Catching Up

This month is passing far too quickly for me. June is our summer this year. Matt decided to take the month of June off from studying for the CPA so that we could have some much needed family time. It's been wonderful, but the time is going way too fast! Here are a few highlights from the month so far:

June 1st was our 7th wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been seven years since I walked down the aisle toward the most amazing man in the world. We didn't have babysitting for our anniversary, so we took Benjamin with us a did a mini-celebration dinner. Then last weekend we had an actual date night and celebrated for real. I'm so blessed to be married to my best friend and I'm thankful to get to go through all of life's ups and downs with him.

Since this is our month off, we decided we needed to take advantage of our zoo membership and take a trip to the zoo. Benjamin enjoys it more and more each time we go. The zoo opens for members at 7:30 during the summer, so it was great because we spent a couple of hours enjoying the animals before the heat and the crowds got to bad.

We discovered a new part of the zoo we hadn't been to before that has a lot of hands on stuff for kids. Most of it didn't open until after 9, so we will have to go back to check it out another time, but Benjamin enjoyed driving the little boat.

Last week, we had a little friend decide to make itself at home on our patio. Benjamin was thrilled and stood by the sliding glass door saying "liderd!" all afternoon. This momma was not so thrilled and is glad that he has decided not to come back this week. I don't know what I'm going to do when Benjamin starts bringing me those kinds of things.

On June 12, my sister Rachel gave birth to a precious baby boy! They named him Stephen Matthew and he is simply adorable. At least, from what I can tell by the pictures. I'm anxious to get up to Indiana to meet him in person and take a few pictures of my own. And I'm so thrilled that Benjamin has a boy cousin to play with, at least as soon as Stephen gets big enough.

This week we traveled to Austin for Olana's memorial service. It was a day mixed with both sadness and joy. We were blessed to be able to meet more of Olana's family and are so thankful to have had that opportunity. But it was sad too as the memorial service was such a reminder of how much we will miss Olana. It was so good to gather together with others and celebrate her life though, and I'm so thankful for the hope we have in knowing that she has no more pain and no more tears and that we will see her again someday.

Benjamin enjoyed meeting all of his birthfamily and especially enjoyed trying on this cowboy hat that belonged to one of them. Silly guy!

And in between all of our activities, Benjamin continues to be Benjamin and we are enjoying this stage of discovery. He continues to amaze me with his verbal skills and his ability to remember things. This morning I took two boxes of books to Half Price Books to sell them and when I pulled into the parking lot, he started saying "monkey, monkey!" The last time we went to Half Price Books was at the beginning of April, and in the kids section they had some stuffed monkeys. I could not believe he remembered them just by seeing the outside of the store.

Benjamin also continues to love just about any type of vehicle and can't seem to go anywhere without a car or truck in his hand. Yesterday I was getting ready to go out to run some errands and I told him it was time to go. As I was getting my shoes on, he gathered up his goodies and stood by the door to the garage waiting for me. I laughed when I realized that he had piled his car, three trucks, and a train inside his bigger train so that he could take them ALL to the store.


Another of Benjamin's favorite things to do is walk down to get the mail. He has now taken to putting on my shoes and clomping over to me saying "mail, mail"

Benjamin certainly loves silliness. His favorite game right now is closing me in a room and saying "Bye, later" right before he almost closes the door. Then he pushes it open again and says "HI!" and busts up laughing.

And most exciting of all is that he is learning to use the potty!!! We are not officially potty training yet because we are traveling to IN in July and I don't want to start until we will be in routine for at least a month after starting. But, for the last four days, he has wanted to get on the toilet in my bathroom and he's actually peed! Woohoo! I swore I wouldn't talk about potty stuff with other people when I had kids, and here I am blogging about it, but ya know, it's just an exciting milestone so I can't help it. I wanted to post a picture of him sitting his cute little self on the potty, but didn't have the camera handy when he was there, so maybe another day.

Sorry this was such a random post, but it's been a while, so it was bound to be random. I'll leave you with a few more pictures of the boy.