Moving = Exhaustion

It's been a long time since I've updated the blog, but we moved into our new house on the 21st and with spending every free moment of every day either packing/unpacking or cleaning, there just wasn't a lot of things to photograph. Oh look - here's Michelle cleaning the disgusting dog fur out of her new freezer! Oh look - here's one of her cleaning dog fur out of the washing machine! Oh and these are good - here's a picture of Michelle packing the toiletries and one of her unpacking them again the next day in a different location! Fascinating! Thought I'd save you that fun stuff. How about pictures of me at the doctor's finally getting anti-biotics after dealing with a sinus infection for 5 weeks thinking it was just a pesky cold? Or a thousand pictures of Benjamin with a runny nose and a double ear infection? Didn't feel the need to take those either. Let's just say it was a stressful, not suitable for blogging kind of month.

However, amoxicillian is a wonder and luckily Benjamin and I are both doing much better. So, here are a few pics from the last week while my mom was back again helping us crazy sickies get things done. Pictures of the house itself will come as soon as things look a little more presentable.

One of my favorite things to do with Benjamin in stores is to find the toys and let him play with all the stuff I'm too cheap/too sensible to buy him. Bless all the toy manufacturers who package their toys in open boxes that say, "Try me!" on them. Free entertainment.


Just hanging out with Dad on the couch after church. (That's a pen he's playing with, by the way).


Now that we have stairs, Benjamin is learning how to go down them safely. He's done it before on smaller stair cases, but ours is pretty hefty. For some reason, he always wants to go down forward (sliding on his bum) rather than on his stomach like he goes up.


We played with bubbles at German mom's group and he loved it immensely. So we had to go buy some to play with at home too. He's definitely a fan, but even more of the wand than the bubbles. He took the wand from me and wanted to dunk it himself, blow them himself and then rub the wand all over the yard. He kind of figured out how to blow, but never thought to put the wand in front of his mouth as he was doing it.







Sometimes Benjamin insists on getting up before he's really awake. This time Kelly indulged him and provided a warm, if perhaps a slightly bony, pillow on which to continue his snooze.


Benjamin loves putting things on his head and tonight he kept doing it with a dishtowel. He'd put it on his head and then go running over to the mirror we have at the end of the hall to see how he looked, before running back to me so I could see him too. Somewhere in that process, it would inevitable fall off and so he'd struggle to replace it and go running off again. It was so adorable. My old camera and the natural delay between pressing the button and taking of the picture, caused me to miss the best shots, but here's a cute one of him running back as it started to fall off. He had so much fun. He was laughing the whole time. I love watching him developing a sense of humor like that. The little things he finds funny are so charming. During lunch it was the sound of his sippy cup rolling across the table. He rolled it back and forth about 20 times, laughing uproariously the entire time.

Happy Birthday Benjamin!!

This week was Benjamin's first birthday!! We celebrated the momentous occasion with a visit from Grandma, his first bite of cake, and a dinner at Red Robin (one of the few non-smoking establishments in this state). Later in the week we also went to a nearby beach. Benjamin seemed to have a great time. He also got plenty of cool presents and new clothes. What a lucky kid!

He also managed to fall face first on a pine cone and cut his cheek just in time for all the pictures. :) So, that's what the marks on his left cheek are, in case you're wondering.

Here are some of my favorite pictures:

We decorated the kitchen the night before and surprised him with the cake and decorations in the morning. As you can guess, the streamers were his favorite.


His first taste of cake. Chocolate with chocolate pudding on top. Guess who made the cake? :) Surprisingly, he stayed really clean. This is as messy as he got.


He got lots of birthday cards and loved looking at all of them.


Then we went to Red Robin. He had a blast playing around, but his favorite part was when they brought out the big icecream and sang to him. He clapped as they approached, but once they started singing to him, he was too enthralled to do anything but stare.




Later in the week we went to the beach and played in the grass.





All that excitement left him pretty worn out in the afternoons.


Just a few more cute photos of our fun week.