Drostan's First Snowball Fight

We had a wonderful storm this weekend. It rained for the first few hours and then turned to snow. Of course, at first, the snow melted as soon as it hit the wet ground, but after several hours enough snow had accumulated to actually cover the ground. So we decided to take Drostan outside and play in the snow. We felt like he was old enought to learn to properly enjoy snow. So first we taught him the basics.

After he had the basics down we went to the advanced round.

We're still working on his aim.

We also tried to teach him to build a snowman. We built the bottom for the snowman easily enough. Then we put on the middle (stomach) of the snowman and..........

The snowman was so fat(or rather the snow was so heavy) that the middle crushed the bottom. I guess the obesity epidemic is even worse than I thought.

After all that playing in the snow we also taught him how to enjoy being out of the snow. Hot chocolate with marshmallows. Yummy.

Check

So right now life is a little busy for Cassie and I. I am set to graduate on Dec 19 (32 calendar days and counting). We have an 18 month old, crazy, energetic little boy. That keeps Cassie busy morning, noon and night. In addition to all that Cassie and I will be moving right before graduation. So running through the checklist: Apply for graduation, check; boxes for moving, check; moving van, check; employment, check. It seems the only thing missing is a place to live. That could be problematic.

Luckily, I have been completing my indentured servitude at the Veteran's hospital in DC. The OR was closed on Veteran's Day and I did not have clinicals on Tues because of class. So Cassie and I took Drostan for a road trip to Salisbury. My company put us up in a hotel and took us out to dinner. Cassie and I set up appointments to check out some houses to rent. (For those of you who don't know Salisbury has a university so many of the houses for rent are geared to college kids.) We looked at several places but most of them were small with little living space and even less storage space. A couple of places were okay and looked nice, they were all much cheaper than out current rent. However, the last appointment was for a real house in a nice neighborhood. The first time we called about it the lady said that she had some renters, but she called us back on Mon and asked if we were still interested. So we went and checked it out. It is a little older house that has not been updated since it was built, but it has some space. The link has many pictures of the house, some are kind of fuzzy but the pictures of the outside are pretty nice. http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/20581881. For those of you that have not come to visit (you know who you are) or anyone who wants to come visit again and hit the beach, we may actually have some room to spare. The best part, rent is still less than we pay now.

That's all for now, I have to go and study to make sure I do indeed graduate.

My Crazy Kid

I have been called to repentance by my wife, for not posting anything about our son on the blog for far too long. Nevermind the fact that I tried to teach her how to post and she chose not to learn. Nevermind that I am in the final semester (yeah) of grad school. Oh well, it is what it is. Drostan is one crazy kid. In the last several months since I last posted (about Drostan) he has done a fair bit of growing up. He has gone back to Idaho and visited the grandparents, endured undue taunts and ridicule from his uncles, survived many long arduous journeys (my interview trips) and come out practically unscathed.

Drostan loves the playground. If we go for a walk and Drostan sees playground equipment he is gone. He will take off whether mom and dad follow or not. Trust me he has done it. He is playing with another little boy in our ward, who happens to be 4 days younger than Drostan (not that you would know it by looking at the size difference).

Drostan at the Baltimore Zoo. It was hard to convince the zookeeps that he didn't belong with the monkeys. He has started climbing anything and everything. Nothing is safe.

Drostan is in too big a hurry to grow up. After suffering the aforementioned torment (from his evil uncles). Drostan got another haircut, which he liked about as much as the first one. After that he looked much less like our cute baby and more like a little boy. Ever since he has wanted to be all grown up. Drostan climbed up into the car over the console and proceeded to "drive" the car.

And this is where we ended up. And where we will end up for the next few years. This is the beach at Ocean City, a few miles from Salisbury.

And we still have the cutest boy in the whole world.

Decisions, decisions

As some of you may know, I have been looking for a job recently. I know I don't graduate for 95 days (but who's counting) but the credentialing process can sometimes take several months to complete. And after having been without an income for many long months I am a little excited to start getting paid. I regress-anyway I went on several interiews, one in New York, two in Pennsylvania, and one in Maryland. After the interviews I eliminated one in PA, the other one was #3 on my list, but the top two was a tie between Cooperstown NY (Baseball Hall of Fame/Lake Ostego) and Salisbury MD (20 minutes from the ocean). Decisions, decisions.

Ocean City, MD

Cooperstown, NY

As you can see not an easy decision. Both opportunities would be good jobs. Salary and benefits were comparable. Both were very nice hospitals that would allow me the kind of job/autonomy that I wanted. One (NY) was situated on the edge of a large lake inbetween the Catskill and the Adirondack mountains. The other (MD) is twenty minutes from the beach, and we checked out the beach-very nice. So how do you decide? We flipped a coin and it landed on edge-honestly.

Rock-paper-scissors? throwing darts at a map? I don't know.

.

.

After comparing everything from town size to sales tax, we made a decision, I think. We are relatively cetain that my first job as a CRNA will be in......

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

ummmm (clearing my throat).....

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

drum roll please.........

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.My computer is running so slow..........

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

oh yea, my first job is going to be in ---as long as they still want me in January, and I pass my boards---

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Salisbury MD.

Catching up

So it has been awhile since I have had time to post anything. So I thought I would throw a few pictures up and let you all see what we have been up to. As many of you may remember Drostan's hair was interesting during his first few months, it would have made a perfect mohawk if it stood up. I had been telling Cassie for a few weeks that he was starting to look shaggy. Well she finally agreed and we attempted to cut Drostan's hair. Trust me he did not appreciate it at all.

But doesn't he look so much better. If you make the picture bigger you can see the remnants of a tear under his right eye.

Mom however would not cut his curls in the back.

Later Mom made cookies to make him feel better. Drostan wanted to help. Normally, for Drostan, eating with a spoon means holding the spoon in one hand and shoveling food in his mouth with the other hand. This time he got it right.
Drostan's new hobby is rearranging the furniture. I guess he takes after his mother after all.

Stay tuned there will be more to come..............sometime. For now I am going to bed.

.............Continued

So our story continues after Drostan has had all his fun with his toys. Mom made him a cute little cake that looks like a teddy bear. Well what good is having a cake if you can't eat it?? Having never eaten cake before he was a little wary.

I'll just try a little bit.

Oh! that was good! Baby like!

What? It is MY birthday.
OOOHHH, cake is GOOD. More please.

yea, show of all those teeth. Two more are coming in on the top. Drostan had cake from head to toe. Literally there was cake in his hair and all down both legs, but he had fun. And after all, it was HIS birthday.



Drostan loves to play and dance.

Drostan's First Birthday

It seems impossible but last Saturday, May 16, Drostan turned 1 year old. It has been so much fun to watch him grow up and play and learn. Drostan is one of the funnest, happiest, and definitely cutest babies ever. So to celebrate his birthday Dad took Drostan out to the woods. Our ward was having the Father and Son campout so we went and gave mom the night off.

Drostan chilling out watching the fire. He is tired so he looks a little zoned out. but check out his cool boots from Gma &Gpa Madsen.

Gma & Gpa Ball sent Drostan's present and lucky for us it arrived on his B-day. Drostan hit one of the keys on his musical caterpillar as he was opening it and he wouldn't even finish unwrapping it he just wanted to play with it as it was.

Everybody thinks that Drostan does not like the phone because he will never talk on it when we want him to, but he loves to play with the phone when no one is on it. So mom and dad got him his own along with some chew toys which happen to be some of his favorite toys.

Ain't my wife great. She made this teddy bear cake all by herself.

Drostan only needed a little help blowing out the candle. He needed a lot of help to keep from tearing the cake to pieces before we could take a picture.

To be continued..............

Spring has sprung

Spring has officially sprung in DC, and with it all the tourists. A few weekends ago we decided to go and see the cherry blossoms. Drostan has "sort of" been there before but we thought he might like to get out and walk around. Generally DC traffic is not so bad during the weekend, but there was a hockey game and the Cherry Blossom festival, so it was a little crazier than usual. We finally made it to the Tidal Basin and it was worth it. The trees were in full bloom and everytime there was a breeze it looked like it was snowing because of all the blossoms in the air.

Drostan played it cool. He was just chillin until....

............we let him out of the stroller. He had a great time. He is so fearless, he was running after other little kids (mostly 2-5 yr olds) and walking up to complete strangers. He can be quite the charmer when he has an audience.

He especially liked being in the tree. He thought that was the greatest thing.

A night on the town

Living in the DC Metro area is great, there is always something to do. Some of those things are free (Smithsonian, monuments, animal rights protests) and some of those things are not (a night at the Kennedy Center, football games, and the circus). We have tried to do mostly the free stuff, owing to our status as poor college students (again). However, while Randy and Kris were visiting we decided to do both. We heard on the radio that the circus was coming to town, oddly enough it was the same time as Randy and Kris (hmmm). Neither Cassie nor I could remember the last time we had been to the circus. So we took the Metro down to DC, and amazingly no one got lost. We popped up right in front of a show. PETA or some other group had come to protest (you can never have enough protests in DC). People were screaming and chanting for Barnum and Bailey (who I think are dead) to "go home" they also threw in there animal molesters, animal abusers, and just to cover all their bases child molesters. It was quite entertaining, I think there were more freaks outside the "big tent" than inside. Oh and the circus was fun too. They had all the usual accoutrements, clowns and acrobats, and animals. The stadium was so dark that a lot of the pictures didn't turn out but some of them are posted below.


The elephants were probably the coolest part of the animal segment. These might even be termed "big elephants" by my dad. Its amazing what they can do.

But for me the coolest part of the circus was these guys.

I gotta get me one of those.

No Safe Place

Can I just tell you all that this has been a crazy month. Crawling around gets you nowhere fast. I was so sick of going everywhere on my hands and knees. Everybody else here walks around I figured it was time I started standing on my own two legs. It took me a few bruised knees but I figured it out soon enough. And since I did I am free. The world looks a whole lot different from this perspective, so many new places to explore. I found this great hiding place under the sink. Mom and Dad were a couple of killjoys and wouldn't let me hang out for very long, but I'll go back when they're not looking.
Getting in was easy enough but I had a little trouble getting out. I kept bumping my head (darn tight quarters)

After mastering the the whole walking thing, it was on to the next step, literally. My house has three levels and I like to play on all three but stairs can be tricky. My friend Hunter taught me how to go up the stairs easy enough, but I've fallen down the stairs once and I wasn't looking forward to doing that again. These two crazy old people came and stayed with me for a few days and the very first day they were here they started dragging me down the stairs backwards. I figured if I didn't figure out how to go down the stairs they were going to kill me. Lucky for me as soon as I started doing it on my own the let me, no more getting dragged by my ankles. I am doing pretty good too, only fallen a couple of times (when no one was looking).

Speaking of those old folks, Mom and Dad said they are my grandma and grandpa Madsen. They hung out for a few days and played. The old man is a big chicken (check out the video below), cracked me up how easy he was to scare.

Here we got into a heated argument, I think I won.

Walker

He is no Texas Ranger, but nonetheless, Drostan is a walker. He has been teasing us for several weeks. As soon as he could crawl he would crawl over to anything he could and pull himself up on it. That soon progressed to pulling himself up and then letting go and standing there. Then he just kind of stopped there and was happy with that. Then he decided he could walk as long as he had something to hold onto. So Cassie and I went to Target (sorry Justin) and bought him a little walker. He loves it. He chases Dad and runs into the wall, great fun for little boys.

At times he has become quite the little chatterbox as well. You can see in the first video he jabbers quite proficiently. The second video is one of his first attempts at walking unassisted. He has been practicing all day and is doing even better now. However, our 81/2 year old camera is starting to show its age and may need to soon be replaced. Don't worry about the fall in the third video, no blood no foul, right? It actually looks worse than it really was.

Drostan and Dad

Anesthesia school is somewhat stressful. I spend many hours at the hospital and almost as much time studying. As such occasionally I need to decompress. My favorite thing to do is to come home to my beautiful wife and my wonderful son. This makes call very difficult because after a full day I have to go to an empty room and try to sleep before waking up in the middle of the night because nobody in this area knows how to drive (Sorry, enough ranting). Anyway playing with Drostan is often what gets me through from day to day.

Super Bowl Sunday

"I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father..." I don't know how many times I have read this verse, but I figured if it worked for Lehi maybe I should do it too. So in an effort to teach Drostan "in all the learning of [his] father" we taught him about football.

On Saturday Drostan was standing up and throwing his arms in the air and it looked just like a referee signaling a touchdown. So I grabbed the camera and this was the best shot I could get.Next we tried to teach Drostan how to navigate the stairs. Now that we have a mobile son, when one of us leaves the room Drostan decides to follow. This is the first time he tried to climb the stairs (he was following his Daddy). He got up about three stairs and got stuck, but he couldn't figure out how to go down either.
Next, came mealtime/messmaking. Drostan loves to eat. He eats everything he can get his hands on, literally. Shoes, paper, random objects on the floor, etc. Well we were having spaghetti one night so we decided to let Drostan try some too. He eventually got some of it in his mouth.

With Randy for a grandpa Drostan also has to learn about all kinds of strange animals he may eventually encounter at grandpa's house. I don't know about the triceritops but if Randy could find a giraffe for sale he would probably buy it.

and this is just a picture to prove that I really do have the cutest boy in the whole wide world. As if all the other pictures hadn't convinced you.

First Christmas

Even though Cassie and I have been married for 8 years this was the first year that we have ever celebrated Christmas by ourselves. It was extra special because it was also Drostan's first Christmas. Because we are poor college students we decided to go low key this year, besides Drostan really doesn't know what is going on, he just wants to eat the paper. Drostan was very good to unwrap all the presents, the trick was to let him rip a piece of paper off and then take it away so he had to rip another piece off to eat. I think he had fun.

You can see his mouth open and he is getting ready to eat the paper before he even has it off the box.

"Oh Mom, you shouldn't have"

At this point he just resorted to eating the paper while it was on the box because everytime he took it off the box someone took it away from him.

Mom and Das got some presents too. Since I am in the bishopric and have to wear a suit every week Cassie bought me a new suit, my old one is almost 6 years old. The piture doesn't do it justice, but the lining in irridescent and shimmers between the pink/purple you can see to a green and a gray. Very cool. Cassie got gift cards so that she can pick out her own cool clothes.

Later we all went to Doug and Elinor's to share some holiday cheer with our cousins. We had a lovely Christmas dinner, visited and played some games. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year and we pray that we might all keep the Christmas spirit alive in our hearts throughout the rest of the year.