A Busy Month!

August was a very busy month for us. Amongst all of the other things we had going, we took a much needed weekend vacation to San Diego. We went to the see the Philadelphia Phillies play the San Diego Padres, went to the San Diego Zoo, went to the beach and had some GREAT food! We got there Friday night and crashed, then we woke up early Saturday morning, had breakfast in the outside corridor of our hotel (the weather was perfect) and then headed off to the zoo. We rode the skyfari at the zoo, that goes over the top of all the animals (Karsten's favorite, she said it made her feel like she was a bird), then we went to the petting zoo area, and lastly we rode the guided bus tour. I highly recommend the bus tour, you get to see 75% of the zoo (which is massive), and you don't have to do all of the walking. At about 2 pm, we left the zoo and went and had lunch at Anthony's Fish Grotto. This restuarant is located right on the San Diego bay, in fact, the back windows of the restaurant are over the water. Sailboats are sailing past and waving while you are eating. The food was amazing, and it was nostalgic for our family. Mom and Dad used to go there every year for their anniversary the first few years they were married. They still had the same salad that my Mom adored, and it was neat to be able to try what I had heard her talk so much about....and she was right, it was GREAT! She sure is missed.

After lunch we went back to our hotel and rested for a little bit, and got ready for the Phillies game. I got lucky enough to have made friends with the Padres disabilities coordinator, and he got all of us field passes on to the field during batting practice=AMAZING! We all had so much fun, smiles all around. We also had amazing seats, the Phillies ended up losing, but we got to meet some of the Phillies players, got some autographs, and had a blast!

Sunday we woke up and went to the beach...but I will save that for another blog!

Last Day of Soccer & Soccer Party

Karsten has officially finished her first soccer season. We all had a lot of fun, and made some new friends. She has decided that she wants to try something new this season, but hopefully she will play again in the future. She really started doing better during her last few games, and came SO close to making a goal in the very last one! After the last game, we had a soccer pool party at the Coach's house. All the kids and parents had a blast! The kids got to get their trophies, and Karsten was THRILLED about that. Also, Karsten and her friend Brianna (who she has known since they were crawling) have always both had cute little builds and long pretty hair, but they even showed up to the party wearing the same swimsuit and they looked just like twins! So cute! Soccer will be missed!

Karsten & Anders

Karsten started dance class again at her old school today. In all the craziness that has been my life the past few months, I accidentally paid for her dance classes twice in June. I just caught the mistake a few days ago, so I was told I could either get the credit or just let her do another month of dance, even though she doesn't attend that preschool anymore. Well, I just decided to let her do the month since we don't have much going on for her in August. So, today was her first day back and she was so excited to see Anders...he is her European boyfriend. They have been claiming to be boyfriend/girlfriend since the beginning of the year. It's very cute. Karsten is a wild women, and though he enjoys her wild ways, she makes him nervous and he has to calm her and try to keep her out of trouble. He will tell her, "Karsten stop! Sit down, you are going to get in trouble!" I took their picture today and noticed that they actually kind of look like brother and sister. Maybe if Steven and I had a boy he would look like that. What do you think? The first pic is the happy couple at the beginning of the year, and the second one is today. So CUTE!

Swimming

Karsten started swim lessons yesterday. She LOVES the people, and I knew she would love the lessons. So yesterday was day 1 and it went GREAT! The teacher says she is a natural and was so brave that she will be easy to train. She jumped in to the instructor while holding her hands, and swam several laps of the pool while just holding onto the instructors fingers. She would put her face in the water and blow bubbles like she told her to. I couldn't have been more proud, and Karsten was very excited to tell Steven when he got home that the teacher said she was "Amazing!" Today was day 2 and she still did very well. She swam several laps again, but this time the teacher let go a couple of times and let her go under. She choked on water and told the teacher that she was done. "I'm done, because sinking is not very fun!" were her exact words. She did however regroup somewhat, but I think she was relieved when her lesson was up. Her buddy Anthony had shown up for his lesson, and she was more than willing to give the pool to him. Later in the day she got to go play with him and his sister at their house. She has a BLAST! When I came to pick her up she started yelling that she didn't want to leave yet, and told me that she needed a big sister. After that we came home and relaxed, it had been a long day. We skipped her nap, and she was snoring in her bed at 7:15. :-)

Mom

Time for a little update. I have been meaning to update for the past week or so, and things have just been really busy. Karsten is finishing up her summer school, starting swim lessons, and my Dad and I have had a lot of running around to do these past couple of months. When I started this blog a month or so ago, I did it with the intention of being able to look back one day and be able to have a record of what was going on in our lives. That being said, these past few months have been some of the hardest of my entire life. Some of the events I would like to forget...though I know that I never will. I told myself when I started this blog that I would just keep it light and mainly focus on Karsten, and while I will probably primarily still stick to that, I also feel the need to note some of the other stuff that has been going on. So...as most of you know, I lost my Mother on May 10th of this year. We are coming up on 3 months without her, and it still hurts just as bad as it did that day. She was my best friend, my daily confidant, one of my greatest sources of laughter....just wonderful. She was only 59 years old, and so vibrant. She was always so happy and full of energy, and through that, she made us all happy. I miss her so very much....words just cannot describe it. Not only was she a wonderful Mom, but a wonderful "Grammy". The best you can get. Karsten loves her so much. She asks daily when she will be an angel so she can fly with her. She has such an innocence about her, and I wish I could better answer her questions. She gets so confused, and I can't blame her...I think we are all still a bit confused. I think of her a million times a day, as I know that I will the rest of my life. I haven't brought all of this up in the past blogs, because, well...to be honest it just hurts too much. But, I want this blog to really reflect what is going on in our lives and in my head and if I didn't mention it, then it just wouldn't be accurate. I love you Mom.

P.S. The tree above was planted in honor of my Mom, a couple of miles from where she was born.

Busy Saturday!

Well...Karsten had her 2nd soccer game today and it went very well. We don't keep score, but we did win. But who's counting? Anyways, Karsten had a better game today. She refrained from chasing dragonflies this time, although she did run off the field one time telling me that a "scary buggy" was chasing her. I think she just wanted a water break. She did get a few kicks on the ball this game, and only laid down on the field once. Oh, I forgot to mention that she went and stood behind the other teams goal and pretended to be a monster....just all of the normal soccer stuff. It's normal right? Anyways, Poppa joined us at the game again. We are always happy when he comes with us. He loves to cheer Karsten on! After the game, we came home and played "musical princess", Karsten is a great musical princess. Steven was the prince, and I was hoping to be the Queen, but I was told to be the carriage driver. That's how it goes sometimes. After lunch we all took a nap together, which was WONDERFUL. I love lazy days! Then, we got up and went swimming and made dinner at Pop's house. Lastly, we went to U-Swirl and created our own ice cream. Karsten was so excited. She said her creation was a "potion ice cream". It had a little bit of everything on it, and she loved it! Enjoy the pics of our day, we were loaned a GREAT new professional camera by Uncle Greg, and we LOVE it! So expect a lot more pics!

First Blog

Ok...So I started this blog after seeing a couple of my friends doing it. It seems to be a good way to document the things going on in our lives and a nice way to keep our family up to date as well. So lets see how it goes. ...

Karsten is now almost 3 1/2 years old. She is so beautiful, smart, and such a mess. She keeps me on my toes, and a smile on my face. She just recently started playing soccer and seems to like it so far. She loves practice because everyone gets to have a ball to kick, but at her first game last week, she got really frustrated when there was only 1 ball and it would get kicked away from her. She took it very personal and ran to Steven yelling, "It looks like they don't want me to kick that ball after all!!!" Anyways, enjoy the pics.