Easter Eggs and Baby Chicks

On Saturday, we went up to Nate’s niece Mabel’s birthday party. Heidi had some really cute decorations and a fun easter egg hunt for the kids, so Bennett got to go on his first easter egg hunt. We weren’t sure if he would figure it out, but he actually did really well. Aunt Anna helped him find the eggs and set him down by them, and he loved picking them up and putting them in his basket, and carrying his basket of eggs around.

 

  After the birthday party, we went over to Nate’s parents’ house to see the baby chicks they got last weekend. They were pretty cute. Bennett didn’t quite understand that you have to softly pet the chicks – he grabbed onto their feathers, so we just had him stand outside the cage and watch them the rest of the time. He had fun watching them though. (I love how his mouth is hanging open when he’s looking down at them)

On the way home, Nate gave Bennett one of his easter eggs to play with. When we’d been driving about 15 minutes (with Bennett quiet in the back – we thought he was asleep), we noticed a strong chocolate smell. Bennett had figured out how to open the plastic egg and found the 3 partially-melted chocolate eggs that were inside. He had sucked the chocolate out and dropped the tin foil wrappers to the side of his car seat. The pictures don’t quite show it well enough, but it was EVERYWHERE. face, coat, shirt, pants, shoes, hands, car seat. It was pretty funny. We pulled over and stripped him down and used up all the baby wipes to get him clean. Apparently he likes chocolate.

Grandpa and Grandma’s Visit

Bennett’s grandparents came to visit us last week during their spring break. We didn’t do anything momentous, but we had fun and Bennett LOVED having them here to play with him and give him all the attention he wanted :) We went down to watch my brother’s intramural tennis match, watched some March Madness played games, went for a Sunday walk, took naps, took a quick trip to Idaho, had lunch with my sister at the school where she student teaches, made curtains, tried to teach Bennett how to walk (Dave and Grandpa tried – he does seem to be making a little progress, although no real independent steps yet) and mostly just enjoyed being together. Here are some pictures from the week:

 

 

(this isn’t just a random picture of us in front of a busy street – look at the street sign :)

Fourth time’s the charm?

Part of my justification for spending money on my camera and photography class was that if I could take pictures of Bennett when I wanted “professional” ones, then I wouldn’t have to pay someone else to. For Bennett’s “official” 12-month pictures, it took me 4 tries and almost until he was 13 months to finally get a couple pictures I thought would work. Between my lackluster photography skills and an uncooperative subject, it was quite the task to get a shot that was in focus, with the correct exposure and enough light, AND get Bennett to not only look at me, but smile. After three failed photo shoots, I finally got a couple good pictures last week. I thought I’d throw in a couple of the not-so-good ones for your viewing pleasure.

 

 

Meeting Zoey

We had a fairly uneventful weekend – hung out with our neighbors Friday night, and on Saturday Nate went skiing and we just relaxed the rest of the day and took care of a few things around the house. On Sunday, Bennett and I went up to Nate’s parents’ house and Bennett got to meet their new dog, Zoey. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for Nate, Bennett seems to be a dog fan. He sat in front of the back door watching the dog for a while, and would would start whining when Zoey would run away so Bennett couldn’t see her as well. I will admit she’s a pretty cute dog, and she’s definitely a hit with the kids.

 

Ski Day

After a failed attempt a couple of weeks ago, on Saturday Nate and I had the chance to go skiing together. We headed up to Brighton for the day, and it was great to get outside. This was my 4th time ever skiing (twice in high school, and once 2 years ago) so I was a little nervous. We had a rough start to the day when I dropped my glove from the lift on our first ride up (I took it off because I had something in my eye). My nice husband went and got it for me while I went down an easier run – he even let me wear one of his and endured ridicule from a guy skiing by who said “so you’re the guy who dropped his glove from the lift”. Overall it was a great day – Nate was patient and stayed with me the whole day, and although I had plenty of falls (including an especially embarrassing one right in front of the “sports action photographer”), none of them resulted in injuries. Unfortunately, we only got one picture in before the camera batteries died. Even more unfortunate, it’s of me and I look like a dork. The background is pretty though :)

While we were skiing, Bennett got to go and play with his friend Grace. It sounded like he had a fun day – they did pretty well playing together, except for when Grace hung onto Bennett’s shirt and used him as her walker as they made their way across the room.

 

Laura was also brave enough to take them to the zoo in the afternoon. She said Bennett was really good, although he probably couldn’t see most of the animals. The animals were either too small, asleep, or otherwise too hard to see. He and Grace did both like watching the elephants and giraffes, though. I guess you can’t really miss those.

Thanks for watching him Laura!

Does this look like a boy who never gets into trouble?

When I was at a friend’s house last week visiting teaching, she said, while Bennett was sitting quietly on my nap, “I bet he never gets into trouble, and doesn’t do anything wrong”. I guess he decided to prove her wrong (in case you can’t tell, those are oats. From a brand new box I opened 2 days ago).

 

By the time I found him (about 30 seconds after I had last looked to see what he was doing), he had made enough of a mess that I figured I might as well let him play in it and explore for a little while. He seemed to be enjoying himself.