Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Sick & Digital Scrapbooking

Well, so much for posting every week! But I had a good excuse for last week, everybody here was sick with a nasty cold. Last Tuesday, I felt miserable and I'm sure Ben was feeling the same. So we didn't do much. We are all better now, thankfully, with only mild runny noses left. Although, Ben woke up yesterday morning with pink eye. So he was home with me and of course no work done!

Last week, I also started something I've been wanting to do for a while and that is take one of Jessica Spraque's digital scrapbooking classes. You can check out her website and classes here if you are interested. I'm taking the "Now we're rockin'" intermediate class right now and just finished up my second assignment. It's a four week class with one assignment per week with challenges and daily emails. It is awesome! I love it. I just wish I had more time! The story of my life! Here are my first two assignments:


We had a fun weekend. Heather, Dave, Max, Mareta and Michael Oberheim came up for a short but sweet visit. It was loud and rambunctious but so fun to have everybody here and sleeping in one house. I am just so happy and excited to have space and room to do things like this finally. I love my new house! I got some great pictures of everybody sledding down the driveway on Sunday but haven't uploaded them to my computer so I'll have to post those on a later day. Ben was just thrilled with the "big" kids. He couldn't take his eyes off of them. He loved watching Max and Michael play with his trucks. I can't believe Michael is almost 5 and Max and Mareta are 7. Where does the time go! They have gotten so tall and are such little people now. I can remember seeing them as babies at Lake George their first summer.

I can hear Ben stirring from his nap so I have to get going. I'm sure there is more to say but it will have to wait until next time!

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Sticks, rocks and mud

Has it really been a week already since I posted last! Where has the time gone? Although I think posting once a week will be my goal. I think that's a reasonable goal so we'll see how it goes.

So much to talk about...where should I begin? Ben officially turned 20 months last Wednesday. He is growing up so fast. He is talking so much better in the last couple of weeks. It just amazes me. Even Tammy commented on it yesterday. Here are some of my favorite versions of his words right now.

* fafall = waffles
* serser = ceral
* dump digger = daddy's dump truck
* oooeee = wubie (our word for his pacifier)
* self = by myself
* baff = bath
* yogeet = yogurt
* ire = fire truck
* wessel = go into Mon & Dad's room and "wrestle" on the bed

He is doing so well feeding himself right now and has really started to show an interest in doing it all by himself.


He does a great job considering and thankfully has started wearing a bib again. He loves to zoom around on his radio flyer scooter. He absolutely loves books. His favorite thing right now is to go lay on Mommy and Daddy's bed to read stories and when he's home he wants to do this several times a day. He is starting to identify pictures in books and tell we what they are and also tell me which book he wants to read. (ie ire weeooo weeoo = fire truck book and the fire truck says wheeooo wheeoo) He still loves to be outside and really really enjoyed the 60 degree weather we had last week.

He doesn't seem to mind the cold and likes the snow but has a hard time walking in it. He really enjoyed playing in the mud and puddles last week when it was so warm.

His favorite thing outside right now other than going to see Daddy's "dump" in the "shop" is throwing "ocks" in the puddles outside. Sticks and puddles are also fun too!

Last Friday night we celebrated Papa's (John's dad) birthday. We had him over for a ham dinner and it was the first time Ben went over to him on his own and asked to get up in his lap! That's a big milestone! Also, yesterday (1/15/07), Ben didn't take a nap but spent 1 1/2 hours playing in his crib and when I went in to get him he had taken off his duck slippers, his socks and his pants and thrown them all on the floor. That's the first time he's taken off his pants by himself! Thankfully the diaper stayed on!

I've been keeping busy trying to get all of our year end stuff done. Hoping to get our Christmas cards out in the mail finally today! Needing to get back to the finishing the upstairs of the house. John's been fortunate enough to get a new house project in January. It's nice to have some income this time of year! So he has been busy at that. We finally moved the big chest freezer from the shop to the basement of the new house!! Yeah! It's funny how the little things like that, which make your life so convenient are so nice to get done! It really is so nice to have a house finally and have some space. Even if it's not done and there's a ton of boxes and stuff in the basement that needs to be dealt with.

So that's about it for us for now. I've got to get back to getting some work done. See ya next week!

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

A start

Well I've done it. I've jumped on the blogging band wagon. Why you might ask? First, I really want to document and remember our everyday lives. I want to get those memories in scrapbooks for myself because I love looking at them. But I don't have much time to scrapbook. So I thought, if I recorded a few memories here with photos and printed it out it would allow me to remember the things to scrapbook when I do have the time. Why not just keep a journal? Well, I do sort of and that leads to the second reason, sharing our photos and events with family and friends. We have some many contacts spread all over the country that want to know how we are doing and how Ben is growing but to keep up by email is very time consuming. I'm also terrible about sharing the photos I take. So that leads to this blog. I'll jot down some memories for me to remember and post some photos and thoughts to share with family and friends and hopefully spend less time and feel better about it than I do know.

I've been an avidly reading the blogs of some of my favorite scrapbook celebritys for at least a year now and that has really inspired me to keep track of our everyday daily routine lives more. For no special reason other than I just want to be able to look back in 10, 20 years and remember those little things that I know I'll forget. Plus I wanted a place I could share photos with friends and family easier.

So here it goes! I hope I can keep up with it. Not take too much time but still record some moments and photos that I want to remember forever.

On that note, last weekend John was able to move Ben swing into the basement. He was able to attach it to holes that already existed in the short metal beam. Here's what it looks like
(Look at all that stuff to deal with in the background!)Ben absolutely loves it! He has always loved to swing of course but now (especially with the winter weather) he can't get enough of it! I timed him yesterday and he swang for 22 minutes before he was even remotely interested in getting out! He calls it "winging". He gets this pleading look on his face and says to me "winging?" It is sooo cute! My heart just melts. He trys to squeeze under the gate and to go downstairs and gets so excited when I say ok..lets go winging!

Is that a happy face or what!

So that is it for today. My first blog entry and hopefully the first of many more. If you take the time to read it, be sure to leave a comment and let me know!

Ta Ta for now!
Heather