Nothing majorly new here, just wanted to share a couple funny pictures we took tonight! We started a tradition this year of making spaghetti and home-made meatball dinner ever Sunday afternoon and Red just looooved it tonight!

This is quite possibly one of THE funniest pictures we've ever gotten of Red!  He seriously cracks himself up all the time.  (AND US!)

YUMMY, MOMMY!  I love Spaghetti and meatballs!

He loves using real silverware and bowls (under mommy's watchful eye) to feed himself now! You can see how proud of himself he is in this picture!

Red has been transitioning to one nap from 2 recently and he just couldn't make it to lunch the other day, fell asleep before I even served him!

We spent Labor Day at Watch Hill Beach in Rhode Island with our friends and Red savored his last piece of watermelon for the summer.  :)

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OMGosh - so cute. :)

 So in case I haven't already asked you for your leftover Sunday coupons, you might not know that I am soon to be featured on TLC's Extreme Couponing.  hahahaha, j/k. But in an effort to start saving a bit of money on groceries and stuff for the house, I have started couponing and going to ShopRite and CVS.  I got all this stuff (below) for $15 and it was over $50 of great stuff!  The best thing I got was that big blue blanket that has vinyl on one side and fleece on the other and folds up to velcro shut - its perfect for picnics and the beach.  If you have any couponing tips for me, please drop me a line!!!

Summer Fun - August happenings

Hi everyone!  Randy and I have had such a busy and fun summer that we're both feeling really ready for our favorite season to begin - FALL!  So in the few weeks since my last catch-up post, a couple cool things have transpired.  We went to Virginia!  We have been saying we'd go visit Randy's cousin Tammy and her family for a few years now.  But we never followed through with the plans and so now that they have a son just 2 months older than Red, we thought it would be a perfect time to visit.  So we went and had a great time with Tammy, Derek and little Andrew!  Tammy was quite the tour guide, taking us into Old-Town Alexandria and into D.C. to see the sites and visit the The museum of Natural History - sooooo cool!  Here are a few pictures:

Tammy & Andrew enjoying the train-ride into D.C.

The boys playing on the Metro

Red loves being on Daddy's shoulders!

Red got SO much energy out while in D.C. that he fell asleep on the metro with a death-grip on his zebra lovey.  We tried pulling out of his mouth while he slept but he had his teeth clenched down so hard on it!

We let Red eat a giant chocolate chip cookie (or at least a bite or two of it!) after what ended up being a rather tramatic bath-time experience with Andrew where the both of them pretty much beat each other up for stealing each other's tub toys. :)

Down by the duckies at the river in Old-Town Alexandria.  

Red didn't really care about the White House but Randy & I thought it was fun to see again!

I also have had 2 really special baby showers these last couple weekends.  My sister in-law, Megan, is going to give Red his very FIRST CASSOTTO COUSIN in just a couple months time.  So that was the first shower and it was really great.  The shower was at her mom's home nearby.  Her mom's back yard is big and flat and perfect for parties!  I hope Megan had a great time because I know I did!  Randy's mom actually relinquished cake duties (a duty I think she holds very dear!) to ME!  So I had my friend, Karen, make the cake topper again and it turned out super cute.  It was a lemon cake with lemon-zest frosting:

I had a hard time deciding how to decorate because they don't know the sex of the baby yet so I decided to go with green and yellow and use lemons and limes to decorate and go with the colors of the cake.  I think it turned out fun and summer-y.  We're SO EXCITED for Megan & Ryan to have their baby soon!

Before Randy made Ryan leave the party full of women, Ryan was so sweet to bring a tray of punch out to all the ladies!

The Happy Parents-to-be!

Red had fun riding in the empty box after the party.  (And enjoying some leftover lemon cake!)

Red loves his Auntie Meggie and Uncle Ry-Ry.  He even threw himself into Megan's arms (from mommy, no less!) and snuggled her with a big hug!!!

After the shower, I had about 100 lemons and limes so I decided to try my hand at making BRAZILION LEMONDADE.  YUUUUUUUM.  We always order it when we're at Tucano's in Utah and I found a GREAT website by two Mormon moms - OurBestBites.com - that had the recipe!  I ended up having somewhat of an impromptu luncheon with some old Gap friends and the lemonade was a hit.

Then it was one of my best friend's baby shower's.  She's due just 2 days after Megan in October.  So Erica's shower was fun too!  Here are a couple pics:  (and in case you couldn't tell by all the PINK, they're having a GIRL!):

Cakes by Donna - OMGoodness, DIVINE!

We missed Julie, who's enjoying a trip to California right now, but the three of us had a great time celebrating this exciting time in Erica's life! (Marcie, Erica, Saren)

Lastly, just a few fun recent pics of Red practicing his swimming skills in the bath tub.  We decided to do swim lessons with a friend of ours these last 2 weeks.  The lessons are every day, rain or shine.  And let me tell you, there's been a real lack of shine.  And a real lot of rain.

This is Red's new favorite face - he's very proud of the fact that he can do this!  It cracks me up.

A typical morning on the Cassotto house-hold and EXACTLY why I bought a steam mop to sanitize the floors- eating spilled cheerios off the floor while Talcott trails behind slurping up what Red leaves behind.  

What a Summer!!! SERIOUSLY LONG catch-up post.

Okay, so its been way too long since I last posted.  We had gone to Cancun a week or two after my last post in May and when I got home, I was working hard to pull off my very first piano recital with all my students.  THEN, I wanted to spend time working on Red's FIRST birthday party preparations so I vowed to post right after that celebration, but THEN we ended up going to Maine for the week as kind of a last-minute trip!  SOOOO.....Here's the short version of all those fun events:

     Cancun was awesome.  We stayed at the Now Sapphire (weird name, right?!) and it was beautiful and perfect.  The weather was 88 degrees and sunny with a steady breeze every single day.  Doesn't get much better than that!  We went for our anniversary (7 YEARS!) and thought it would be a "fun adventure" to take Red.  HA.  That's ONE way of putting it.  No seriously, Red was really a champ.  Flirting with the college girls behind us on the plane the entire way down, chowing down on all sorts of new foods like fish and watermelon and coconut icecream at the resort, and napping with us at the pool - he was really good, well - as good as a 10-month old can be!  He did have one kind of crabby day, when he got a sudden diaper rash (probably all the swim diapers and dips in and out of the pool is my guess) and that happened to be our actual anniversary, but we didn't mind - we just wanted him to feel better soon, which he did!  

     Our last vacation was before Red was born, when we took a little babymoon to The Grand Cayman - it was amazing and perfect and thus, we thought Cancun would be just as magical.  Well, suffice it to say, I don't think we'll be visiting Mexico again anytime soon.  I've been to Mexico a handful of times and I think its lovely and all, but I think there are lots of other less poverty-stricken, cleaner, just-as-beautiful tropical locations I'd like to visit.  But it is a pretty cheap vacation for what you get so that's a plus.  Here are a few pics:

Plane-ride down.

These next few pics are from a professional photoshoot we did on the resort.

Lots of lazy naps at the pool on vacation!

Red only slept in his pack and play for about 3 hours the first night and then he ended up in our bed the rest of the time - we loved it!

Big Kahuna.

He loved playing Peek-a-boo on the beach.

So after the trip, I started prepping my piano students for their first recital.  SO FUN!  We held it at Valerie Manor in Torrington, which is an old-folks home.  Lots of the residents came and LOTS of family members (like can you say ENTOURAGE?!!!) so I have to give it to those brave little kids who performed in front of about 50 or 60 people!!!  I have to say, I'm starting to have anxiety again in my life.  This recital brought up a lot of anxiety for me.  I was a nervous wreck beforehand.  I made nice printed Programs for all the families as well as individualized Certificate of Acheivements for each of the students, accompanied by either a king-sized Butterfinger or Symphony Bar.  All my Admissions presentations history came into play when I got up in front of all the families and residents and my anxiety subsided, but I was so nervous for the kids performances!!!  Randy tells me I did a fabulous job (but what else is he going to tell me?!) (oh, and he PROBABLY didn't use the word fabulous) and I think the kids had a lot of fun and had even more confidence and pride after their big day!  Here's a pic from that special day:

Okay, so then it was onto the birthday party preparations.  Any of you who know me, know that I love to entertain and craft, so this birthday party was pretty much the perfect excuse (I just realized how to use italicize rather than capitalize words) for me to combine a couple of my favorite passions!  We pretty much invited all the special people in Red's life, from friends to family to all our wonderful neighbors.  All in all, 76 people were able to make it and I was soooo touched by the amount of love Red has in his life, just by the actual show of party-goers.  So again, my anxiety started creeping up again the day before the party.  I actually took a Xanax that Randy had in the cupboard in case he needed it on the flight to Mexico (which he didn't, but his Dr. gave him a script just in case).  I probably shouldn't have done that because I swear it made me feel even WORSE!  I mean worse.  hahahaha.  Okay, enough with caps and italicize.  Back to my ramblings.  So we had a wedding on the night before the big party which meant I had to be even more organized and ready to go because I wouldn't have that inevitability of staying up late the night before and getting ready for the party.  So naturally, I knew about this wedding about a year ago and decided I would do what any good party planner who didn't have the night before the party available for prep would do, I started 4 months ago!  hahahaha, j/k.  not really.  I started thinking about his party when Red was 8 months old.  I do realize that simply stating this is going to expose me as a total craze-ball, but if you're reading this and didn't already realize this, then you probably don't know me too well.  I designed Red's invites and hand-crafted 50 of them, spending pain-staking hours after bed-time crafting each little piece of the invite, cutting red ribbons, using randy's leather-hole-cutter thingy to make perfect holes in the elephant's blanket for the tassles to go through, etc. etc.  NEVER AGAIN!!!!!  I loved the final product and I hope that each recipient opened the card and it put a smile on their face but for the love of Talcott, I'm not doing that again.  My friend Dana (shout-out!) told me I need to invest in a Cricuit and I think this might be my next big craft purchase.  Then I you-tubed how to make tissue pom-poms and crafted a bunch of those.  I used a coupon to buy a really huge banner from Walgreens that had a bunch of our favorite photos from Red's first year.  My other friend Caitlin (shout-out!) told me I should save it for his graduation party in 17 more years and put it back up - so back into its cylindrical container it went and into the attic - GREAT IDEA!  I made a looping slide-show of our favorite pictures of Red, set to music and had it going on the laptop, which was on the piano.  There were lots of other details and decorations like a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY RED banner, home-made icecream sandwhiches and hand-made party hats for all the kids (that none of the kids were really too interested in - hahahaha!) but lets just cut to the chase and post the pictures:

The invitation - the back of the blanket had all the event details.  

A labor of love, I tell you!

Red's special hat that Etsy crafter StellandLivi made for him - an "R" on the back-side for him.  

All the kid's hats I made.

Auntie Megan (due in October!) with Nonni & Poppi before the party.  

The tissue pom-poms.

My friend and neighbor, Karen, made his fondant cake topper.  SO CUTE!  She has a great little business making these.  The cake was home-made carrot with cream-cheese frosting. Red liked it. :)

Sisters Mila & Addy wearing the hats!

We even had an inflatable water slide - the line was about 14 kids deep at one point - it was a hot day, perfect for the water slide!

Cake at last!  He sat and ate every morsel of that cake for about 15 minutes!

Red LOVED feeding daddy his special treat!

We took off his shirt while he ate so that he didn't completely ruin it!

The birthday boy in all his glory.

Speaking of that special shirt - made by Etsy crafter MakMayDesins - here's the back of it.  

The FRONT of his shirt!

The birthday banner I'm saving for his graduation party in 17 years.  Hehehehe. 

Randy had boy's weekend a couple weeks before so while he was in NH, he bought a ton of great (and very illegal) fireworks and we had a fun show - this one is called The Eye of the Tiger.  It was awesome!!!

Red only got about 100 new toys, tough life, isn't it?!!!

I was up 'till midnight painting this lawn-mower box to make an elephant for the kids to take pictures!  Thanks, Alicia!

On his actual birthday, the day after the party - we took the FINAL tie pictures (tear!) on his new elephant  stuffed animal.

We went to the local pool on his birthday as a family - much-needed down-time and Red had fun sticking his fingers into daddy's nose and squealing with excitement when Randy said, "OOOOOOUCH!"

The most emotional part of the day was when everyone sang to Red for his birthday cake.  I looked at him so excited to eat his first cupcake and listened to all the family and friends singing in celebration and I was just completely struck with emotion, so happy that Red will have such loving friends, neighbors and family to help him along his journey.  I couldn't believe, in that moment, that one short year ago, I gave birth to this adorable and precious baby - the most handsome man (besides Randy!) that I have ever laid eyes on.  Red is truly such a joy in our lives and I feel SO BEYOND BLESSED to be able to stay at home and help him grow and mature each and every single day.  I hope Red will look back at pictures of his first birthday and realize one day just how loved he has been, from the very first day of his life.  

And now onto Maine.  We were lucky enough to be able to go to Kennebunk Maine this past week and stay at our friend's home up there - YIPPEE!  We had a blast, visited Freeport, Mother's Beach, Gooch Beach, the pier at Old Orchard Beach and of course, the beautiful Ogunquit.  Ryan and Megan came up to meet us for dinner and icecream and the walk on Marginal Way in Ogunquit - it was a wonderful evening and I'm so glad Red had so much fun with Ryan and Megan!!!  Here are those pics:

Red and his shark-mouth bum chasing daddy!

Mr. Independent wanted to walk on his own - A LOT.  This was one night in  down-town Kennebunk.

My parents will appreciate that the Rasmusson in me covers Red up from head to toe whenever he's outside!

L.L.Bean Campus in Freeport - trying out the cool pack our friends let us borrow. 

Railroad tracks in Old Orchard Beach - LOVE THIS ONE!

Caught in the act - my two men - checking out those two girls!

Mother's Beach was beautiful - such a fun day together.

Happy baby = Happy mommy.

We think this is a funny one because I'm posing for the camera and Red just wants to open up the Bag of Brownies we just bought.  This place - Simply Divine Brownies has been featured on a bunch of Food Network shows and food magazines but we thought the brownies kinda sucked.  

Eating breakfast one morning.  Our very serious and observant boy.  

Marginal Way with Ryan and Megan - the sun was in Red's eyes (and ours) but some gracious walker-byer just took this one pictures so that's all we got.  :)

I promise to be a better blogger from now on.  No more catch-up posts.  xoxoxoxoxo, Saren.

One funny last pic of Red - wearing mommy's glasses.