Pictureless October

I almost always have my camera in my purse. But somehow this month I have forgotten it over and over again. It's been a pretty fun month though. I LOVE fall! I love the beautiful colors and the sound of leaves crunching when you walk, and I'm almost always ready for sweater weather by the time October comes around.

And we've gotten to do quite a few fun things this year. We went to Sever's Corn Maze for the first time a few weeks ago. That place is awesome! We did not give ourselves nearly enough time to enjoy it all. Lesson learned. We will not have plans for later the same day next year. They have a huge (I mean HUGE) corn pool to play in. Tyler sort of love/hated it. It's so deep that it was really hard for him to walk in so he would get a little frustrated. But he loved jumping in the corn and running around the hay bales that surrounded it. There were also a lot of animals, which Tyler of course loved. And the bird room. I am completely freaked out by birds, so I waited outside. But Carl and Tyler loved being surrounded by creepy birds flying everywhere. There is so much to do there that we didn't have nearly enough time to do everything we wanted, but it was a lot of fun!

The next weekend my brother, Jacob, and his wife, Laura came to visit. While they were here we went to Como Zoo. We go to the MN Zoo fairly often, but we never go to Como. They have totally different animals, so it was a fun change. And at the end we all rode on the carousel. Tyler had a blast all day that ended blissfully with Chipotle (his favorite!) on the way home. That was a couple weeks ago and he still keeps talking about Laura. Sorry Jacob. He might talk about you, but since he says your name differently every time, I really don't know.  :-)

We also got to go to Tyler's friend's first birthday party. And we've had some fun weekends in the leaves at home! I actually took pictures in the leaves, so I'll put those up later. :-)

Tyler is growing like a crazy dude. Seriously. He's getting so grown up! I realize that I have a new favorite everytime I write on here. But this is adorable. He loves reading his Bible and lately he goes in and gets it off the shelf or he just askes for it. He calls it his Bye-bee. So cute. So we've been reading lots of "bye-bee" stories everyday. The amazing part is that he actually sits through them now. They're kind of long so he used to lose interest and look at other books while we read to him. Now he asks for it and usually sits through the whole story. I love it!

And here are a few random pictures, just because.

 A little blurry, but proof that my son is a complete goofball.

 

So excited to paint!!!

Why waste your time painting one paper at a time when you have two hands?

Whoever came up with a playdough tool set is a genius. Genius, I tell you.

Reading in his pile of puppies.

The Big 18

My baby is a year and a half old now! He was 18 months on Wednesday and I cannot believe it. It's craziness.

So in honor of his half birthday, here's a little Tyler update.

Top 10 words that come to mind when I think of Tyler:
     - Energetic                                    
     - Fearless                             
     - Hilarious                                
     - Sweet
     - Talkative
     - Loving
     - Cheeseball
     - Adventurous
     - Active
     - Happy

Currently he's in his room (where he's been for an hour) making silly noises, squealing, laughing, singing and talking non-stop instead of napping. I decided to take him out for a special lunch since we had a very crazy morning and he was soooo good and oh-so-deserving of a fun treat. So we went to Wendy's and had a Frosty for dessert. Note to self: Never give Tyler ice cream before nap time. I'm not sure sleep is anywhere in his near future. Oops.

Tyler talks all the time. He rarely stops, actually. Fortunately Carl and I are almost fluent (but not quite) in Tylernese. Surprisingly few others are. :-) Here are a few of the things that make us laugh:
  
If he sees a picture of my sister or hears her name he starts barking. (His way of talking about her  dog)

He introduces "Mommy" and "Daddy" to every single person we see anywhere. Ever.

At Target the other day the cashier was talking to him. He's usually very friendly when we're checking out, but this time he was ignoring her. Finally, when she just kept talking to him he looked right at her, shook his finger and slowly said, "No, no, no."

He points one finger in the air after anything he thinks is fun, funny or delicious and says "One more!"

He also says "One more" to ask permission to do something again. Usually when he thinks he's being funny. Ok, he's right, he usually is being funny.

He fearlessly climbs things that he's much too little to be climbing and then looks down and says, "Mommy, careful." But if we ask if he's being careful he always says no. At least he's looking out for someone's safety - I guess that's a start.

Carl rarely does this, but occassionaly he's taken his phone out during dinner and Tyler shakes his finger and tells him "No, no, no." I'll admit, I'm pretty proud of teaching him that one. :-)

One of his most commonly used phrases is, "Good to go!"

If he sees or hears a baby, he has a pretty realistic (and loud) fake baby cry. Yes, I'm the person with the crying child in my shopping cart all the time, but it's almost never real! He's always copying some one else.

He heard me say "Carl!" once and ever since he thinks it hilarious to call him Carl instead of Daddy.

The only time Tyler gets to watch TV is for the few minutes it takes me to cut his nails every week and a half or so. So when I tell him or ask him if he wants to cut his fingernails, he takes off running to the stairs yelling, "Vee vee!" Who knew getting nails cut could be so exciting? :-)

Tyler has been singing The B-I-B-L-E song lately. It just doesn't get sweeter than hearing his little voice singing, "E i e i e, Buh buh!" as throws his little arms up in the air. :-)

I was not really a fan of this game - all I could think about was Tyler's little head hitting the floor. But they were having such a blast that I took a picture before I stopped all their fun. And in Carl's defense, they were barely moving and I was standing right by Tyler the whole time.

Fun at the library!

At Applebee's a few weeks ago - This is his "I can't believe they just gave me sugar!" happy face.

We just love this boy. :-)

More of the Dells

These are just a few more pictures of Tyler enjoying his time in the Dells. He could totally handle living at The Wilderness hotel. :-)

"Cheese!"

First time bowling!

The Hagen boys

Taking after Uncle Jeff and Uncle Jacob on the drums!

Tyler said "One more" every time he saw one of these carts. He loved riding on them!

Feeding the Deer

I'm a little behind here (again) and I blame it on a week full of house showings and another week with company. It's been a fun, but busy couple of weeks!

Two weeks ago we went to the Dells for another fun weekend, this time with Carl's brother Matt, his wife Janelle, and some of thier cousins. For Tyler it was another action packed weekend and he loved every minute of it. We got there earlier than most of them on Friday so Matt and Janelle (or Na and Nina, as Tyler calls them) suggested going to a deer park. I had seen it from the road before - it doesn't actually look all that exciting when you're driving by, but we knew Tyler would love any sort of petting zoo. Turns out it's awesome. Tyler had one of the best afternoons of his life, I'm pretty sure. There are just deer everywhere! Wandering all over the place. We bought food at the beginning. Matt and Janelle had been there before so they knew to stock up on the food! The does and fawns were just walking around and we could pet and feed them easily. We could still feed the bucks, but they were fenced in.

Tyler loves animals, but I thought he might be at least a little nervous. Nope. I was quite wrong. He was completely, 100% fearless. Unlike me. If you've seen me around dogs then you can imagine how I would respond to deer sticking their faces up to me looking for food. I did not touch or feed a single one. I just handed Tyler more food and let him do it for me.

For some reason, this white deer loved Tyler. Tyler did not love it back. It kept following him around and Tyler would look at it and say, "NO!" and then go give the food to a different one everytime. He was actually very selective about who he wanted to feed.

Tyler called the deer food crackers. And if a deer came up to him while he was empty handed he would always look over at us and ask for a cracker right away. It was pretty cute.

He only tried to eat the deer food a couple times. I'm sure he thought they looked like graham crackers. But he learned quickly that it was a lot more fun to feed the deer than eat it himself.

They were getting a little greedy towards the end!

That night Tyler woke up and had a hard time falling back asleep. After he finally closed his eyes and I thought he was asleep, I jokingly (and very quietly) told Carl he was probably dreaming about hundreds of deer chasing him down for food. Tyler immediately sat straight up in bed and said, "Cracker!" And then he was wide awake ready to talk about the deer!

It's been two weeks and we can still ask him what he fed the deer and he tells us and everytime he sees pictures of deer or anything that might look even a little like a deer he starts talking about crackers. He. Loved. That. Day.

My Mini Master Chef

The hardest part of Tyler's day has almost always been when I'm making dinner. He knows it's almost time to eat, he can see the food and he's waiting for Daddy to get home after a long day. Tough stuff.

But suddenly, it's become his favorite time of day. And mine too! I. Love. This. Age.

It started a couple weeks ago when I was cutting a watermelon when he woke up from his nap and he wanted to be near me. So we pulled a chair up to the island and he helped. And by helped I mean he ate it as fast as I could cut it.

Since that day everytime I start cooking, he comes running, pushes a chair up to the island and climbs up to help. He loves every part of it. From washing his hands, to helping pour things in, to stirring, and especially eating. He has snatched carrots, onions, basil, parsley, chocolate chips, and raw corn on the cob to chew on while I work.

He worked really hard to husk that corn. And he was so proud.

Since he's been loving this so much I decided we needed to have a baking day on Monday. I found this amazing looking recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie Sandwhiches and I was in love. But I've heard a lot lately that it's as bad to eat raw flour as it is to eat raw eggs. And as it turns out, I'm SUPER paranoid about making my family sick. Which is really annoying because I love cookie dough. So anyway, I spent way too much of Tyler's nap trying to find out if there was any way I could cook flour enough to make it safe in cookie dough. And I found nothing. So I decided to just make the brownie cookie part. Until I realized it called for SO MUCH cocoa powder that my over half full container wasn't enough.

So we made up our own recipe. And it was fantastic.

 So excited to get started!

 

 "What is this stuff and why won't you let me eat it?!"

 

 "Yummy!"

 

 Right? Isn't this how we all feel about mini chocolate chips? Bliss.

 

And this is what we call a good day.



Fire Day!

Today Carl was going fishing with some friends from work. After all the extra time he's had to put in at work lately, it was nice that he could get a relaxing day away. But that meant Tyler and I had a free Saturday and no plans. 

Then I remembered that I had seen a sign for the fire department house. Yay!

So we headed over there. Tyler got to sit in two firetrucks and a helicopter and spray a fire hose! And we got free lunch. He had lots of fun! Although I had a really hard time getting good pictures. He was loving it, but a little apprehensive about doing things by himself. So everytime I tried to step back to take a picture the smiles stopped.

These are the best I have.

He really did help spray the cute little house. But he was done as soon as I got the camera out. He said "Daddy" over and over again while he was spraying it because he always helps Carl water the plants outside our house. Everytime we've talked about the big fire hose today he says "Ssssss." Like the water spraying. :-)

Driving a fire truck!

Cute little firefighter

First time in a helicopter!

This was after the elastic on his fire hat snapped his chin. He was a little done with pictures after that. I just love the look on his face in this picture! He looks like he's disgusted with me. But I think it's with pictures. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. :-)

Loving his chips!



Carl is a little jealous that he missed this awesome day.

Afterwards we came home for a quick nap before a house showing. Carl got done just as we were leaving the house for the showing, so he met us at Caribou. Tyler has never played here before, but he loved it! We were there for an hour, but I think he would have stayed much longer.

Now I'm just wondering why he never plays in one place this long at our house!

State Fair

We've been going to the State Fair for at least four years. I can't really remember. But we always look forward to it now. We can't wait for the day each summer when we can pay money to go to the Fair and pay more money for ridiculously expensive and greasy, but equally delicious food. But this year was the first time that Carl took off work and we went on a Tuesday instead of a Saturday. Best. Idea. Ever. I can't believe we haven't done that before. We went with some great friends right away in the morning so that our kids could still get home for naps in the afternoon. Instead of a hot afternoon, it was nice and cool. Instead of constantly trying to maneuver through huge crowds of sweaty people, there were no crowds. And instead of waiting in huge lines for fried food, we could just walk right up and get it. It was amazing.

Last year Tyler was much too little to appreciate it. But this year he loved every minute.

First fried cheese curd! He was a fan.

The boys + Brooke

The girls + Tyler

If we hadn't had to pay for this I think Tyler would have done it all day. He kept saying "Weeeeee" and pointing at it and actually started to cry when we walked away.

There's nothing like State Fair corn on the cob. It's a good thing we got Tyler his own. He ate almost the whole thing!

Tyler also got to see horses and cows and lots of baby animals. He saw the carousel and started pointing at it and getting excited. Is it possible that he remembered riding on one in Colorado in June? But we managed to get by it. We knew he would be distracted by the delicious corn. Maybe next year, Tyler. :-)