All Boxed Up

I had ordered some clothes for the kids and the package arrived yesterday. It was a relatively small box, but they both immediately were drawn to play with it and try to get inside it. The box didn't last long and was soon crushed, so I went out and got some boxes from the garage and taped them together. One of them, I cut out a door so that they could both walk into it. Benjamin and Anna had a blast with it. For a while they just went in and out of the door and played house a bit. Benjamin got really into it and would say, "Anna that the outside, you open the door and I going to get COLD!!!" He would shrill with delight each time he pretended she was making him cold by opening the door! :) Then Benjamin decided he was going to put his Elmo doll to bed inside the box and read him a bedtime story. Anna quickly joined in and brought her baby in too. They played so nicely with one another as Benjamin did a great job reading a couple books to Anna and the dolls! :) I couldn't resist grabbing the camera and capturing the moment!

I love that she rubs his hair sometimes!


Another exciting thing that happened yesterday was that Anna's fourth tooth finally broke through on the bottom, so she doesn't have to be uneven anymore! The sad thing is that she's been uncomfortably teething for about a month now and I was kind of hoping it was a molar tooth that was causing so much trouble instead of just a little front tooth! Oh, well. Progress is progress!

Benjamin's 1st Day of Preschool!

Today was Benjamin's first day of preschool!!! He got so excited once we got him a backpack yesterday. He was really cute and asked me as we were paying for it, "Will my teacher love it?" :) He wore it all morning, including during breakfast.......

(You can tell they are my kids based on how much they aren't happy morning people at first!)

All dressed and ready to go!


"Come on mom, lets go!!!!"


We had to get Anna a purse since Benjamin got a backpack. She's been wanting one to mimic like me carrying a bag around, so it worked perfectly to get it when we got Benjamin the backpack. He's waving bye to the house!

Benjamin and I both did great. There were no tears and he wasn't scared to have me leave him at school at all, which made it much easier for me! I did get a little choked up though when I put Anna in her car seat and she started saying (in her sweet little voice) "bye bye Ben-a-min!" over and over again. :( She did great too though and we had fun playing just the two of us while Benjamin was at school. Dave was really sweet and went with us to pick Benjamin up and then we all went to lunch so we could hear all about his day. He was super happy to tell us how much fun he had and all the things he got to do! We're really proud of him and hope he continues to love it as much as he did today!

18 Months Already

I can't believe it. On Wednesday, my sweet Anna cupcake will be 18 months old. To most that might not seem like a big deal, but 18 months is to me. My favorite age so far has been 11-18 months with both kids. It's such an exciting time of discovery and change! They are like little sponges, soaking up everything around them and happily learning so much. I just love teaching them and watching them change from babies to toddlers. I often find myself just sitting back, not really interacting with Anna.....just watching and listening to what she's saying and doing. It's so amazing. So on Wednesday, she'll be 18 months. One and a half years old. That means its been 6 whole months since she turned one, 18 months since she joined our family.....18 months of pure joy watching her develop into her very own wonderfully sweet and spunky self! We are so looking forward to continuing to watch her grow and just love her so much!

When Benjamin turned 18 months, I had his picture taken by a professional at an outdoor setting. I am still pleased with them and try really hard to be fair with each kid. Since I have my own SLR (read, really awesome camera) now and have been enjoying editing pictures lately, I decided to try and do the pictures myself and save myself the outrageous prices that photographers are charging these days. So we headed to a favorite park of ours. There's no playground equipment or anything, just a large pond with water fountains, lots of grassy room to run about, big trees, and beautiful architecture surrounding it. I figured the way the light sifts in there in the evenings would make for great pictures and it didn't disappoint! I'm so pleased with how they turned out! It was a bit challenging to get Anna smiling and looking at the camera as she ran about with her brother, but very worth it! :)

Here she is before we left for the park that evening. I had planned to have her wear this bow, but she has my fine hair and it kept slipping at the park as she ran around. I quickly decided it was best just to take it out, instead of constantly be fixing it!

She does this with her hand as she's saying, "Where Daddy/Benjamin go?" (They were playing hide and seek).

Saying one of her favorite words, "Whoa!!"

I think it's such a great area to get pictures!

RUN!!!!

W-I-L-D girl!!!

I really like this one!

She is 100% a Daddy's Girl!

To get her to smile a lot, we told her to spin. She loves to spin and always laughs and smiles so big. She also falls down a lot! :)

They both had a great time spinning and running and falling down and laughing, which made for great moments and great pictures!

They actually climbed onto this bench together all by themselves. Daddy pretended he was going to get them, which you will be able to tell they really got into!

Here's the water fountains!

I joked with Dave that this was the one that looked the most like Anna, b/c it shows her crazy hair and her crazy teeth! :)

I wanted to try and get some pregnancy pictures done too. Dave did a really good job!

Can you tell I still have 7 whole weeks to go?!?!?! :)

My sweet boy who is going to make such an awesome big brother again!

We tried to get some pictures of Anna "kissing" Little Three, but the height difference made it too difficult. So we just went on a walk together instead! :)

It was a great time and we were so thankful for the beautiful pictures we were able to capture to help remember this great time in our lives. I had fun making a collage of all the pictures with my new photo editing program too. It doesn't let you pick which picture go where, you just have to keep shuffling them until you get one you like, but it still makes for a fun collage! You might have to click on it and enlarge it for the pictures to be big enough to see.

One day last week, I was blessed with a girl's night out and went to see a movie with my friends. After Anna went to sleep, Dave and Benjamin were sweet enough to fold some laundry for me. Dave told me later how great a job Benjamin did matching every single sock and how pleased he was with himself!

This sweet guy has his first day of preschool tomorrow! He's pretty excited and seems to understand and be okay with knowing that he's going to stay there without us. I'm really excited for him and anxious to see how much fun he has. We're praying it's an easy transition for him and he just LOVES it!!!! :)

State Fair '09

Saturday was a full day of fun in the sun. We started out the morning by playing in the front yard while Dave did some yard work. We wanted to wear out the kids, so they'd take an early nap and we could go to the State Fair later in the day. It worked! The sun was pretty warm, even for the morning.....so you pretty much had to stay in the water. I don't know how Dave did yard work in that heat. At least he was in the shade! Anna was pleased we got the kid-sized yard chair out. You should see her lifting it and moving it all over the place!


Benjamin attacking the sprinkler, a favorite activity of his these days....


I thought this was a cute pose of them!

The sun came blaring out, so it became time for sunglasses. They were cute and kept putting their glasses against each other, checking each other out.

After naps, we did make it to the State Fair. It was a lot of fun, but we all got too hot. It wasn't so much that it was a high temperature that did us in, as the sun was so blaringly hot! It was quite pleasant when the clouds came out and there was a bit of a breeze (too bad that didn't happen often!). Fortunately, we're a fun bunch and still managed to have a great time! Benjamin requested two things when we told him we were going to the fair.....to ride a pony and eat special food, like cotton candy. We were able to fulfill both requests! :) Here's the pony ride......

They have this great area set up where the kids can pretend they are farmers for a day. We always seem to make it to that part after they close it down, but not this time! It was really cute and the kids had lots of fun! Here they are planting their vegetable seeds.......

and Benjamin got to ride a tractor! (Oh, and they gave them the hats they're wearing!)

Benjamin is such a sweet and considerate kid, more than I could ever ask for. We waited for quite a while to "milk the cow". All the other kids (and their picture taking parents) were taking a long time each. I simply told Benjamin we can't milk the cow for too long b/c there are lots of kids waiting for their turn while we were waiting in line. On his own, he sat on the stool when it was his turn, milked the cow one time, and got right up to let the next kid have a turn! :)

They also got to collect food and then feed it to (fake) cows/pigs, pick an apple and vegetable, collect some sheep wool and an egg from the hens, then turn in all their collections for money to use to buy something at the marked. It was a really neat activity!

After that, we went to my favorite part of the fair....baby cows!!!! This little guy's name was Henry and he was born that day about 4 hours earlier!

Dave and I were surprised when he got up and started moving around so easily. SO CUTE!!!!

Apparently, it isn't the best idea to walk the whole fair in 90 degree weather w/ the sun blaring on you when you're almost 8 months pregnant. After feeling quite yucky for a couple hours, I finally was able to throw up and feel better. While I was taking my "bathroom" break, the kids kept right on having fun. Anna discovered that she can push the button on these water fountains and make the water come out and she was more than delighted! I could here their squeals of delight inside the bathroom! I felt bad for the poor sheep that were right there though!

Benjamin had a grand time as well!

Anna was kind enough to show me how much fun a water fountain is after I came out.

We love goats! :) We found this sweet little baby who started nursing milk while we were there. Benjamin was so cute pointing it out.

We made it way later than I thought Anna could do, but eventually it was time to go home. Goodbye fair, we loved visiting you this year!!!