scott caught him at the end.


That looks like a sleepy boy.


Eden was serving Jen dinner. I don't remember how much she said everything cost, but she had very exact numbers that Jen was supposed to pay.


Then Karsten realized he could go down the slide on his tummy. Check out the static in his hair - it was standing straight up each time he went down the slide.


After he went down the slide on his tummy, he decided he wanted to climb back up the slide. He can do this on the little slide in our backyard, but didn't have much luck climbing this big slide.


Eden had fun on the swings!


Then we wanted to get a picture of Eden and Karsten. This was about as good as we got - you can actually see both of their faces, so I will consider that a win. :)


He sat at the top of the slide and gave Jen this huge grin!


Then Scott got to go down the slide with Karsten. I'm not sure Karsten was happy about sharing the slide.


Karsten wasn't too happy to leave the playground, so we decided to swing him between us. He loved it and giggled each time we swung him into the air. Our camera had trouble capturing the picture since it was getting dark and we were moving, but I still like this picture.


Shortly after this picture was taken, Karsten was walking with us toward the car and he totally wiped out. Face first into the concrete and it made a horrible sound. He immediately started screaming and I grabbed him and checked to see if he was bleeding. Luckily he wasn't bleeding, his teeth were fine, looked like he would just have a big bruise. He calmed down after a few minutes, but it started to develop quite a bump. I checked him several times after he went to bed, and he was doing ok. I think it scared me more than it actually hurt him. Guess I'll need to get used to scrapes and bruises - there are likely a lot of them in our future.

Cooking at Grandma's

We went over to my parents house last weekend for the last peach pie of the season. :( When we got there, Karsten got to see the new toy Grandma got him. He is totally into stiring things and 'cooking' so he thought this was SO cool.

'cooking' his food

From Each Day Something New

He was having so much fun with the pot that he brought it into kitchen while we were getting ready for lunch.




Then he needed to find a different toy so Grandma helped him dig a few out of his toybox.


Talking all about the toys - he had lots to say.

Meeting the Polar Bear

Saaturday was just too nice to not spend it outside, so we went to the zoo. We were excited to see the polar bear exhibit that opened this summer. We had grand plans of getting everything ready to roll so we could leave as soon as Karsten woke up and had breakfast on Saturday morning. Hahahaha - he woke up around 7:15a and we left for the zoo around 10:30a. In our defense, he was getting kind of crabby around 9, so we put him down for a quick nap while we got showered and ready.

Since it was later than we had planned, we stopped and picked up Goodcents sandwiches for a picnic at the zoo.



Before we headed out to visit the animals, I thought Karsten might like to wear his shades to keep the sun out of his eyes. Boy, was I wrong - he QUICKLY took them off as soon as I put them on.


The polar bear exhibit was nice - we only saw one polar bear, we think that's all there was. We went in what may have been the back way, but we still got to see the polar bear swimming his laps and Karsten kept laughing at the water, although I'm not sure he actually saw much.



Then off we went to see the other animals. Karsten was pointing at this little buddha statue, I think he liked it was right at his eye level.


Then we saw some birds - I think they were hornbill somethings - they were hopping around on the branches and pushing each other out of the way. Karsten was fixated on them - couldn't take his eyes off of them! When we said, time to go see the next animal he started to cry! We thought he was attached to the birds - we quickly learned that he didn't like to leave any of the animals, he cried each time we left one of the animals to walk to the next area.


His next favorite animals were these little guys...




Then we made it to Australia and were greeted by this guy. All of his friends were sleeping in the shade, but he was staring at all of the people who stopped to stare at him.



Look mom - there's an animal out there.


Next we walked through an area with sheep that you could feed. The machines were out of feed so we couldn't buy any, but that didn't stop this big sheep from walking right up to Karsten and sniffing him. Karsten was watching the sheep and being curious about them - then this big sheep walked up to him and he was DONE. He wanted to be rescued from his stroller and no amount of consoling or petting the sheep would do.




Then he was finally happy once Scott picked him up.


Next we saw some camels - notice that he hasn't made it back into his stroller yet. That darn sheep really spooked him.


Having a great day at the zoo!


After we saw a few more animals, including some deer and a pig, we thought it would be cute to take Karsten's picture on this cute elephant. Karsten had other ideas and they didn't include having his picture taken on an elephant. After this, we decided it was definetely time to head home so Karsten could have a nap.