Christmas Cookies

This year is our fifth Christmas as husband and wife, and only the first one where we are actually going to be home on Christmas day. We are sad we aren't going to be with our families on the actual day, but super excited to start our own traditions for our growing family! Some of our family traditions we will be doing this year are going to church this evening, in the morning (after Santa wakes us up) Kristoffer will read to us the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible and after Karter has opened all of his gifts Kristoffer will make us all a "special" breakfast. Who knows what the afternoon will hold for us, but all that matters is that the three of us have the whole day together!

One tradition that I was super excited to start this year with Karter was making cookies for Santa! I made the dough yesterday and this morning after breakfast we started baking. Karter was really excited to wear his apron and help me cut out the cookies.

He was a pretty good helper, but towards the end his patience were running pretty thin so I finished cutting them by myself. He came back to help decorate though, I would ice and he would add sprinkles. (We were both so covered in sugar I couldn't get a picture.)

Once he discovered the cookie dough was edible, it was all downhill from there. Santa is lucky to have any cookies to eat tonight!

Karter also thought playing in the flour was a lot of fun.

The messier the better!

What kind of bakers would we be if we left the cookies out for Santa without taste testing them first?!

Hopefully Santa enjoys our cookies as much as Karter did!

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go clean flour and sugar from my kitchen floor...enjoy these three videos of Karter getting in the Christmas spirit!!

Santa sent Karter an email!

35 Weeks

This week I am 35 weeks pregnant and it is really starting to hit me that Baby K will be here very soon! I just finished up my last bi-weekly appointment and start going weekly when we return from Indiana. The black shirt in the picture helps hide just how HUGE my belly has gotten, I think Baby K is going to be a big boy just like his older brother. It isn't just my thinking either, Dr. TT said "wow, you look so much bigger than you did 2 weeks ago!" as soon as she walked into the room today. What a nice thing to hear! I've gained 3 lbs since my last appointment, taking my total weight gain to 22 lbs, which is actually pretty good. I gained 31lbs total with Karter, so I hopefully I won't gain that 9lbs while in IN next week! To entertain Karter while we waited for the Dr to come in today we put him on the scale and he weighed 27lbs!! The baby's heartbeat was right around 130bpm today and he is a very active little guy most of the time. My belly measured right on track for 35 weeks and at my next appointment I will get an ultrasound to make sure that he is head down. Thankfully everything has been pretty uneventful throughout the pregnancy, and she didn't ask if I had an big travel plans for Christmas...so I didn't tell her about our 12 hour drive this weekend!

On Sunday we tried to take my picture, but Karter is so used to being the one in front of the camera that he insisted on being in them too.

He knows where the baby is and will say baby or boy when you ask him what is in mommy's tummy. He also knows the baby's name, when you ask him where is he will point to my belly. Thankfully he can't say his K's yet, so don't think you are going to get the name out of him!

Karter is a lover and still likes to give the baby smooches!

And give mommy smooches!

After my photo shoot he still wanted to stand by the tree and have his picture taken, I was happy to get back behind the camera anyway!

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

A couple of weeks ago we had a little photo shoot before church. Our goal was to get one good picture of Karter standing in front of the tree and one good one with all of us in it (and everyone looking at the camera). It sounds easy enough, but it took much longer than it should have, in the end we got our pictures and some funny outtakes along the way. We started with Karter by himself, and for this picture we told him to look at the camera and say hi.

For the next picture we told him to say cheese. He thinks say cheese is funny so it made him laugh, but then he put his hands in his mouth.

Karter needed a break after about 10 pictures, so he sat down and we captured this cute one. It was almost a winner...

...but this is Karter's first year being able to stand, so we wanted a picture to highlight his talents! In the end, this one won!

Guess he was done!!

Next up was the group shot, which of course had to include Rascal. While I was messing with the timer on the camera, Kristoffer gave Rascal a little pep talk.

I don't think they were ready.

It was a bad idea on our part to have the pregnant lady try to push the button and then run and sit down...it takes me longer to get up and down than it does Kristoffer! This was the first group shot and as soon as I sat down I realized I forgot to put shoes on!

Kristoffer decided he would take over pushing the button, but wanted a few test shots first. Karter didn't get the memo he was suppose to make the scrunchy face!

Another test shot.

After getting it lined up Kristoffer ran and got into place, and again we told Karter to look at the camera and say hi. Apparently, he can't say hi without waving!

Rascal gets distracted to easily and kept looking away. How did that ornament fall off the tree?

Finally, we are all looking at the camera and kind of smiling! This was the winner for this years Christmas cards, and I'm sure next year it will be even more difficult to get everyone to look at the camera!

Getting Ready

Around our house we are all getting prepared for the new baby to come next month. Mommy and Daddy will be getting Karter's new big boy room set up soon and will start pulling down all of the baby clothes for Baby K. Karter has been getting himself ready by reading one of mommy's books and trying to figure out what all this new baby business is about!

Story Time

It is no secret that Karterman loves to read, but he has a new thing...climbing up onto the couch to lay down and read.

Sometimes he climbs up to flip through one of his own books....

...and sometimes he climbs up to read Daddy's Sports Illustrated.

Reading on the couch started a few weeks ago when I was in so much pain, I just simply couldn't get down on the floor and read anymore. (Nothing serious, just something about being almost 9 months pregnant, sitting on the floor and having a 25+lbs little monkey sitting on my lap kills my back!) He took to the new way of reading books very quickly, and now will climb up and lay down to let you know he is ready to read! And I must admit, I love all the extra snuggle time we get during the day!

Daddy has a slightly different technique, but Karter loves it just the same!

Snow Day

Last week the Frozen Tundra officially frozen! We got our first snow storm of the season and had our first below zero days, exciting times! We got about 8 inches of snow at our house and were excited to take Karter out to play in it. Last Saturday was relatively warm (about 15 degrees) so we bundled up and headed out to play.

We have a slight hill in our backyard that we tried to have Karter slide down, but it didn't work out so well since we don't have a rope on our sled.

Karter didn't mind though, he was fascinated by all the white stuff!

I was trying to juggle the video camera and my actual camera at the same time, so I don't actually have still pictures of the snow angels being made (videos will be posted some time!), but here is Kristoffer's snow angel.

And here is Karter's very first snow angel!! It turned out really good and he was loving flapping his arms!

One thing he wasn't so sure of was walking in the snow. Can you really blame him though, in most parts the snow came up past his knees!

He fell a lot, but didn't mind at all. However, he didn't like all the snow on his gloves, he is kind of a neat freak about things being on his hands.

It was much easier to walk with Daddy's help!

My boys!!!

Daddy is always being silly and making Karter laugh. He thought it was pretty funny when Daddy was eating the snow!

It was much easier to walk on our shoveled drive!

It is definitely winter in Minnesota!

Our town has a very poor planning committee and decided to build a park across the street from us at the end of October. We have only been able to use it a couple of times because the weather has been so cold. Karter saw the slides when we went around to the front of the house, so we walked down and played for awhile.

"Whoa!! I thought you would catch me dad!"

It was a fun afternoon outside, and Karter enjoyed it a little bit better than last year!

"Cookie, Please"

It sounds a little bit more like "tookie, pease", but that is what I every time we go to Target. Super Target is nice enough to offer children a free cookie from the bakery department, you just have to ask. And apparently, Karter has learned how to ask! Occasionally over the past few months I would get him a cookie if we had a lot of shopping to do, to help me occupy him while I shopped. A couple of weeks ago he surprised me though, we were back in the dairy aisle and we turned the corner and he could see the bakery department clear on the other side of the store and he looked up at me, with a huge smile and said "tookie, pease!" As I mentioned yesterday, he adds please to the end of anything just to charm us, and it works! Of course if he is going to ask so nicely I am going to get him a cookie!! He is one smart cookie!