Whirling by

 My blog updating has been lacking lately...sorry! Life just seems to whirl by me sometimes and I can get so caught up in the day to day routine that I forget important things like our blog. A lack of sleep has not been helping either. Carsten is teething again (we think) and therefore has been pretty fussy and waking up some nights for an hour or more at a time. Add that to late nights and early mornings and it makes for a tired set of parents. Things are going great, just busy as we get more in more involved in life here in Canada. Here are some recent pictures of the boys.

Carsten recently learned how to clap!

 

 

 

Rylan loves to ride his horse.

Carsten was desperately trying to get outside where brother was!

Having reading time together before bed.

Being a "helpful" big brother...without being asked!

Potatoes & a sick baby

We have been so fortunate to receive a lot of food donations lately, so we are trying to make the most out of it. Recently we were given lots of apples which I previously mentioned, but we were also given tons of red potatoes and some butternut squash.

Today we spent most of the day peeling, cutting, cooking and freezing the potatoes and squash. We decided to make french fries that are similar to what you buy in a grocery store frozen and then you bake them. Basically you blanch the potatoes in oil for about 4-5 minutes, just until they are barely brown. After that you dry them off and then freeze them. Then when you are ready to use them, you just put them in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. We really don't eat fries very often, but figured we could store some for future use. We are also making up large batches of mashed potatoes and freezing those as well. We cooked the squash up for baby food, which Carsten loves!

We feel so fortunate to have received this food. We are making everything we can think of that uses potatoes so that we can freeze them before they go bad. All that to say we have been busy and I am tired of cutting potatoes!

On another note entirely, I am pretty sure Carsten has an ear infection. He has been fighting a cold the past few days with a fever. Just noticed to day that he seemed to be in pain anytime I got near the one ear. Hopefully we can take care of it quickly. Think of him in the next few days!

Bath time

Carsten loves taking a bath each night!

Rylan will literally stay in there until the water is freezing!

 The other night we gave Carsten a few pieces of banana to see how he would do with it. Well it ended up all over him, so we opted to throw him in the kitchen sink for a quick bath before dinner. Once Carsten was in the sink of course Rylan wanted to be as well, so we filled up the other side and let him take a quick bath as well. He looks huge next to Carsten!

November already

It is amazing how quickly time flies by. It is hard to believe that it is already Temperatures are dropping here and we continue to see little glimpses of what lies ahead...snow and more snow :) We can't wait!

It was lightly snowing this morning when I took Rylan down to preschool. He was so excited. He kept saying, "look mommy there is snow on your jacket." When I told him there was snow on his jacket, he just laughed. When he got into class he ran up to his friend Elroy and said, "Elboy (how he pronounces it) it is snowing outside, Elboy,  you see the snow outside?" They were both giddy about it.

This week has been a busy one. Someone donated several boxes of apples and several bags of potatoes to the school, so we have been processing a bunch of those. With the apples we have made raw apple sauce to freeze for Carsten and we are drying out a bunch of them in a borrowed dehydrator. With the potatoes, we are making a bunch of meals that use potatoes and freezing them for future use. It has been a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it!

Happy Halloween!

I took the boys around where we live tonight for some trick or treating! Jeff stayed at home to hand candy out. They got a lot of candy even though we only went to about 10 houses. One house that we went to the gal said to Rylan, "here is a bag of candy for you, one for your brother and here is one for your mommy." Rylan said to her, "how about one for my daddy too." She said that is a great idea and gave an extra full size snicker bar for Jeff.

Happy Cowboy

Grumpy Cowboy

A little Carstensaurus

A happy little dino

Carsten the stair climber...sort of

 "I learned how to climb up one stair, but then I got stuck there. When mommy told me it was a no-no I laughed and thought I was pretty funny!"

Family fun day

Here is a picture of Rylan and his friend Caleb who stayed with us last weekend! They really had a good time together, especially when I set up the tent and tunnel for them to play in! Carsten loves it too! We put him in there with Rylan and he just giggled like crazy. Their relationship develops more each day and we are excited to see them play together as brothers and friends!

Today was a day off from classes, so we decided it was time for our family to leave the campus and venture out for some fun together. We went up to Owen Sound (about 45 minutes away) to see a few waterfalls. We found the first waterfall, which was not really that amazing, but still fun. We spent time there letting Ry run around and we took some pictures of both boys there.

 Then we went looking for the second waterfall and stumbled upon this really fun park instead. Rylan was so excited to get to play at the park. The weather was perfect today which was awesome! It has been raining almost everyday, but today it was clear skies, gusty winds and about 60 degrees. Not bad at all. It was a very refreshing day, just what we all needed! (We never did find the second waterfall)