Carsen at 18 months

Where do I begin on what Carsen is doing these days.......Everything! That should start it :) He is such a blessing in our lives and a joy to have in our home. He is just the sweetest little boy and has a way of making you smile all the time!! I love this little man so much, It is hard to believe but I love him more every day! It is crazy to me that just when I think there is no way to love him any more than I already do he learns something new and I love how he does those new things too!

Carsen has been growing like a weed these days... His newest stats are:
Height: 33 inches ~ 71 %
Weight: 27.5 lbs ~ 72%

I always think that I need to write more of the things tha he does and says down but I get to busy and forget. So, I will try to put most of what I can think of right now and then I am sure I will have some other things trickle in on my other posts to come.

He always wants to be part of everthing that is going on. Our stake had a valentine's dance that we went to and Carsen thought that it was great and that everyone was there just to watch him dance and cheer him on. He even got his little friend Makyla to dance with him. So funny! His dancing is more like squats and jumps but so dang cute. He will go "round in a circle" and pivot on one foot, cracks me up!
He is saying so many words that I would be here writing all night. He will repeat ANYTHING you say!! He is so silly! He says most everything really fast, probably my fault ;) He also says "it's a" before a lot of things. :)

Some of his words and new words are:
~Hungee (Hungry)
~Backet ball (basket ball)
~sucker
~Shaew (share) which he usually yells it!
~arseel (Cereal)
~ahsee (sorry)
~tanku (thank you- he says it so fast it crack me up)
~hoop
~shoot
~Oh shoot! (my fault again!)
~Big Ball
~Big truck
~Buzz (for is buzz lightyear ride on toy)
~HAPPY (love this!!)
~Banoon (Balloon)
~Jesus
~Buzzah (Bunny chocolate milk)
~Peety (pretty)
~Woahm (warm)
~ Pop poke (popcorn)
~Hot gog (hot dog)
~Side (outside)
~OOOH, side (slide)
~wing (swing)
~Hug
~ump (jump)
~Snow! He yells it!! Not much for volume control :)
~teet (treat)
~star
~boodoo (the letter W)
~Moon (He loves to call for the moon, it is so cute!! He started doing that when we were outside at 2 and 3 in the morning trying to help his croup)
~Nainey (Laini)
~Ama (Grandma)
~boppa (Grandpa)
~Bubba (Brinsen)
~Way (away)
~Color, color color ( he loves to color with his bath tub crayons and then he will wash it off with a cloth and say clean clean clean!)
~Ephant (Elephant)
~MerKat (MeerKat)
~Neen (Green)
~Coool (cool)
~doos (shoes)
~Lizard
~Ahfoo (Flower)
~Temple
~Oh no
~Paz (Spaz)
~tomp (stomp)
~eck (egg)
~toat (toast)
~Vitamin
~Booo (Blue)
~Elmo
~Big bird
~Cookie
~Pidow (Pillow)
~Bert
~Opit (Open)
~Heart
~Nahngle (Triangle
~buh bye
~Whoa
~edo (yellow)
~Turtle
~Pider (Spider)
~help
~did it
~Sippy
~chicken
~play
~all done
~more
~seeba (Zebra)
~raff (Giraffe)
~snuggle
~thanks
~Scout
~seat
~cheese
~Watoo (Water)
~Binky
~Anin (Again)
~One more (he uses this for everything even if he rally wants 5 more!!)
~ Nice shot!
~Batoo (Vacuum) He is obsessed with the vacuum!!!

Some of the things Carsen LOVES these days:

~He loves to get out and run. He is getting so fast.
~He loves to be outside, cries at the door to be outside all the time
~He always asks for your hand when he goes down stairs now
~He LOVES letters and has known his alphabet since he was about 17 months old. He will look for letters everywhere we go and search to find them till he sees them and yells them out!! so funny!!
~He is so sweet to give hugs and squeezes and kisses!! He gives the picture of Jesus in his room and love and a head butt every night before bed.
~He loves his daddy. As soon as we get into the church he yells DA DAAA and has to go up say hi to him every Sunday up on the stand! Thank goodness we live in a really patient and sweet ward! He also likes to communicate with Keith by blinking hard at him during church and Keith will blink back. Pretty cute!
~He loves Maci!! Maci is such a sweet girl and he just loves his cousin so much that every little girls that we see he yells MACI, in hopes that it is her!!
~He loves animals and could look at and play with them all day long!
~He loves to sing and do actions to his favorite songs: Itsy bitsy spider, If you're happy and you know it, Head shoulders knees and toes, Ring around the rosies and of course the Meerkat
~He loves books, it is so cute to find him sitting up in his chair with a book on his lap.
~He loves to learn new things.
~He loves to go see family and will run up to them and give hugs! I love it!
~ He LOVES to vacuum!! He could vacuum 5 times a day and be so happy!!!
~He LOVES Any kind of Ball! He especially loves basket ball! funny because he has never seen anyone play really!

We love you bug a boo!! Thanks for making our lives so much fun!

Pictures by: Melissa Rackham (my sister) Isn't she great!! Thanks Miss!!!

Hardware Ranch!

We went with some good friends (thanks Tim and Brandi) up to Hardware Ranch the first Saturday in February. It was really cloudy and the inversion was awful down in Logan and then we drove right up the canyon and out of the yuck and into such a beautiful day!! It was so much fun! We saw about 300-400 elk! This is a place where hundreds of wild elk hang out in the winter. You can go on a sleigh ride through the field and be just hundreds of feet away from a TON of elk. Carsen thought it was awesome! He loved seeing the horses that were pulling us.
It was also Carsen's real first time getting to play in the snow and he sort of liked it :)

Story Time

January is one of my least favorite months.....School starts again, the holidays are over and it is just plain cold and yucky outside! We didn't do much, just tried to keep busy and not get too stir crazy.
A friend told us about and invited us to this cute little library story time. (Thanks Allison) They do it Tues, Wed, Thurs mornings. The lady who does it is so sweet and she always has an activity like coloring after and a little treat. Carsen loves it, he loves to sit on the little colored pillows....well for maybe a minute because you know how long he likes to sit still! ha ha!! His very favorite part is to "color, color, color!" He loves to look at the books. He is such a book boy. He doesn't like the long ones because he can't sit still for very long but I guess I shouldn't expect anything else :)
We try to make it to story time about once a week, and have a play group, mom and kids institute or some other activity during the week. It is so nice to have these fun little things that break up the long winter days. It is fun to have Carsen this age where he is learning and enjoying so much!! What a sweet boy he is!! love you bug!!!


Woo Hoo!! I am into the new year!! yay!!

Christmas Eve and Christmas

We don't have many pictures of Christmas eve or day really, we were so caught up in cleaning up puke and other accidents and doing laundry from said accidents because Carsen had an ear infection and some other bug we think and he was pretty sick. poor boy!! We ended up at the Dr. office on Christmas eve morning to find out that he had an ear infection. He seemed to be doing better by the afternoon so we decided that it would be OK for him to go to grandma and grandpa's for the annual Christmas eve fun of making reindeer food and cookies for Santa and his reindeer. It is so cute and I took some pics of the cousins and the kids doing their fun little crafts, but they were all on my mom's camera and I will have to get them later. It was rally good for Carsen to get out of the house and be around family that he didn't even seem sick at all!!
We all had a great time and came back home for the night and put our reindeer food and cookies out! Carsen loved shaking it all over the front porch! So cute!!
Also, on a little side note, Santa usually counts noses on Christmas eve morning but since Carsen was so sick that morning with fever and everything else we decided to let Santa know that it would be better if he could count Carsen's nose on Christmas morning.






After a long night of fevers and big messes and jammie changes tubbies and medicine..... Santa Came!!!!! yay!!
He did come and he counted all our noses! I guess we were all good and poor little Carsen was such a good sport through everything being sick that he definitely deserved presents from Santa. (Counting noses is when Santa comes and marks your nose with soot on Christmas eve morning if you have been good all year so to let you know that he will be coming the next night to bring you presents....such a cute little tradition that Keith grew up with!! Love it!!)
We did the tradition that I have grown up with that my parents put a sheet up to cover the doorway to the room with the tree and presents. It was really fun and so fun to have Carsen understanding it all a little more this year. He obviously wasn't feeling great so it took a little coaxing to get him to pull the sheet off but he did good and we didn't do many pics that morning just a little video since it seemed that between every present that he opened we had to clean up puke or change a bum and jammies. Poor little guy was such a good sport and just wanted to lay down so we drug Christmas way out and just hung out most of the day and then went to visit family later. We stayed down with family and did Keith's family's Christmas the next day. Despite it all, it was still a really great Christmas and we enjoyed spending time with family and all together. So glad that he got better by new years!!

Meeting Santa!

Just a few days before Christmas we realized that Carsen hadn't gone to meet Santa and tell him what he would like, so we went to the mall and he sat on his lap and said "hi" and got a "Treat" aka candy cane from Santa. He actually did pretty well but didn't want to hang out there for more than about a minute! At least I got a picture!! First time meeting Santa.....Success!!!!

Our little Family trip 2010

Every winter since we have had Carsen we have gone down to Salt Lake City and stayed over at a hotel for the night so we can enjoy our time down there and not worry about rushing back after we take Carsen to see the lights. We have decided that this is going to be a family tradition for us tha we will go and spend a night in SLC as a family and just have fun spending time together and going to see fun things and the lights.
When we went last year Carsen was only 5 months old and didn't really understand much about the lights other than just staring at them, but this year I think he really enjoyed them and kept saying oooohhhhh. It was really bitter cold so we bundled all up and got to use Carsen's wonderful so warm bundle me thingy for the stroller!! It is amazing how warm he stayed :) I was a little worried. (I'm sure you can tell by how this poor little guy was so bundled up. He actually fell asleep after a little while he was just so warm and cozy :) what a sweetie!!
Before we went to see the lights we went out to dinner at the olive garden, it was pretty funny to see everyone's reactions as to why we had our little guy with us. It is definitely more work to take him with us, but I just really wanted to have this family tradition and enjoy the time together and just being a family.
We had such a great time and were able to have Doug and Luke come with us to see the lights, they were beautiful as always, and we went to the different visitors centers. We also were able to see the huge new model of the Salt Lake Temple. It was awesome, I have been wanting to see it for so long. I have grown up going to these places and have loved them, but somehow there is a new love for these places as I show my child what is important to me and why I love these places so much and to let him start to grow a love for them as well. It is so sweet and pure to watch a child look at the temple and to feel the spirit and to see a glimpse through their eyes!

The next day we walked around some more and then rode trax and went to the Gateway to do a build a bear for Carsen for Christmas. It was a lot of fun. I took a bunch of pictures but we forgot our camera at home and had to go buy disposable ones, the quality of the pictures is awful!! so sad. Oh well at least I have some pictures of our little vacation :)

The Gateway had their water squirter feature thingy (ha ha...I don't know what to call it!) going to the beats of Christmas music. Carsen LOVED it!! He just kept giggling and saying "ball, ball, ball!" I'm pretty sure that he could have watched it all day long.
We had such a nice time and can't wait for our next family vacation!

All bundled up
cute cousins
pretty Temple with lights
In front of the reflecting pond

Jumping on the hotel bid. He was in heaven!

He thought the dog was real :)
Loving the water show!!

Just picked his bear...
giving it to the sweet girl to stuff it...
Pushing the pedal to stuff his cute bear...
Picking a heart for the bear...
giving the heart a kiss before putting it in the bear... (so sweet!!)
Giving the bear a heart :)....
fluffing the bear...He didn't like this part much, the air was scary ;)

He picked a santa hat for the bear and then we went to name him. It is such a cute little process! When we sat down to name the bear I asked him what he wanted to name his bear and he said "GRRR!" Cutest thing EVER!!! So we named him Grrr and printed out the bear birth certificate and he has slept with him every night since. He gets into his bed every night and says GRRR and Grrr's hat! And he now loves him so much that he will share his binky's with grrr! Love it!! :)

Thanksgiving weekend

Slowly but surly I am finally getting caught up! I totally forgot to take my camera to our family's thanksgivings. I was pretty bummed but I thought I would write down a little about how our weekend went so we could remember it. We got to have our first Thanksgiving on the actual day with my family at my mom and dad's house. It was so nice and relaxed and my parents even gave us the sweet gift of watching Carsen for us while we went to a movie. :) We hadn't gone to a movie without him since I was 8 months pregnant with him. It was so fun to go out on a date with my sweet hubby! Thanks mom and dad! we love you!!

The next day we decided to put our Christmas decorations up. We had a blast doing it and since we didn't put up quite as much this year since it is way more crowded with toys and things around :) We put it up during Carsen's nap and he was so excited when he woke up to Christmas decorations. He LOVED the tree and the lights and every time he saw them he would saw "OOOOOOHHHH!" So cute!! He loved the little snowman that we have that sits next to the tree and every morning he would go and sit next to him and ask to have the lights to the tree plugged in so he could oooohhh and ahhhhh at them. I just love watching him get so excited about all the new little things that he sees and learns!
It got so cold that weekend that we had about and inch of ice on the inside of our windows and we thought it was picture worthy. Crazy cold Logan!! Something that I never thought that I would hear myself say but even though it is almost always colder up here. I actually really like Logan!! Crazy huh! ;)




Then on the Saturday right after Thanksgiving we went down to Sandy to Keith's grandparents to have their family's dinner. It was really fun there as well. We really enjoyed spreading the weekend out and getting to spend so much time with family. And so much good food!!! Thanks so much! We love you all.

Keith's Birthday at the Fun Park!!

I have been looking back at birthday pictures of Keith's birthdays and I realized that I have made him the exact same cake for the last 5 years! Ha ha, I guess he likes it :) We celebrated his birthday this last year by having dinner and cake with our friends and then going over to the Cache Valley Fun park. I was really surprised at how fun that place is and totally free for kids 18 months and under and adults to get in...perfect! We played on the big indoor playground and then we played a few of the arcade games. We will need to go back sometime soon to play laser tag, to bowl and go roller skating. Carsen loved going down the slide with his daddy and climbing through the tubes. I think his very favorite part of the night was the arcade game that you push a big blinking button and a bunch of bouncy balls fall and they bounce around until they go into the little slots that tell you how many tickets you get. It was so much fun to watch him laugh so hard! He was also loving the duck punch game, skeeball game and the Basketball game (which he is obsessed with right now!) He didn't really care about the tickets that he won until he realized that he got suckers from turning them in!! He is such a sugar junky like his daddy :) whatever makes them happy, right?!? ;)
The cake
singing happy birthday daddy
enjoying his piece of the cake

cute kiddos
love that smile

Monkey crawling


going down the slide with daddy
skee ball :)
What could be better than blinking lights, a big button to push and balls!!

Carsen was in heaven with this game and had so much fun!

so cute :)

We have since gone back to the park about 5 times and he loves it every time and especially when Maci is with him :) He LOVES Maci. He thinks that every little girl that we see is Maci and asks for her all the time. She is so sweet to him. He loves his cousins, it is so cute to watch him with them :)