Allen, Kersten, and Connor

A new Connor-ism

Kersten — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:50:14 +0000

Day 2 of being a better blogger. So far so good!! We have had a fairly quiet weekend - just enjoying being inside our cozy house while it is cold and rainy outside. While we were doing laundry yesterday, Connor came into our room and said “Well hi guys. I have a question for you. What do you want for Christmas?”. Haha!!! He asked us that question about 50 times throughout the day. When we asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he thoughtfully responded that he would like pizza.
Enough for now, time to get back to playing trains.

My little cutie!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Kersten — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:12:11 +0000

My resolution for 2011 is to be a more frequent blogger. I think it is a great way to document the happenings of our life and to keep a history of all the cute and funny things that Connor does.

We had a very busy and fun fall. We went to Corpus Christi for a weekend to spend some time at the beach with Connor. Unfortunately, there was a hurricane off the coast so the weather was terrible! But we found lots of indoor activities and had a great time. We even managed to sneak in some beach time between rain storms.

Burying our feet in the sand

Exporing the CC Aquarium

Connor also turned 2 this fall!! He is so proud to be a 2 year old. He tells me “I’m 2. I’m a big boy.” He had the best time at his brithday party. We rented a bounce house and had a Mickey Mouse themed party. He LOVED the bounce house. In fact, he is still asking about it. He was completely excited about his birthday cake and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and he loved all his presents.

Connor's birthday party at school

Jumping in the bounce house

Enjoying the singing of 'Happy Birthday'!

Cake is GOOD!

Excited about opening presents with his friend, Sophia

This fall, we also welcomed Abigail Kathryn to our family. She was born a little early on Oct 2 and is a sweet, healthy little girl. We headed up to Mansfield to meet her.

Aunt Mimi and Abby

Halloween was lots of fun. There was a Halloween party at Connor’s school and he class did a little performance (ok, mostly the teachers performed and the kids watched them) — it was precious! We had a block party and got to meet lots of our new neighbors. Then, Connor and Allen went trick-or-treating and I stayed home to give out candy. Connor wasn’t so sure about trick-or-treating….at least until he went to the first house and realized he got candy! He was IN! He made Allen take him back out 3 different times. It was great!!!

Connor's class preparing for their performance (Connor is Mickey Mouse)

Our pumpkin (Are you sensing a theme??)

Our little Mickey Mouse

November was fun. My nephew, Jordan, spent a weekend with us. Connor and Jordan had so much fun together.

We had a lovely Christmas in Arlington with the Halls. We went to the ‘Ice’ show at the Gaylord Texan hotel. With 4 kids, Christmas morning was obviously exciting and a bit crazy! Connor was so excited about his first few presents that he didn’t even get around to opening more than half his gifts until after we got home.

Working on our gingerbread house

Connor was so proud of his gingerbread house -- he decorated the whole thing by himself

Our whole family at Connor's preschool party

Connor and Santa

The Hall/Kos family at Ice

Sometimes they grow up right before your eyes

Kersten — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:27:38 +0000

Sometimes I am amazed to watch Connor grow up right before my eyes. On Friday, we pulled out his new training potty. My goal was just to introduce the potty to him and for him to start seeing it at out house. As soon as we put it together, he asked to sit on the potty. So I let him ….diaper and all. He spent quite some time sitting on the potty and then getting off, closing the lid and repeat. Then I asked him if he wanted to pee pee on the potty (diaper still on) and he said yes. He sat down on the potty and was visibly concentrating on peeing. A little later, when we needed to do a diaper change, I asked him if he would like to sit on the potty without his diaper. He was excited! He sat down and went pee pee. I was just amazed and so proud — so was he!! Connor tried several more times to use the potty. Wow. I didn’t think we were even remotely ready for potty training but maybe I was wrong. Growing up so fast!

Some other fun tidbits from our weekend — we’ve been letting Connor practice using a real cup to drink from instead of a sippy cup. When he is very careful with is cup (whether or not he spills), we tend to tell him he is doing a good job. So Saturday morning, as Allen was drinking his OJ, Connor said ‘Good job Daddy’ — ha!!

When Connor leaves a room that I am in, he says ‘bye bye I love you’ Such a sweet boy!!

Less than 2 weeks til our little guy is 2!!!

And now an ear infection

Kersten — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 03:32:24 +0000

Mother’s instinct. I should ALWAYS listen to it. Connor has been fighting a cold all week and I kept telling myself he would get over it even though I knew in my gut that he wasn’t getting better. His eyes just told me that he still felt miserable. I should have listened to my gut (and Connor’s eyes). This afternoon, after he cried all morning and seemed to feel no better after nap, we took him to Urgent Care. Turns out my baby has a pretty nasty ear infection. That explanins the low-grade fever he’s had for the past several days and the screaming in the middle of the night. I’m so glad we decided to take him to the doctor and get some antibiotics. Hopefully, he’ll feel better tomorrow and we can still enjoy our weekend.

Preschool

Kersten — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:48:53 +0000

Connor started preschool on Aug 23. He goes to a school that is very close to our new house and is wonderful. We spent a couple weeks before school started doing some practice runs where we would spend a couple of hours at school. He even had lunch with the class. HOwever, during all of our practice runs, I was very close by. So, when the first day of real school came, he was quite unhappy that I left. When I picked him up that afternoon, I could tell that he had cried most of the day. And to be honest, I had spent a good deal of the day crying as well. But by day 2, he did much better.

But with preschool comes germs! The next Monday, Connor had a pretty nasty cold AND pink eye! Yuck!! So he has missed the whole 2nd week of school due to pink eye and fever. I’m just hoping that he is well enough to go back to school next week.

Here are some pictures from his first school morning (you can tell that he is crazy about going - ha!)

I don't wanna go to school!!!

Come on guys....no more pictures!

Connor’s latest saying is ‘what dat’ and ‘who dat’. He will point to everything (including me!) and say ‘what dat?’ Of course, when I tell him he will simply say ‘yeah’ like he was testing me and I got the answer right. Haha!! Connor is definitely going to be a Why kid!!!

New house!

Kersten — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:18:27 +0000

For the past 7-8 months, we have been busy building a new house and selling our old house. Thank goodness it’s all over now! We moved into our new house about a month ago and have been busy unpacking and getting settled in. After a lot of drama including two separate buyers and lots of delays, we closed on our old house about a week ago. It definitely feels good to only have 1 mortgage!!!

We are loving our new house. It is MUCH larger than our old house so we have lots of room to grow. Our front yard is relatively flat and we live on a cul-de-sac so there will be lots of playing outside.

Some pics of our new house:

Lot clearing

Our new house!

the backyard

Fancy new kitchen

My boys

It’s been too long

Kersten — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:00:12 +0000

Well, it has been just too long since I have done a blog post. To say things have been busy would be an understatement. So what have we been up to?? Our little boy is growing, growing, growing! I can’t believe he’ll be 2 in a month. He is very active — loves to jump, play on the playground and RUN! He is also very smart (I know, I’m biased). He already knows almost all the letters of the alphabet, can count to 10 and is putting together phrases. Just today he said ‘Daddy come upstairs please’. He is very good with his manners - saying please and thank you. He also says ‘Bless you’ when someone sneezes. Some pics of our growing boy:

Running at Zilker Kite Festival

Playing in the backyard

Coloring Easter eggs with Mommy

Helping Daddy with yardwork

Riding on a truck

Sweet, sweet boy

Relaxin' after an afternoon at the pool

Learning to drive already???

Just playing

Fun at Sea World

Visting Connor's 1st bedroom for the last time

Jump!!!

Snow Day!!

Kersten — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:37:28 +0000

We had snow yesterday. Real, falling from the sky, sticks to the ground snow!! (About 2 inches of snow) It started snowing first thing in the morning and continued all day. It was so pretty and fun to play in. We got out and had a little snowball fight and built Connor a snowman.

Our house in the snow

The pond near our house

So excited to be outside in the snow

Snowball fight!!!!

Allen and the Snowman

Connor checking out his 'noman'

What is this stuff???

In other news… We are continuing to move forward with our new house. We have several design appts this week to pick out everything for the house. It’s a very exciting part of the process.

Our old house has been on the market for a few weeks and we’ve has several lookers. Still waiting for the perfect buyer.

Time to catch up

Kersten — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:13:22 +0000

Yikes! Been awhile since I last posted an update. There have been a lot of fun and exciting things happening in our life. So, we’ll back up a few months. I went back to work at the beginning of November. I work 20 hours per week and my wonderful mom keeps Connor when I’m at the office. It is definitely a whole new challenge to get everything done but I’m finding it really helps to be organized. Of course, having an amazing husband like Allen makes everything better.

We had a fun Thanksgiving in Arlington with the Halls. Connor loved getting to play with his big cousins and they were so good with him. We all went to a Dallas Stars game and little man did fantastic.

At the Dallas Stars game

Playing with Aunt Lauren

Early in December, we went back to Arlington for the Big 12 Championship game. It was held at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. The game was so fun and we got to see the new stadium.

After Texas WON the Big 12 Championship game!!!

We spent Christmas at home with my family. It was a fun, fairly low-key Christmas and it was great to spend some good time with my brothers, sister-in-law and nephew. I was even able to talk everyone into participating in one of my favorite traditions — looking at Christmas lights.

Checking out a Christmas gift

In the mountain of wrapping paper

Mommy and Connor

Christmas morning

Cousins!! They LOVE their wagons from Grandma.

Jordan and silly Uncle Kevin

The day after Christmas, all the girls took the babys to see Disney Live. The boys were so good and seemed to have a great time!! My mom has been looking forward to taking her grandkids to events like this for years (yep, since before she had any grandkids).

At the Disney show

Allen and I were busy during the whole Christmas break preparing for our next major life event. We are buying a new house and selling our current house. So we were packing and cleaning and prepping to get our house on the market. And the latest news is that we’ve made an offer to build a new house. We are very excited about the new house but so sad to leave the house we have lived in for over 5 years. More details about the house will be coming as we know it.

Working on the house

And a few more pics — because Connor is cute.

Texas cutie

Riding his truck

Graduating from fall semester at The Little Gym

Random words of wisdom

Kersten — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:39:14 +0000

Nope, not my words of wisdom (like I have any to begin with….) but the words of my amazing son. He has been working so hard on learning how to say words and associate them with an object. I wanted to take a moment to document some of the words that he knows.

(As a side note, I might be the only person who can actually differentiate between some of his words but I know what he is talking about.)

mama

dada

ball (sounds like bah)

balloon (sounds like bahoo)

dog (sounds like gog. when asked what a dog sounds like, Connor will pant.)

duck

blue (sounds like beu)

outside

bath

car (when i ask him what a car sounds like he buzzes his lips)

baby (sounds like dadee)

apple

That’s all I can think of right now but as you can tell, I’m so proud of my little man. He learns something new everyday. Maybe that’s why he looks so good in this shirt:

It says 'Future Engineer'

So cute!