California

Get ready for a blog post overload!! I'm REALLY behind and have lots to share!!

First let me start with our recent trip to Southern California for Kitti's (Tim's mom) 60th birthday....a whole month ago! (Yes, I'm THAT far behind in my posts!)

A couple of years ago we went down to California and had a surprise party for Herb's (Tim's dad) 60th birthday so we thought we needed to throw a surprise party for Kitti's 60th as well. (We actually started talking about it back in April!) Luckily Tim's cousin Linda was gracious enough to not only allow us to host the party at her house in Temecula, CA, but to open her home for us to stay there all weekend too! And by us I mean Tim, Karsen & Myself and Bryan & Renee! Thank you Linda!!!

The party was set for Saturday, October 10th but we flew down in the evening on Thursday the 8th so that we would have all day on Friday the 9th to shop and setup for the party.

I was a little nervous for the flight down there because it was Karsen's first time on an airplane and I wasn't sure how he would handle the altitude change and the overall experience. But he ended up doing a great job!

We got to the airport in Seattle and got our car parked at a site and got all checked in with our luggage checked without any problems. We had Karsen in his carseat the whole time, since we were going to check the seat at the gate anyway.
When we got to security, we of course had to take him out of his seat to put the seat thru the conveyor belt and carry Karsen thru the metal detector.
As soon as Tim pulled Karsen out of his seat, he discovered that Karsen had pooped so much that it was all over his sleeper and even on the pads in his car seat! I had to carefully carry Karsen thru security so that I didn't get any of it on myself since I didn't have a change of clothes with me.

As soon as we gathered all of our stuff on the other side of security, we headed straight for a bathroom to change Karsen. It was a good thing that we had Renee and Bryan with us to help because we had so much to carry and they waited with all of our stuff while we went into a family restroom. Thanks guys!

Thank goodness that was the only hiccup in our trip! Karsen ended up sleeping the entire plane ride and the entire trip from the airport to Linda's house, which took about an hour or so.

Karsen's first time on an airplane!!

He was such a good boy on the plane!

In California! Karsen's first time outside of Washington state!

The next morning we all got up and got ready to go shopping for everything that we needed for the party the next day. I was the last person ready (anyone who knows me really well shouldn't be surprised...haha!) and Karsen and I found everyone sitting out by the pool enjoying the sunny weather while they waited for us.

We took the opportunity to get a picture of Karsen in front of his first palm trees!

Checking out the pool:

While we were out and about in town, we all got hungry and decided to stop to grab some lunch somewhere. We passed this place called Whoo's and both Bryan and Renee said that they had really good fish tacos and wanted to go there for lunch. Neither Tim or I had ever been there (let alone heard of it) before, but it wasn't bad. We both got carne asada burritos. :)

At Wahoo's we were goofing around:
(Picture taken with my BlackBerry)

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Later that evening, after dinner, we decided to feed Karsen some rice cereal again. We had the SLR camera with us this time and got a few shots of his messy eating.

Trying the lick the cereal off of the spoon:

I love the cereal on the tip of his nose:
Starting to get a little frustrated with this method of eating:
Even though he had such a messy face, he was still cute!

After we got Karsen all cleaned up and dressed for bed, we decided to play some pool. Even Karsen wanted to get in on the action!

Studying the layout to figure out his strategy:

It was getting late and WAY past Karsen's bedtime. Karsen had fallen asleep, but we hadn't finished playing our game yet and I didn't want to put him in bed in the other room since none of us would be in there. So we pulled the top part of the papasan chair out from the family room and used it as a make shift bed for Karsen while we finished playing. It was funny!

He looks so tiny in the papasan!

He is so cute when he sleeps!

It was a full day (and night before) but it was fun! Because there was so much that went on over that weekend, I'm going to divide different events into separate posts.

Stay tuned for more posts! Up next: The Surprise Party.

Love, Michaela