Karston 2 month STATS!

( I had a hard time picking just one good picture!)

Now, Karston has been my BIGGEST baby by far! He was 9 lbs 2 oz and birth and 22 inches long, my other two were 7.9 lbs and 7.11 lbs. Karston is in 6-9 months clothes and has been since a little before 2 months old, although, some 3-6 mon stuff do fit him.

His 2 month STATS: (Drumroll please)

14.5 pounds

and

25 inches long

=

95%ile!!!!!!!!

Stetson 3 Year Stats!

What a big boy Stetson has gotten to be! On August 23rd, we went in for his 3 year checkup and he did so good! He is:

36.5 inches tall

and

30.4 pounds

So he is still in the 25th %ile but at least he STAYED there and didn't go down! Keep growing little monkey! (He really is a little climbing monkey, we need to get him into some gymnastics or something to get all that energy out!)

Below are just some pictures of the late gift he got from Grandma Jan in the mail!! What a fun surprise! He was very excited as you can see from the first picture!

Baby Blessing on 8/21/11

My Sweet little Karston Dallas was blessed on Sunday, August 21st, 2011 by his wonderful father. We were blessed to have some fun visitors for the occasion!







Happy family of FIVE!!


Papa Alex and Grandma Debby with ALL the Grandkids!



Uncle Robert and Aunt Lexi with their girls and baby Karston


Proud Papa!

Proud BIG Brothers!


Sweet Baby, I pray that you will live up to your potiential that you have been blessed with!

Bunches of pictures from the PARTY!

Stetson blew out the candles before we could even sing Happy Birthday!

Birthday Party Prep!

Baking the cake.

FIRST: Let me just say, if you ever need to make a cake in a pinch but don't have a cake mix check on the back of your Hershey's Cocoa box, there is an awesome recipie for "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake and "Perfectly Chocolate" Frosting and they are oh so yummy! The cake is really moist and the frosting is to chocolatey!!

SECOND: When you plan on making a double layer cake like this with the rounds MAKE SURE you grease them up good and flour really good or else you will have to make another batch of cake like I did!! One of my first Rounds I did came out in a couple pieces!

THIRD: That cream in the middle is Vanilla pudding. It's pretty tasty, but I don't know that I will make a cake like that again. I just think the cake devoured the taste of the pudding, almost as if it weren't even there.

moving on...

FOURTH: Creating the DECOR... Can you tell what it's going to be? If anyone reading this has any tips for creating structures with better frosting I am all ears. I used a Royal frosting recipe that had 4 egg whites, 4 cups powdered sugar and a little cream of tartar, but as you can see in the picture below, the frosting was "leaking" down in between the oreos.

Let me tell you the bulid up of this contraption though. There is one full graham cracker on the bottom for some stability, then 2 HUGE marshmellows on top of that with a cut wooden kabob stick holding them together. On the 2 marshmellows is another full graham cracker. (by the way: in between all the layers is a little bit of the frosting to hold it all together) Then, as you can see in the picture, 3 HUGE marshmellows held together with another kabob stick, I think after that I put the oreos on to keep the thing stable. And I really had to GOB the frosting on the oreos to get them to stick onto the marshmellows, partly because they weren't clear to the edge or the graham cracker. Then I "glued" two half graham crackers to the sides and one on top. Then make cake round that fell apart came in handy for the curved structure at the top!

Of course, the boys got to enjoy "helping" me make the cake too!


What a CUTE face!?

Baby Karston was just chillin'



And the finished product!... technically: I added some red frosting around where the cake was separating on the side because of the pudding in the middle.

Frosting this sucker was probably the most diffucult part. That frosting was too runny if I didn't add more sugar after adding the food coloring. For his chimney, I guess you call it?, I used 3 mini chareston chews and I'm sure you've figured out the red stuff is licorice, I used twizzlers. Also I had to stick a kabob stick on each side and the back to stablize it on the cake.

(The mess of black frosting and twizzlers in the front was a mistake, pretty much just made it up as I went. Phil said it was a nice railroad track. ;)
Bet you didn't guess it was going to be Thomas!

Birthday Boy!

On his very special day he got to go play at the McBride's home while Mom and Dad went out to get him a present! Are we such procrastinators or what?!

He got to open some mail from Grandmas and Grandpas!

Stetson is such a fun little guy to be around. He loves to play with trains of any sort. He will even line random things up on the table and say, "Look, Mom, train!" He plays with the baby toys that hook together and calls that his train.

He's got a great imagination, and he is teaching Preston to have one too. He pretends to have some kind of food, let's say, ice cream and he shares it with Preston and so Preston takes a bite of it from his hand. Stetson is slowly but surely learning how to share with his brother. Although he has had his cars taken away before because he refuses to share. It's tough learning the hard way!

Stetson is a bugger to go to bed for Mom. He likes to keep company until he falls asleep but, Mom can't do that all the time. A lot of the times though, he will just hang out on his bed staring at the ceiling until he finally falls asleep.

He's talking a whole lot. He is at the stage where he wants to show us everything, and if we don't look right away he will keep repeating himself until we do look. He also finds bugs in the house and either A: says hurry mom, look look, bug... get it! or B: runs from it says, 'Save me! Save me!'

Stetson is one little character. We are working on getting to know more friends and getting out to play with them more or having them come over. Stetson definitely loves having friends!

Trying to Catch up!

It's like he knows he's cute or something? Preston is 17 months here.

Funny combination: Chocolate on face and now ready for oranges. But look at that oh so happy face! (Just about 3 years old here!)

I think Karston was 7 weeks here.


He is in his cute 3 month outfit given to us from the Relief Society presidency, too bad he is too big for it now!!



Dad interacting with "baby Karston" as Stetson would say. He actually almost laughed!! It was so cute! Still about 7 Weeks here.


Stetson just loves his baby brother. He told me one time that "baby Karston" was his baby and that Preston was Mom's baby.

Swimming!

FUN in David and Stacy's pool!

Preston is obsessed with holding the ball.

Stetson loves jumping into the water!

Aunt Donna and Drew, he is a fantasic swimmer for a 2 year old, by the way.

Little Cousin DREW... soo cute!