Thanksgiving festivities

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone...can't believe that means another year has done the same. Last year about this time we were in Minnesota, getting ready to come back to Idaho for the holidays and then move to Louisiana. Then have a baby. We had no idea how much could change in a years time. How much Ethan would grow and learn, and the joy our new little Ben would be to our family. We are blessed with so much it is practically impossible for me to find words. So let the faces tell all. We have it ALL and are so grateful to a loving Father in Heaven. Here are some of the festivities...

Since Ethan's name is hard for children to say we get various adorable pronunciations from his friends, but the best is his own version of his name, Ee-hee, so this picture depicts one of his favorite things to do as he coins it ee-hee howp (Ethan helps) If you cannot tell, he was delighted to help roll out cookie dough!

A whole lotta wrestling happens around our place...even the baby gets mixed in!

Love how much my hubby loves his boys, he's the best dad in the world!

Ben in all his chubby glory, even his rolls have rolls, and every one is delightful! No one can get enough of him!

Already such a character! Can't believe he's already 8 1/2 months!

Ethan giving kisses to "Flat Lizzie" Aunt Liz is on her mission so we bring her lifesize photo self to family gatherings...Ethan was a little confused...

Ethan following Ba pa "howping" with yardwork

This was a serious highlight for Ethan...he LOVES things with wheels that go vroom...in fact he calls them vrooms and another phrase we hear on repeat while we are riding in the car is ee-hee dries (Ethan drives) because he wants to go to home depot and ride in the carts with the steering wheels...oh to be two


Ethan also gave us a lesson on Vrooms over the holiday. He loves grandpa's truck, which is a diesel and makes a delightful vroom, Ethan calls it Ba pa's vroom. The orange car which I drive is typically called Mom's vroom (occassionally it gets to be Dad's vroom) and when we pulled out the vacuum at Grandma and Grandpa's house Ethan dubbed it as Grandma's vroom. Sorry Katie, that really seems like you got the bad end of that deal.

Well that's about it for that holiday....now on to another update that will take me a month to do haha!

Turtles in a half shell...

We were going to go all out as a family for Halloween and have all 3 boys be ninja turtles and I would be april o'neil (if you are unfamiliar with these characters then you really missed out on great 90's cartoons) however I ran out of time finishing mine and David's costumes...it was plenty of work to make two little turtles...anyway, Ben was a very uncooperative Rafael, and Ethan was Leonardo...their full costumes stayed on about 2 seconds but they were darn cute! 

fuzzy, but still cute, he was just too wiggly

The fakest smile ever but still cute! pumpkin carving was much too serious to take a break for a picture!

So he mostly looked concerned and ordered David around the whole time we carved pumpkins...apparently there is a very distinct way it must be done...he ensured that it was done just so, otherwise screeching ensued

Aren't they cute! Love my TMNTurtles

Our ward Young Women had a Halloween Carnival for the primary kids, and Ethan was so delighted to play a game and win a treat...well who wouldn't be right?

I think if I were to cut and paste all of my pictures together I could find a picture of each boy looking at the camera and smiling, but as it stands we are lucky to get anything at all...hence the fact that they are all fuzzy and unfocused! This is what you get when you have two VERY busy boys! We love them and had a blast taking Ethan to a couple of neighbors houses...his phrase of the night..." Mo cheet" (more treats)

 and he promptly sorted out all the suckers once we got home

It's Autumn Time!

So it is autumn time...it feels like the dead of winter now though. Thank goodness we took some walks and played hard in the leaves before the pretty part of autumn came and went seemingly overnight. It warms my heart to see my two boys learning to play together. Typically Ethan is "experimenting" on Ben, but good natured Ben just smiles and laughs...love my two boys, so different but so incredible! Here are some of our adventures of the last couple of weeks!

Playing in the leaves in our backyard

For some reason the best game was to see how many tiny crumbles of leaves he could get to stay on Ben's head...poor Ben

This is the day we went to the pumpkin patch! It was so much fun...so glad we went because the weather took a cold turn two days later and hasn't come back yet! Ethan was delighted and therefore so were we...he was having so much fun it pained him to try and look at the camera for mom at all!

Thanks Dave for being the only one to cooperate lol

the perfect pumpkin for pie!

Ethan was on a mission...he just kept wanting to pick up pumpkins...he could have wandered through the patch all day

still looking

He loved following me around and jabbering

Ethan is my little buddy...loves to be with his momma...such a recent development for being such a daddy's boy!

What could be more fun than a giant...CORN box...much cleaner and more festive than sand...the boys LOVED it! Ben thought it was dinner

waiting in line for the haystack slide...another HUGE hit with Ethan

Nothing like finishing off a great night with some snuggles and bedtime stories...this is what chilly nights were made for!

Long Overdue Post...Ben at 6 months

So once again I am rather slow at updating, it's just that we are so busy with house projects and playing our little hearts out before it is too cold to enjoy being outside. I feel bad because I do want our posterity to have a little glimpse of what we were like, but more importantly I want my boys to grow up enjoying life and living to its fullest, so for that reason I won't apologize for playing hard!
     Ben will be 7 months in less than a week and I failed to record his 6 month stats...I already don't know the exact numbers anymore so I'll give it my best shot from what I remember...

At 6 months he weighed about 17.5 lbs. and was somewhere around the 55%
He was 26.5 inches long, which put him around the 37%

Those aren't exact, but hey, most important is that he is healthy and growing. We thought from the beginning that he was going to tower over his older brother, which would probably help him deal with the torment he receives daily (all out of love) but at this point he is quite a bit smaller now than Ethan was...who knows we will just see what happens. He is the perfect little angel and I don't know what I would do without his infectious smile. He is so easy to love and so delightful to snuggle.

At 6+ months Ben...

Is eating solids pretty well...loves sweet potatoes, squash, and is OBSESSED with graham crackers...seriously the boy could eat them all day
-He is SUPER serious about food in general...we don't mess around when it comes to feeding
-He rolls over both ways and sits up on his own, still falls once in a while, but overall pretty stable
-He loves to blow raspberries when he is being playful
-Smiles every time he wakes up and sees his brother...he sure does love his Ethan
-loves to play with faces...his motor skills are improving so he loves using his fingers
-still has a little old man hairline, but it is slowly filling in on top...I adore his head
-still no teeth, the bottom left keeps breaking the skin and then going back under- it's killing me
-loves his thumb, but is moving on to sucking on his big toe as well!

-Loves loves loves to play in the grass

I just can't handle how much I adore this little boy...he just smiles all the time...

And to wrap up, here are my two munchkins...Ethan was determined that he was going to hold Ben, and that Ben was going to LIKE IT!

Bet you've never seen a rain gutter do this before...

These boys of mine are everything that is important and perfect in life...I hope that anyone who ever reads this who only has girls is not offended by my serious adoration for boys, but I can't imagine my life with anything else at this point. I've come to realize as I watch our own little family and other families with children, that it doesn't matter whether you thought you wanted one or the other, or believed you would have a girl or a boy, once you hold that little baby in your arms THAT BABY is the only thing you ever wanted. So as for me, I only ever wanted my two babies to be my little Ethan and Benjamin and I am completely in awe and adoration of their cuteness, cleverness, and absolute perfectness every day of my life, and I am pretty darn grateful to my husband for working so hard to provide a good life for us, and allowing me to be home with my sweet little rascals...Ben is growing out of babyhood faster than I can stand, and Ethan is full swing in to little boyhood...we say it all the time as we watch his mind go to work, He is ALL BOY!

We typically strip him down to diaper still for mealtime, I got tired of scrubbing spaghetti sauce, cheese, juice, etc. from all of his clothing...poor Ben could be in for it with hand me downs lol

It is rare to find this child in a moment where he is not smiling...he is the most content baby and he loves to socialize

Ben is just starting to think about sitting up, he does pretty well until he gets excited, and then he just falls on his face!

Apparently Ethan wants to have super arm strength...he used to put cereal boxes on his arms, or shoes, but last week he discovered the rain gutter spout, and now, rain drainage will never be the same!

And so begin my days of cape tying...

Silly Ben loves grass, until his face is in it, but he loves the feel on his hands and feet!

Looks like someone was snitching in my box of pears, and I don't think it was Ben or David...Ethan, were you a little hungry? lol

is slowly talking more and more, combining words and saying things that actually make sense sometimes...he loves to sing songs, especially the cleanup song which sounds like "dee da" instead of cleanup but I love it, and his animal sounds are pretty great, toddlers are hysterical and oh so clever!

Well my blog needs a whole revamp done, so who knows, it will probably be another month and a half until I get another post up, so I hope I can be forgiven by my posterity for doing a terrible job at journaling! 

Everything is Cuter in Mini X 2

I had NO IDEA how fun it would be to have two little boys so close together. I think in my mind I always just thought you had either a boy or girl first, and then the opposite on round two. So I had never thoroughly processed the idea of two in a row, but there is almost nothing sweeter. It's like how I've always said that everything is cuter in mini, but one more step on that ladder is that it's even cuter if it's mini, and then there's two...SERIOUSLY...so here goes, for viewing pleasure and memory sake so I can look at these pictures someday down the road when they are teenagers at the same time and I want to lock them in their rooms for a decade...and remind myself of how much I adore them!

Kisses!

Two matching diaper bottoms!

Two faces adoring each other

Even more adoration

Two snuggle buddies

So much snuggling, and adoring

Does it get any sweeter?! I say not!

Summertime is for getting messy outside and loving every minute of it!

I had no idea how I could love another face as much as I adored Ethan's, how on earth could you love another quirky personality, another squishy bottom and rolly legs, how would it be possible to enjoy kissing another double chin, and pinching fat rolls as much as with your first...and then Ben came, my whole world turned again, and now I have two little long eyelashed, button nosed boys that have me wrapped completely around their fingers and I wouldn't have it any other way!