Happy 1st Birthday Carson!

I tried posting pictures from Carson's birthday a long time ago, but had such a hard time uploading the photos that I got frustrated and gave up. But, better late than never...

 

Carson turned 1 on December 22nd. Poor kid. With all the excitement of Christmas and the busyness of me going back to work full time we nearly forgot all about his birthday. Good thing he is only 1 and will never remember! I promise to do better next year!

 

We had Vanderveen Christmas that evening so we decided to bring a long birthday cake. He was pretty timid at first about putting his fingers into the cake, but once he got going poor Aunt Laura had chocolate cake all over her house!

 

At 1 years old Carson is starting to become a little bit of an easier child. He is sleeping through the night 6/7 nights a week (he still has the odd night where he wakes up crying and needs a sip of milk). He is fine being left with a babysitter - provided his brother and sister are there. He is standing and walking around furniture (it will still be a couple of months until we're walking unassisted), He is a very funny, goofy and DROOLY child! 

Our Old, New House

I randomly came across these pictures on my computer. I didn't even know I still had them! They are pictures from MLS of our house when we first bought it. A lot of you never got a chance to see our house before we moved in. So you've probably been wondering why a lot of our projects are half done and why our house is the way it is. So here is a look at how it looked when we first bought it, and you will see how far we have come!! (Sorry the pictures are so small).

Kitchen

 

My favorite part of the kitchen was the floor. It was this lovely brown lino with a random square of parkay flooring right smack dab in the middle. The counter tops were in rough shape with scratches everywhere and the walls were pee yellow. It also had a retro globe light hanging over the kitchen table that I swear I smacked my head on 10 times before I finally gave up and took it down.

 

This is the other side of the kitchen. This wall was COVERED in holes from pictures. We ripped the wall out and converted it to an island with more cabinets and counter space. 

Dining Room

Again, I don't know how ANY of these walls are still standing. There were so many nail holes in them. We often joked it would have been easier to hang new drywall than fill and sand all the nail holes. The light again was just BEAUTIFUL and the carpet would have been wonderful to keep under the table to soak up any food spills.

Living Room

Pretty much the only thing I liked about the living room was the bay window. The pink walls and carpet all went.

Our Room

Besides the cat pee filled carpet, and crummy paint color, our room wasn't too bad. I love how big it is and our GIGANTIC closet! (Although we still want to do a built in on one side.) I love, love, love having an ensuite with our own shower. Also, the ensuite has a window that opens, so on hot days we can open that window and the one by the bed and get an awesome breeze going!

 

 

Carson's Room

It took several coats of paint and primer to cover up this green paint! Logan had this room first, but it is now Carson's. It's super tiny!

Katie and Logan's Room

When Logan saw this picture he asked if we could paint the walls blue again. But I'm a mean boring mom and told them all the walls in the house had to match and be the same color.

10.5 Months

During my unmotivated absence from blogging I missed Carson's 9 month post. But now my little Justin Bieber wanna be is now ten and a half months old. He is FINALLY sleeping through the night (hallelujah!) and semi-crawling (he army crawls so fast but just cant seem to get the grasp of actual crawling). He is getting soooo big! He hardly seems like a baby anymore!

 

Especially with the hair cut he got today!! Bye bye Justin Bieber!

Halloween 2012

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. The next post I had wanted to do was about our trip to Phoenix. But I had soooo many good pictures I wanted to post, and it takes sooo long to upload them that I got overwhelmed and thus unmotivated. So I've decided to skip the Phoenix blog. I've already posted them on facebook. For those of you without facebook (cough Mom Wiens) if you want to see them I'll gladly bring them over next time.

 

On to Halloween...

 

As usual, Mark declared "NO MORE PUMPKINS!" And, as usual, we bought one and made him carve it anyways. :)

 

Logan and Katie are super big into Power Ranger Samurai right now. So we carved our pumpkin into the Red Ranger's mask. (Just incase you couldn't tell from our awesome masterpiece haha)

On Tuesday night the Bouwman's had all of our friends over for a pre Halloween party. We wanted to get all the kids together in their customes for a picture .

 

From Left to Right: Cyrus V (dragon), Caiden K (spider), Carter B (tiger), Beckett B (peas), Payton B (monkey), Katie (Pink Power Ranger), Jaden N (dino), Logan (Black Ranger), Carson (bat)

Logan and Katie obviously insisted on being Power Rangers this year. We thought the bat costume was fitting for Carson this year as he only had 2 teeth up top - the "fangs". However, of course a week before Halloween Carson would have to get a 3rd tooth up top - ruining his fangs. But, it was still super cute. Carson only went to a couple of houses this year as it was way too cold. The other two toughed it out and went for blocks. Though we did lose the masks after about 2 houses.

First day of KINDERGARTEN

Ever since his last day of preschool, Logan has been counting down the days until kindergarten. He missed his friends, the crafts and getting away from Katie. He was so excited to start school again! He had his very first day on Thursday - and LOVED it!

 

 

As we were just about to head out the door Auntie Bobby told him to have fun, to which he replied, "We get TWO recesses Auntie Bobby, duh!" And so far it seems recess was his favorite part of school!

 

Logan's closest preschool buddy Theo isn't in the same class this year. I was a little worried that would really upset Logan and put a huge damper on the first couple of days of Kindergarten. But thankfully Logan's Sunday school friend Kaleb is in his class! He found Kaleb first thing in the morning before school even started and didn't even hesitate to leave me and blindly follow his new teacher. (The parents were not allowed to go into the school with the kids at all, which for me was sad as I had hoped to take a lot more pictures, but I see how it would be easier.)

8 Months

 

Carson is now 8 months old. I am proud to report we can now cross one item off of the 7 month wish list - Carson is now sitting on his own. He is a lean, mean, sitting machine. Ok, maybe not lean - he's still pretty chunky. And he's not really mean. In fact, this past week Carson has been soooo very happy! Except for at night.. which bring us to the 2nd item on the wish list - sleeping through the night. These past couple of nights have been brutal. He has been getting up every few hours. AUGH! But, I think he's going through a growth spurt, so he needs some extra little bed time snacks. Hopefully we'll be able to cross this item off the list sooner than later! 

Katie's trip to 'Amont"

At the beginning of the month my mom took Katie to visit The Brandses in Vermont. This was Katie's first trip away by herself with grandma. She was very, very excited. However, once she got there she was very, very shy and somewhat homesick. But thankfully it only lasted 2 days and she was back to her crazy random self.

 

 

On the plane to Montreal - it took them 2 days to get there due to a cancelled flight and full flight loads. Katie did very well on the flight there - she snacked practically the whole way! The flight home was a different story...

 

Hanging out at Auntie Donna's house.



 

Chasing the chickens and pea hens. 



Looking for eggs - Katie loved the eggs and insisted on having eggs every morning for breakfast!

Not wanting to play with Kaya and Keira

And the star of the trip... Rocky! Like Logan, Katie fell in love with Rocky and talked about him non stop when she got home.

Swimming at a lake close to Auntie Donna's house.

Swimming at the pool.

 

Katie came home hopped up on sugar! Grandma let her have her OWN frappacinos!

 

Katie sure is a city slicker. They went and visited Zac's pigs (Zac is my cousin Rachel's fiance) and Katie was not too sure about them.

 

She refused to go into the barns because they were too "stinky" for her. So the only cows she saw were these ones hanging out outside.

7 Months

As usual, this post is a couple days/weeks late. We have just been too busy enjoying the beautiful weather outside! But since its raining today we figured we may as well dress Carson up and take a couple of  "7 month" pictures.

At 7 months Carson is a very happy little boy. He loves to watch his big brother and sister play. He LOVES Duke and squeals whenever Duke comes near him. He is a very LOUD baby now. ESPECIALLY when he's hungry. If you're not shoveling food in fast enough he will let you know! And once he's had enough food and is no longer hungry - he'll let you know by locking his lips shut. This is one of Carson's favorite new looks - he almost always has his lips pursed like this!

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Carson's newest "trick" is rolling ALL the way over. For a while now Carson has been able to roll from his back to his tummy.. but thats it. He would then lie face down in the carpet and scream until someone would come to his rescue. But this week he FINALLY figured out how to roll from his tummy back to his back. And now he's a rolling machine! He rolls all the way across the living room floor until he gets himself stuck under a piece of furniture.

Next on the agenda, sitting up! That or sleeping through the night!

Summer Hockey

Logan received a hockey slip and slide for his birthday from Uncle Louis and Auntie Niki. Sunday was the first time he got to set it up and play with it, and he had a BLAST! We set it up on our front lawn and they played with it all afternoon! Thankfully my cousin Shaylynn was staying with us for the weekend - so she could play in the freezing cold water with Logan rather than us!

It's the perfect combination for Logan - water and hockey!!

 Katie also had a lot of fun with it, although she preferred to play around the outside of the rink.

I could barely get them to sit still long enough to take their pictures!

Even Mark had to get in on the slip and slide action! (Even though the box said NOT for children over the age of 10 - NOT for people over 5 feet tall and NOT for people over 110 pounds.)

Happy 5th Birthday Logan!

It's hard to believe that Logan is already F|I|VE! It feels like just yesterday that I was 3 days over due and camping in Kananaskis. And ever since then Logan has been celebrating his birthday there!

Right now Logan and Katie are big into Madagascar. (Both the first and second movie were on YTV last month, so we now have them saved on our PVR and they watch them frequently. And they absolutely FREAK OUT when they see a preview for Madagascar 3 on TV. Katie tells everyone who will listen "When its in the cheap theatre we get to go see it!") So my Aunt Nancy made Logan this awesome Madagascar cake with whipped cream and oranges inside. (Logan asked for a grand marnier cake, but I thought it would look bad when ordering a grand marnier cake with "Happy 5th Birthday" on it.)

We celebrated his birthday with a bbq with friends after the annual Kananaskis golf tournament.



All of his gifts were so different, but were ALL big hits this year.

And just because every post needs a little bit of Carson cuteness....