Don't worry, we haven't had any foul weather up here in Washington. But we have been hit by something...something terrible. If I didn't know any better I would think the Tazmanian Devil paid us a visit...but he didn't...it was someone else.





Who was it you ask? It was none other than the Kallen Baby! Yep...the Kallen Baby. Some might say he is just as bad as the Tazmanian Devil. Other's might believe he is far worse.

He actually isn't bad at all. We think he is the sweetest thing in the world, however, he does know how to make quite the mess...just like the Tazmanian Devil. It is amazing how quickly our little tyke can destroy our house. I honestly think he might be related to Taz at times. After looking at the following pictures, I think you all would agree.

He accomplished all of this in less than 10 minutes. Wow...our boy has some serious skills.

Valentines Day turned out to be very different for me than I had originally imagined. I made Tyson promise me that he wouldn't spend any money this year, and for once, he actually kept his promise (he usually cheats and buys me stuff anyway). All we had planned for our romantic V-Day was to drop off the squirt at my parents for a few hours and go out to lunch together. That was it...which some of you might think is a horrible way to spend Valentines Day, but it sounded great to me. Plus, I can't even remember the last time we ate a meal alone together.

The day started off pretty normal, Tyson being the wonderful husband that he is, got up with Kallen in the morning, fed him, and allowed me to sleep in. This all by itself is the best gift my husband can give to me...and he does it often...I'm so lucky. I finally crawled out of bed around 9:30, showered and got ready for the day. Then I got Kallen dressed and ready to go, which wasn't until about 11:30. That's pretty good for him, considering that he usually stays in his pajamas for most of the day. Some days, neither one of us get out of our pajamas at all. (Did I ever mention that PJ's are some of my favorite things to wear?) Anyway, around noon we were ready to hit the road.

We were on our way to my parents, when Tyson suddenly mentioned that he was shocked that I hadn't turned on the radio. I hadn't really thought about it, but then he proceeded to turn it on. It wasn't a surprise that the the CD kicked in, because I had previously been listening to one of my Josh Groban CD's the day before (and no Tyson and Toby, he is not gay). However, I was surprised when it wasn't Josh that I heard on the CD but someone else. It took me only a second to recognize that I was listening to our song, our Biscuits and Honey song. Many of you probably do not know this, but one of the first dates Tyson ever took me on was going up to the mountains together and cooking Biscuits and Honey over a campfire. Sounds kind of silly, but it really is one of the best dates I have ever been on. Afterwards, some of Tyson's roommates (Jeff and Brian) thought it was a funny date and decided to write a song about it. Then they had the chance to record it using a neighbors sound equipment and the Biscuits and Honey song was born. It truly is our personal song and I think that is awesome! So it might have been a really small thing, but to have Tyson sneak into my car beforehand so he could surprise me with our song on Valentine's Day was a very great surprise. I loved it. (If I knew how to post this song on here, I would let you all listen to it, but I don't know how to. Sorry.)

After this, our day again proceeded much as I thought it would. We dropped off Kallen at my Mom's and then we drove towards one of the three restaurants that Tyson had picked out beforehand...Thai, Japanese, or Indian. But as usual, I vetoed them all and we ended up going to Red Robin...my favorite restaurant of all time (can I get a big cheer from Meg?). It was so tasty and I didn't regret my decision.

Afterwards, we went around the mall and hung out, enjoying the squirt free time that we had. Then we decided to go back to my parents and hang out there for awhile. For the rest of the afternoon, we just hung out and I thought our fun Valentine's adventure was over. However, around dinnertime, Tyson asked if I wanted to do our activity? I was confused and asked him what he was talking about. He left the room, went outside, and when he returned, he had two long sticks in his hand, a jar of honey and a can of biscuits. With a smile, He asked me if I wanted to have some biscuits and honey with him. How cute is that. So the rest of the evening, we sat around my parents fire and cooked some biscuits with honey.

Now that is a great Valentines Day if I do say so myself.

My parents joined the Children's Museum here in Seattle, so we decided to check it out one Friday. They had a special exhibit that was just for young toddlers like Kallen. Once he gets older, I bet he'll love the other sections, but we'll probably just keep hanging out in the toddler area until he gets a bit bigger. Here are some of the fun things he got to do.

I don't know what these toys are called, but Kallen loves them. In fact, one time a bigger kid walked in front of him to play with it, and Kallen got a little frustrated and tried to push him out of the way. Silly Kallen.


Kallen is a little afraid of slides as you can tell from this picture. Also, he's afraid of elevators. Have any of you ever heard of a kid afraid of elevators? Kind of sad huh? Hopefully he will outgrow this. At least in the second picture he tolerated going down the slide with Grandma.



This whole toddler exhibit had a sea theme, so they had some plastic seaweed that the kids could walk through. Kallen liked this a lot too.


This was a whale that kids could climb through. No matter how hard we tried to get him to climb through it, Kallen wouldn't budge.

Now this last picture shows Kallen's favorite part of the whole exhibit. He loved playing in the water with all of the boats and sea animals. Most of all though he just loved to splash. I felt bad for all of the other kids that were around him, because he got them all wet. They had little splash guards that the kids could wear, but they didn't really help. By the end of the day, he was soaked.

This winter has been great for snow. We usually get one or two good snow days, but this year we've had a few weeks. For instance, last week, it snowed every day. That just doesn't happen here in Western Washington.

Now that Kallen is a walking machine, we wanted him to be able to enjoy the snow as much as possible. We bundled him all up and took him outside to play as often as we could. He absolutely loves the snow. This was the first day that it began to snow.


This kid loves to walk in the snow. One day we just walked around and around our house for about 1/2 an hour. He doesn't fall very often, but when he does, he gets stuck like this. Then he just freezes and sits there stuck in that position until someone comes over and helps him back up. It is actually pretty funny.


For those of you that like videos, here is a short one we got of Kallen the first time we took him out. At first he didn't know what to do.

Sorry that I haven't posted anything for months. I've taken pictures, but I haven't gotten around to editing them at all, so I never wanted to post them. Oh well. They still aren't edited, but Grandma Hill has been patient long enough and now demands to see pictures of Kallen. So here they are.

We travelled down to Eugene for Christmas this year and spent the holidays with Tyson's whole family. It was great. Very crowded, but it was great to have everyone there.

Tyson's family has a tradition of waking up as early as possible every Christmas, so even though I think this tradition is silly and should be destroyed, in the end I had to play along. Little Kallen wasn't even awake when we started. Lucky kid, he got to keep sleeping for a little longer.

Once Kallen did wake up, I don't think he really got that he was getting presents, but he sure liked all the attention he got. He loved having 15 people clapping for him every time he'd do something cute. He would sit in the middle of the floor with his legs spread out on his sides and clap along with all of us as we chanted, "yeah for Kallen". What a funny kid.

Our trip to Oregon was great. However, Kallen did have a few accidents while we were down there. I don't know if you could tell from any of the previous pictures, but this little guy got a very bruised nose. Just a day after we arrived, Kallen was leaning against one of Grandpa Hill's speakers and toppled it over. In the process of doing so, he fell over on it and the base of the speaker, which is made of metel and pretty sharp, whacked him right on the bridge of his nose between his eyes. He had the biggest gash and his poor little eyes and nose were black and blue for days. This is the best picture I could find of it. But this was a few days after it happened. This wasn't the only bump Kallen got. It seemed like every day he would end up getting hurt in some way. For instance, one day he fell off the bed onto his head and then later that night got whacked in the head with a WII controller. Poor kid. But he recovered from all of his bumps and bruises very quickly.

After our trip to Oregon, we then came home to Washington and had Christmas with my parents. Kallen really liked looking at the tree with all of the lights and my parents new train.



It was a great Christmas for us all. We were so happy to see all of our family and Christmas is always better when you have a little squirt to share it with. We can't wait till next year when Kallen will get the whole thing a little better.