Our New Ride!!

Saturday morning we loaded up our car for one last time and went to Burnsville to upgrade to a minivan. When we leased our car 2 1/2 years ago, we didn't expect to out grow it so quickly. So we decided to opt out of our lease early and purchase a minivan. We went a couple weeks ago and looked at the VW Routan and fell in love with it, but didn't want to jump in to anything so we looked around a little bit more. This past Saturday we went to test drive our second choice, the Toyota Sienna, but new as soon as we sat in it we knew that it wasn't for us.

After test driving the Sienna we went back to VW and drove the Routan again. We still felt the same way, so we told our dealer, Steve that we wanted to buy it.

Steve was pretty happy to make a sale! The Volkswagen dealership is actually located where our old Saturn dealership was...kind of ironic to buy our two cars from the same place, but different dealers. (VW has been in Burnsville for 30 years, but just moved into the old Saturn building because it is closer to all the other dealers.)

Here is our new beauty...a 2009 VW Routan!! Our van is a "previously loved" vehicle that we think we got an amazing deal on...it only had 14k miles, power everything and still looks and smells new!

We are really happy about our purchase and love all the room it has.

The gear shift is in an interesting spot and that is taking a bit to get used to.

Karter has already sat in just about every seat, because he thinks it is fun to climb in and climb all over the seats before he gets in his car seat. He really wants to sit in the very back seat!

Including our two test drives in the van, Kaden has fallen asleep every time he has been in it...so apparently he is pretty comfortable with the new ride!

Karter is too!

We are so happy to finally have a vehicle that our whole family (including Rascal) can travel in and be comfortable! In the next few months we will be going camping and traveling to Indiana, Chicago and Kansas City and we can't wait to take the van on a road trip!

This video is pretty ridiculous, but here is a little peak inside of the van...

Totally in Love

I am totally in love...with my hunky husband, our children and our life!! Our little fella, Kaden, just puts me over the top everyday. I mean just look at those big, beautiful blue eyes, they get me every time!

And his little gummy grin! He is such a happy baby, and his gorgeous smile makes a mama's heart melt.

Then there is his chubba-wabba's...I'm a sucker for chubby baby legs!

It is so hard to imagine our life just four and half months ago when Kaden wasn't born yet. He has fit into our lives so perfectly and I couldn't love him more!!

Then there is his older brother, boy is he a character! It's hard to get a good picture of Karter these days because he is always doing something silly...

...like obsessing over Daddy's old watch and acting like his arm is broken all day just to keep the watch on his arm...

...and making our living room look like a disaster area 2 seconds after he wakes up from a nap....

...and saying "read" 1,000 times a day! Despite being silly most of the day, Karter is a sweetheart! He can be very thoughtful and sharing when he wants to be, and he does the sweetest things out of the blue. He gives the best hugs and smoochies!! His brother is the recipient of a lot of his loving!

These boys are the cutest...

But just try and get a picture of the two of them, it is a challenge!

Karter is always trying to hold Kaden's hand...

...or wiggle his toes!

Kaden doesn't seem to mind though!

Even when he falls over!

Talking about being in love, I am so in love with this man! He is an amazing dad, and watching him with our children makes me love him even more!!

Here are a couple of videos of our cutie pies. The first one is of Kaden making a big mess during his bath time, and the second is of Karterman reading to Kaden....Enjoy!

**EDIT** I don't know what is going on with the videos and the boys are waking up, so I don't have time to fix it! If you want to watch the videos, head over to our youtube channel to check them out.

Hotel Stay

A couple of weeks ago when we went to Chicago, we decided that it we would stay in a hotel instead of totally taking over Jake and Joscelynn's house. I think hotels are great...you get to leave your dirty towels laying around and someone else cleans them up, someone else makes your bed, you get to lay in bed and watch TV and most importantly you get to sleep in and not worry about getting up to clean the house. I love staying in hotels....er, make that I loved staying in hotels before we had kids! Sure, someone else still cleaned up our towels and made out beds, but there was no laying in bed watching TV, unless you wanted to watch Mickey Mouse Club, and there definitely wasn't any sleeping in!!

The kids were great though! Karter loved sleeping in his big bed (and thankfully didn't fall out!) and this being Kaden's first hotel stay he slept pretty well. I told Karter that I loved laying in bed watching TV in bed at hotels, so he thought it was funny to lay in bed too.

We are growing up and decided to not stay in the cheapest hotel we could find, and actually stayed in a DoubleTree, which was super nice. Within the first 30 minutes after checking-in, Karter was playing with the remote and Kristoffer said "I think Karter just rented a movie." We couldn't figure out what happened, but when we got our bill and it had a $15 charge, we knew that he had indeed rented a movie. Thankfully, the front desk took pity on us and didn't make us pay for it!

It was a fun experience, but I think we were all happy to get home and not sleep in the same room!

Music Man

As I have mentioned many, MANY times before, Karter loves music, but FINALLY he has started to make some of his own instead of just insisting that we sing all the time. He breaks out into song at totally random times and we think it is so cute. Here he is Saturday morning at breakfast singing his version of "Twinkle, Twinkle".


As you all know, Karterman also loves Elmo, and he has watched Elmo so much that he knows the theme song! Just in case you can't understand him, the words are...."La, la, la, la Elmo's World. Elmo loves his goldfish. His crayon, too. That's Elmo's World."



His musical talent doesn't end with just singing, he also has a future as a drummer. (Notice his drum stick is actually his harmonica.)



He doesn't stop at just drumming. Oh no, he can sing and drum at the same time!

Kaden's First Meal

On Saturday, Kaden had is first meal not all from Mommy! He had his first bowl of rice cereal mixed with breast milk.

He was really excited to eat something new and ate the entire bowl!

He would get so excited and try to grab the spoon and yell at Mommy if she didn't put it in his mouth fast enough!

Just try to feed a baby, your face automatically opens to try and get the baby to open theirs.

Not one to easily give up the spotlight, Karter was trying to get our attention/help Kaden the whole time.

Jumping Bean

Karter is a jumper! Instead of walking around the house, he is usually jumping...jumping around the living room, jumping off his stool, jumping down the stairs, jumping UP the stairs...always jumping!

A few weeks ago our church had a little carnival in the parking lot and of course the jumping house was a huge hit with Karter!

To add to his jumping addiction, a few weeks ago he saw an episode of Elmo all about jumping. So now he usually sings "Jumping, jumping, jumping, jumping" (to the tune of Jingle Bells) while he is jumping!



Here is a little video of our little jumping bean this morning. He is singing his second favorite jumping tune..."hop, hop, bunny rabbit!"

SURPRISE!

This past weekend we traveled down to Chicago for my big brother's surprise birthday party. Joscelynn had been planning this party for months and we were so excited to be apart of it. Some of Jake's friends, us and mom were all gathered in the party room of this super cool Neapolitan pizza place in their neighborhood waiting for them to arrive. It was so fun to see the look on Jake's face when he realized we were all there!! The surprise kind of freaked out Jonah and Karter, but I think Jake was pretty happy!! The food was delicious and what better reason to celebrate than my bub turning 30!

Tiramisu makes a pretty good birthday cake!

Trying to make 2 year olds sit still is VERY hard, Jonah did sit still long enough to help his daddy make a wish, but then...

....it was back to jumping and being silly with Karter and his best bud Nathan (not pictured).

Jonah is so good at smiling for the camera, but he always looks like he is up to something! After I took his picture, he told me to take one of Karter.

Karter's not so good at smiling for the camera, but he is definitely up to something!

We had left home at 2:30am and spent the afternoon at Lincoln Park Zoo, so by the time the party was starting Kaden was so tired. I'm not sure how with all of the noise, but he fell asleep and missed most of the party.

It was a great night celebrating my favorite brother's birthday!!

Happy 4 Months!

Yesterday was Kaden's 4 month birthday! I didn't post about it yesterday, because I wanted to wait until after he went to the doctor today so I would have his latest stats...and boy has he grown!

• Weight - 16lbs 12oz (over a pound more than Karter weighed at this same age) 84th percentile
• Height - 26 1/4 in 90th percentile
• Head Circumference - 17 3/4 in 98 percentile

Kaden continues to be a great eater and sleeper. He is on a pretty good schedule these days eating every 4 hours, taking 3 naps during the day and sleeping 10-11 hours at night. When he is awake during the day he is the happiest little fella and almost always has a smile (and drool) on his face! Kaden is very playful and getting pretty good at grabbing things and bringing them into his mouth. It is so fun to watch him grow and change each day and I am so happy that I am able to stay home with him and Karter to witness all their changes! Happy 4 months!!!

Memorial Day

Our family had a fantastic 3-day weekend! We spent the weekend in Chicago (more on that later this week), but decided to have in impromptu cookout Monday night when we got home. This was Karter's first time around our fire pit and he did great cooking his own hot dogs with Daddy.

Kristoffer put together quite the spread for not having this cookout planned...we had hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob, chips and of course smores!

Kaden was SO happy to be out of the car and really enjoyed hanging out with us outside!

I think he likes being outside!

Karter had a lot of fun eating his dinner on the ground.

After dinner it was time to roast our marshmallows.

Turns out Karter doesn't really like marshmallows toasted, so he just ate them straight out of the package.

When we were over by the fire, Rascal stole our corn cobs and had himself a little picnic!

It was a long day for all of us, but Kaden was a real trooper!

Karter kept stealing drinks when we weren't looking.

We found a little a toad on the ground when we were playing and Karter really wanted to play with it.

Kristoffer tried to get Karter to hold it for probably 5 minutes, but he kept jumping away and Karter wouldn't hold onto him. So the toad on his way to live a happy life!

Our impromptu wiener roast was the perfect end to our perfect 3-day weekend!