Christmas in Indiana: Part I - Time with Great Grandpa & Great Grandma

We are back home in the very Frozen Tundra from our Christmas vacation in Indiana. We left super early on the 26th, but later found out that it didn't really matter that we left early, we were still going to get to Indiana later than expected! The roads in MN weren't that clear so we drove 30-40 mph for the first 2 hours of the trip. This actually turned out to be a huge blessing since about 10 minutes outside of Rochester we were stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire. After unloading the whole back end to get the jack and tools out of the car Kristoffer quickly got to work, only to find out that the tire was frozen to the side of the car and it wouldn't budge! One phone call to 911, one tow truck, one hour and 50 bucks later we were back on the road for thankfully a very uneventful rest of the drive. (Sorry, no pictures of that whole ordeal, for some reason Kristoffer didn't think it was appropriate for me to take a picture of the guy helping change our tire!)

My Grandma rescheduled our family's Christmas party for the 26th so that we could make it to celebrate with everyone. So, after stopping by mom's for an hour to quickly change, we were back in the car again headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's. It is so amazing to watch my grandparents (especially my Grandpa) interact with Jonah and Karter....they just love those boys! Grandpa collects antique Oliver tractors, and for Christmas he got all of the boys (including Baby K) Oliver T-shirts!

On Monday after a delicious lunch at The Beef House, Kristoffer and I took Karter back over to Grandpa and Grandma's house so he could play on their footstool a little more!

He absolutely loved climbing up and then falling down to get a laugh out of us. He is such a ham!

Just look at that mischievous look!

Grandma also taught him a new trick...doing somersaults.

He couldn't get enough of them!

After playing inside, we bundled up and headed out to the tool shed so Grandpa could show off the latest tractor to be refinished. I believe that this tractor was bought new in 1971 and they used it to farm with for many many years, and this fall Uncle Matt and Ryan refinished it. It looks great!

Karter (and Daddy) thought it was pretty cool to play in the cab!

My grandparents are such special people to me, and I loved watching them play with Karter that day!

Christmas Morning

On Christmas morning Santa woke us up around 6:30am. After we were woken up we went to see if Karter heard Santa, and sure enough he had! He jumped up as soon as we opened the door and pointed to the hall and said "ho, ho, ho!" We got him out of his bed and he ran to the tree!

He (and Rascal) were pretty excited to see all the packages that were not there when he went to bed!

Before we opened any gifts, Kristoffer read us the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible. Karter was curled up in my lap drinking his milk and totally listening to every word Kristoffer was reading!

Then it was on to the presents! Karter was so into ripping all of the paper off, but was pretty neat with it and handed us each piece he tore off.

He wasted no time going from one present to the next....

...except of course when he opened up an Elmo book! He had to open it and point to every Elmo before moving on.

And of course his Elmo slippers had to go on right away!

He had such concentration when he was opening each one!

Karter posing with all of the gifts Santa left for him!

More presents from mom and dad! We are more patient than Santa and added pretty ribbons to our packages when we were wrapping them. Before each one Karter would hand it to one of us and say "PEASE", wanting us to take the ribbon off so he could rip into it!

After all of the packages were opened, Kristoffer made us a delicious breakfast. For the rest of the day we watched Christmas movies, baked goodies for our trip to Indiana, watched the snow fall, played with all of Karter's new toys and enjoyed spending the day at home just the 3 of us! It was such a special holiday for our family, and hopefully you all had a very Merry CHRISTmas!

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!