Around the House

After the busy-ness of Christmas, January has been fairly low-key for us. We’re attempting to re-organize parts of the house to make way for baby #2 and get Bennett’s new room ready (although I’m struggling to decide what to do in there, so for now we’re just making room elsewhere for everything we have stored in there now. Here are a few pictures of what Bennett’s been up to:

a little slave labor…he loves the new little vacuum Nate gave me for Christmas, and here he is drinking out of the faucet when I was turned around making dinner. Notice his feet sticking up in the air.

 

Reading books. Lately he picks out at least 5, sometimes 10 books when it’s naptime or bedtime, and I have a hard time convincing him that we’re done unless we get through the whole pile. Usually we hide a few behind the pillows when he’s not looking :)

Talking to grandma on the phone (he wouldn’t give it back to me, although I don’t think he was saying much) and playing with the train he got for Christmas (if you notice his lips, he’s saying “choo choo” as he drives it around).

Hopefully we can make some progress on our projects in the next few weeks!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

My (Becky’s) grandpa turned 90 a couple weeks ago! We celebrated with a big party up in Idaho last weekend. My parents were able to drive out from Oregon and spend a little time at our house on their way to and from the celebration. Bennett loved having his grandparents here and was pretty sad (as was I!) on Monday when they left.

We had fun spending time with the extended family on Saturday – here are a few pictures from the party:

 

the family group shot – thanks to my trusty tripod and remote :)

 

This is what Bennett did the whole time – played with the balloons. He enlisted various people throughout the night – but usually his grandma or dad – to play with him. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t really take any pictures when we were at my house, but we had a nice Sunday with my parents and Camille and Bryce – yummy dinner and fun games. I hope I can look as great as my grandpa if I make it to 90!

Post-Christmas and New Year’s in Oregon

A couple days after Christmas, we headed to Ashland to spend a few days with my family. We mostly just had fun spending time with almost all the family (we missed you Dave & Liz!) and hanging out. Instead of writing all about our week, I’ll highlight some of the fun with pictures (they’re more interesting anyway, right?).

We had a little gift exchange party the first night we were there:

Bennett with the new backpack grandma & grandpa gave him, Kallie trying on her mom’s boots, and Bennett trying out Kallie’s little camera.

Bennett giving Davis a thank you hug for his car, and Camille with the jewelry holder Nate and I made for her.

We read books, took naps, and stole other people’s toys when they weren’t looking:

We posed for pictures with the boy cousins (the grandchildren count in my family is 5 boys with one on the way, and one girl), and watched the snow falling out the window:

We played minute-to-win-it games (I have pictures of the other competitors, but figured I probably shouldn’t post them without permission because some are a little awkward-looking):

We went to the fun Science Works Museum (the kids, and adults, had fun exploring all the activities they have, including the giant bubbles, bottle rocket launcher pictured below, and the frozen shadow room, where you are in a dark room and pose when a flash goes off, and it records your shadow on the white wall behind you):

We went bowling (sadly, Bennett started feeling sick when we were bowling and didn’t finish out his game. We went out to eat afterwards and he wouldn’t eat any fries and just laid on Nate’s shoulder and fell asleep. Quite uncharacteristic of him, so we knew he must not be feeling well!):

And finally, we celebrated the new year with party hats, noise makers, sparkling cider, and by laughing at each other attempting to dance with the “Just Dance 2” Wii game (please note that I look especially large in the last picture because the couch is at an angle and I’m closer to the camera than everyone else :)

It was a great trip and we were grateful for decent weather on the drive out and back (and for the use of Nate’s brother’s DVD player!), and the chance to spend time with family, even though it went by too quickly as always!

Christmas Wrap-Up

I feel like I’m just finishing recovering from Christmas, which is why it has taken me so long to write this. We had tons of fun celebrating with Nate’s family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and enjoyed having Christmas morning at our house for the first time. It was fun to have the focus just be on Bennett (especially since this is his last year as an only child!) and see how excited he was about his gifts.

We had a delicious Christmas Eve dinner with Nate’s family, including vegetable and shrimp tempura, fondue for the steak, lettuce wraps, salad, etc. We enjoyed helping the kids act out the nativity, singing a few Christmas songs, and just hanging out before heading home. On Christmas morning, Bennett was pretty excited to see the “ball ball hoot” (aka basketball hoop) Santa brought for him. We got a video (if you’re patient enough to watch it – it’s a little long :) of him coming in and seeing it. The second video below, if you wait till the end, shows the little dance he would do while waiting for the ball to drop out of the hoop (it's probably slightly too big for the hoop, but works). He would have been content to play with that for a while, but also liked pulling everything out of his stocking and seeing what else Santa brought him.

Once Bennett opened his gifts, I brought down one for Nate that couldn’t sit under the tree until I was ready for him to open it – for obvious reasons :) see if you can guess what it is. And Bennett checking out his new book.

We headed up to Nate’s parents’ house in the late morning, when we enjoyed lounging around, playing the new Wii, and opening more presents. Bennett was pretty funny with all of his – he would tear a tiny piece of wrapping paper off and make sure it was either in the garbage or given to one of us to throw away before he could move on to tearing off another little piece. I guess he was just trying to prolong the present opening :) We enjoyed another day relaxing with family and good food!