Daily funny

Whenever we ask Ben how his day was at Wee Creekers or what he learned at school, he always starts naming all his friends and teachers. "Gabin, MarTIN, Ewen, Tabum, Yerra, Maggots..." (Gavin, Martin, Susan, Tatum, Jerra, Mattux...)

I forgot to say that Ben called Darrell's cat Alex "Aggots!"

Hungry Mommy

I make a full sandwich for me and a half sandwich for Ben and twice in one day he ate the middle out of his half sandwich (avoiding the crusts and getting his cheeks messy like kids do), walked over to me, put his crust on my plate and said it was Mommy's, took my full sandwich and said it was Benny's. I guess he was hungry that day! Or he's moving up in the world to the full sandwich size.

Visit to Grammy's

We took a last hoorah trip to Almena to visit Grammy Pat and Grandpa Darrell and see some 4-H animals and ride some rides at the Norton home-owned carnival. I'll try to post some photos tonight. Ben really enjoyed himself - he "drove" a car and a tractor, he jumped in the jump tent for a very long time (and held his own against the bigger, concussion-causing kids!), he rode the carousel with Grammy, and decided at the last minute he did not want to ride the big ferris wheel. He really wanted to go on the roller coaster that looked scary to me, so I decided to try it. He seemed to enjoy the first two loops, but didn't like the last three. It was very jerky and I tried to hold his neck. He loved playing the games, but didn't understand that you really only got three tries to break plates with a baseball - he wanted to continue throwing forever. And there was one little kids game that just has balls rolling into slots and the number of the slot tells you which little prize you won. He didn't understand the point of it and wanted to roll the balls over and over. He played Sinko with Grandpa Darrell too. I've never seen Sinko before. He broke one plate and he got two ping pong balls in glasses too and won . He tasted his first cotton candy. We stayed at a motel and Ben was always excited to go to "Ranma's house." He really enjoyed "Dawell's" company, just like he enjoys being with Albert and Michael.

Mommy back to work

I'm back at work and not happy about it at all. :-( Tim is at home getting to know Oliver better. I really enjoyed this maternity leave and did not want to go back to the hectic life of working and commuting and stressing, etc. Oh well. We all have to work.

Black Stallion narrated

Ben loves movies, as we all know. We recently watched Black Stallion, one of my favorite old(er) movies. Ben narrated the movie for us. I started writing down everything he said so I could put it here. If you've seen the movie recently, or remember it, you'll know what he is talking about. I'll help with a few hints.
- boat! (they're on a boat)
- horsey! (there's a horse)
- raining! (there's a big storm)
- swimming! (the boat sinks, so the horsey and Alec are swimming)
- barefoot! (Alec is walking barefoot on the beach)
- climbing! (Alec is climbing on rocks)
- rock!
- tunnel! (Alec sleeps in a little cave in the rock)
- horsey!
- horsey tangled! (Black's ropes get caught on the rocks)
- snake!
- bite! (the snake will bite Alec)
- horsey!
- rescue! (Black rescued Alec from the snake)
- dark! (night comes)
- running! (Black and Alec are running)
Then Ben bites his finger eating popcorn and cries and gets distracted and doesn't watch the rest of the movie.

:-)

All aboard!!

Ben's vocabulary is increasing by the minute, and we can't tell where it is coming from! He started saying "Ahbort!" and after thinking for a while, we thought he must be saying "All Aboard!" and he sings "Clean up, clean up." He got both of those from Wee Creekers.
We got lots of fruit at the flea market and I made popsicles to use up some of it. Ben calls them "pockles" and LOVES them. We also got him a used tricycle and he calls it a "bikel."

Other cute new words:
Octopus = opt-gus
Madagascar (the movie) = Maggots gacar
Slinky = hinky

Oliver has started talking too! He says the exact same thing Ben said: it sounds like saying "uncle" or "igloo" with your mouth closed. I think it ends up being Ah-goo later. It sounds so sweet.

Oliver's heritage

We always said Ben had a lot of Chieves in him, and looked like my Uncle Scott (Albert's brother). Donna always said she saw Pat in Ben, and there is one baby picture of Pat we saw that looked very much like Ben. Now Donna says Oliver looks like me, and she sent three baby pictures of me to compare. What do you think?

Oliver at two months

Here is Oliver's two-month photo. We went to the doctor yesterday and he got three shots and Ben got one shot. Lots of Waggoner wailing, but it didn't last too long. They're both pretty tough. Oliver weighs 13 pounds.

Here are Ben's and my Play-doh creations.

Here is Oliver almost-smiling.
Here is Ben painting. He was more interested in painting himself than the paper.


Ben often tells us to draw or paint instead of doing it himself, so I was instructed to paint this picture. Ben told me what colors to make everyone, and said he had to have toes, so he has toes. The next day he said we needed eyes, but we haven't added eyes yet. He tells me who is who on the picture while I'm making dinner. "Ovver," "Benny," "Mommy" and "Dad."Ben in the baby swing and Oliver trying to sit up in the Bumbo chair.

Non-boys post?

How about a post not about the boys, for a change of pace? Here are some random photos. Here is the canyon where we live. Our house is about 8 miles from the intersection you see, and the library is about 9 miles from the intersection, so we are really enjoying mountain living while remaining close to civilization.

We have a horrible "infestation" of wild rose, which has quadruple the number of thorns as regular rose and spreads like wildfire and drives me nuts. Since Ben likes to be barefoot so much, I have tried to destroy them so he can walk in our glorious yard without getting stuck by thorns, but it is a LOSING battle. If I pull up one plant and try to get most of its roots, 20 plants grow back within a week. Here is a photo of the actual roses, which bloom on only a few of them, and I don't consider them worth the thorns.


Albert and I tried to pull up all the wild rose along the house here when they visited in May, and now you can see there are hundreds more sprouts already, all lined up along the house. Arrrgh!!

On the other hand, Columbines are just gorgeous, and here are several in bloom.
We thought these were Hens and Chicks, but alien heads sprouted out of them. Pretty creepy. You can tell I do not have a green thumb at all.

We have managed to paint two rooms so far this summer - our bedroom and my bathroom. I meant to buy a taupe color for the bedroom, and occasionally it looks taupe, but mostly it turned out to be a wimpy lavender. I replaced the dark purple on the wall behind the bed with a brown (again, completely different from the paint chip in the store!)Here you can see the lavender.
And here's my bathroom: a rich turquoise to go along with the brown fixtures. I'm enjoying it.
And finally, a photo of my new car - a 2005 dark blue Subaru Forester. The poor C-RV was limping along and it feels much better to have the kids in something reliable.

Delightful picnic and camping trip

Ben's school, Wee Creekers, has a picnic every year for staff and students and we were delighted to be invited. It was held at some campsites in Golden Gate Canyon State Park, just up the road from us. The campground is called Aspen Meadows, and with all the rain we've had, the aspens are beautiful, so you can imagine it was a gorgeous setting. It was great to meet other moms and get to know Linda, the director, better. It turns out there was an extra tent site, so we ran home to get our camping gear and came back. Ben had a blast playing with his friends. I would say Martin is his best friend right now, and Martin is such a sweetie. He's four, I think, and really takes care of Ben. He and all the kids say "MarTIN" instead of the usual "Mart'n." I think his parents actually pronounce it that way too, therefore that would be the correct pronunciation. Ben puts extra emphasis on the TIN. Our neighbor, Mattux, was camping too, and Ben ran around yelling, "Maggots!! MarTIN!! Lightin Ween!!" (Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars). He loved visiting other people's tents and spent a lot of time inside "his" tent and our tent. He couldn't really keep up with the 4- and 5-year-old boys as they ran around fighting over guns and climbing on rocks. Ben also insisted on being barefoot, oddly, and got lots of comments about having tough feet. Below are photos of Tim at the picnic, Ben in someone's tent, Joanna with Oliver in the Moby Wrap, and a group photo. MarTIN is in the reddish baseball cap looking at the camera, and Mattux is squatting and has red pajama pants on. The lady in the cowboy hat is Linda, the Wee Creekers director/owner.