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....

In my CD player...

One of the things that I love about my "new" car (I still call it new even though we've had it for over a year and a half) is the fact that it has a working radio and, get this - a CD player. Not just any CD player, a 6 disc CD/DVD player. What a HUUUUUUGE difference from my jeep! Now I have a choice in what to listen to while in the car. Here's what I am currently listening to...

1. WOW Hits 2012
When I listen to the radio I usually listen to Shine. This CD has a lot of my current favorite songs on it - like Lead Me by Sanctus Real and I Will Follow by Chris Tomlin. The one thing I can't stand about Shine is Stephanie Nicole's annoying voice - the way she talks just drives me bonkers! This way with the CD I get to listen to all my favorite songs, with no annoying djs!

2. Carly Rae Jepsen's Curiosity.
I thought about quickly ejecting this CD and replacing it with something less embarrassing. But you've got to admit that Call Me Maybe is EXTREMELY catchy! It reminds me of something my friends and I would have listened to in high school and belted out at the top of our lungs driving around in Jackie's car. To be honest, I couldn't sing you a single line from any of the other 5 songs on the CD. We only listen to Call Me Maybe over and over and over again. Logan and Katie LOVE it! They're actually the ones who begged me to buy the CD (honest!).

3. Paul Brandt's This Time Around
A throw back to my country days. I used to ONLY listen to country music (and not just because AM1060 was the only station my jeep could get). But now that I have all these different options I no longer find myself choosing country as my first option. But after seeing Paul Brandt preform at the grandstand show last week I am finding my love of country music being restored. Paul used to be one of my favorite country singers (mainly because when I was younger he put on a private concert for the Kids Cancer Care Foundation so we got to meet him and get his autograph.)

4. Praise - Where Kids Get Down and Lift God High
Logan and Katie brought this CD home from VBS a couple weeks ago. We showed up to VBS early one evening to pick them up and found all the kids at the front of the sanctuary singing and dancing like crazy to this CD. Both Logan and Katie were up on the stage (with Aunt Geraldine) bouncing around like crazy. Katie loves the Sunday School Swing song and Mark and Logan LOVE I'll Do My Best.

5. Veggie Tale's Josh and the Big Wall
Ok, so it's not a CD. But this movie is always in my car's CD/DVD player. This movie was given to our family as a gift from my Uncle Jerry and Auntie Geraldine as it was Connor's favorite movie. The kids and I now know it by heart. Logan's favorite line "We were in slavery!"

6. Laura Story's Blessings
I love, love, love her song Blessings. I really didn't think much of it the first couple of times I heard it on Shine, but when Carson was in ICU back in January this song was constantly on my mind. I would randomly wake up in the middle of the night singing it and played it for Carson from my phone probably twice a day. It was a real source of comfort and reminded me that God is with us through the good times AND bad.

There you have it. That is what I am currently listening to. The list would probably be a lot different if Mark never drove my car and had no say in what CDs I bought :)

Sulphur Mountain

My mom is always looking for a hiking buddy. She loves to go out to the mountains and go on hikes - but the rest of us aren't as enthusiastic. However, she may have just found a new hiking buddy... Logan!

Today she and Logan went out to Banff and hiked Sulphur Mountain. I did some research to see what the web had to say about the hike.. it's 5.5 km. Elevation gain is 742 metres. Hike Alberta categorizes it as a Strenuous hike and says it should take anywhere between 2-5 hours.

It took Logan and my mom 3 hours from bottom to top with very little complaining. 

Logan loved his first hike. And apparently he did awesome. He was by far the youngest hiker there (the next youngest was 9 years old). Everyone they passed was in shock by how little/young he was and what a great job he was doing. There - that's the end of my little brag session.

He did make grandma stop and take a break to throw rocks in the waterfall for a while though. And they also had to stop for a snowball fight! (It's funny, Logan was just talking yesterday about how he was excited to make snowballs in the winter).

Once they reached the top they settled down for a picnic lunch and enjoyed the views from 7,402 feet. Logan decided to share his cheesies with an overly friendly chipmunk.

My mom had found coupons for a free ride down the mountain in the gondola. (I don't think Logan could have hiked back down!) Logan was yelling out the window to all the hikers down below: "You can do it! I did it! So can you!"

Once they got back down the mountain Logan burned off the last of his energy by playing with his new slingshot grandma bought him.

Stampede 2012

In the past Mark and I haven't done much Stampede-wise. But this year we seem to have really gotten into the spirit of things. We kicked off the week with an awesome pancake breakfast at the Museum of the Regiments (thank you Randell Hahn and the Investor's Group). Everyone enjoyed the food immensely.

Chatting with the clown over breakfast.

We found Randell over at the cotton candy station where he gave Katie the LARGEST cotton candy and one major sugar high! 

Logan enjoyed playing the games...

... while Katie got her face painted.

And then on Saturday morning we joined Robyn at the Bowness Stampede Parade.

The kids had a riot and enjoyed all the free candy that was chucked their way.

Then that afternoon we headed down to the Stampede grounds for the first time in almost 10 years. For Christmas my parents had given us tickets to the rodeo and chuck wagons/grandstand show. It was HOT during the rodeo! 

The bulls were getting their fair share of payback today! One trapped a rodeo clown in the barrel and proceeded to knock him around the entire field.

In between the rodeo and the chucks we walked around the Stampede grounds. We played a few games of wack-a-mole on the midway and filled up on traditional stampede food.

We had a lot of fun at the chucks trying to predict winners. Robyn and I's theory of selecting wagon's by their driver's good looks didn't quite pan out though.

For me though, the highlight of the day was seeing Paul Brandt perform in the grandstand show. Actually, the entire grandstand show was just amazing. The fireworks this year rival the ones at Disney. I would DEFINITELY recommend trying to get tickets to see it!

Thank you so so so much to Mom and Dad Wiens for watching Carson for us, and to Louis and Niki for watching the other two hooligans!

Canada Day Weekend

We had an EXCELLENT July long weekend this year. As usual, we spent it out at my family's acreage near Water Valley. Now it ain't called WATER Valley for nothing - it can rain a LOT. However, this weekend we had AWESOME weather the entire time! Logan and his friends spent a fair amount of time swimming in the pond and running around half naked.

We enjoyed camp fires every evening. On Sunday night we had a giant bonfire and fire works to celebrate Canada Day.

We also celebrated my parents' 30th Wedding anniversary this weekend. 

Katie and Kelsey - BFF's forever.



Carson pretty much hung out all weekend - literally.