Benjamin Funnies

Matt and I have had this tradition the past couple of years of wrapping each other's gifts at the same time in our bedroom. One of us wraps on one side of the bed and the other on the other side. It's so fun and we talk and tease about what we got. This year, we wrapped the major presents separately, but decided to let Ben in on the wrapping of the stocking stuffers. Here is how it went:

Conversation #1
Ben: "Mommy there's candy in your stocking.
Matt: "Ben, it's a secret, we can't tell mommy what's in there."
Ben: (after waiting until daddy left the room for a minute and in a whisper) "mommy, there's candy" Then running to Matt's side of the bed and grabbing whatever it was he holds it up and says "wanna see mommy, it's candy!" I was a good little girl and looked the other way. ;-)

Conversation #2
Ben: "Mommy is that chocolate?"
Me: "Shhhhhh, it's a secret."
Ben: "is it chocolate??? It IS chocolate!"
Me: "Shhhh, you can't talk about it yet, it's a secret until tomorrow"
Ben: "Is daddy going to share?"
Me: "You'll have to wait and see"
Ben: "Daddy, are you going to share your chocolate?"

So much fun!

Christmas is Almost Here!

It's four days until Christmas and my mind is already going into break mode. Matt gets 11 days off including the weekends! Makes me feel like I'm in school again and going on Christmas bread. Needless to say, I should be cleaning and cooking and folding laundry to get prepared for our time as a family and then our travels to be with extended family. Not to mention wrapping presents! But I'm blogging instead. Hehe!

I'm done with my Christmas baking for the year, other than a bit of peppermint bark I've got in the works, but I just had to share these pictures of Benjamin helping out with and then enjoying some goodies last week. He was a great helper, even if I did have to separate all the sugar cookies he decorated from the rest. There was just an awful lot of finger licking going on! But that's what makes it so much fun.

 Stacking up the chocolate to get it ready for the fudge

 Sampling the sugar cookies. Yum!

 Matt's work Christmas party has a Santa every year and the little kids get gifts. Ben wouldn't sit on his lap, but was happy to stand next to him. :-)

After dinner at the Christmas party, all the kids went up on risers and sang Jingle Bells using their parents' car keys. It was pretty cute!

Merry Christmas!!

Benjamin Funnies

This morning Benjamin came to our door at 5am and asked us if we were going to get up. We of course told him no and that it was not morning and he needed to go back to bed. He does this quite often, although not usually quite that early, and many times does not go back to sleep, so I was a little nervous. He was up again at 6:30 to use the bathroom and again, I was shocked that he went back to bed. Finally at 8:30 (yes that's what I said) Matt and I both woke up for good and lay in bed wondering if it could possibly be true that Ben was still asleep. He set quite the record when he finally woke up at 9am. Yay for us! :)

But the best part was that the first words out of his mouth were "I closed my eyes and it worked! I went to sleep." Awesome!!

Winter has Arrived!

Denial can be such a great place to be, but it always has to end. I've been in severe denial about Indiana weather. One of the reasons we picked San Antonio as a place to live way back when was because it averages 300 days of sunshine a year and we wouldn't have to drive in winter conditions. So when we moved back to Indiana at the end of March and the weather turned warm two days later, I could almost pretend it was just normal. And when we experienced way more sunshine than normal and higher than normal temperatures all the way into November, it felt like maybe this could be normal. And then winter hit. Hard! We got several inches of snow over the weekend and today's high temperature is a bitter 19 degrees. Denial is over! But I have to admit that the snow is beautiful. Benjamin came to our bedroom door Saturday morning and announced "snowtime is here!" So we bundled up and went out to enjoy the wonder of his first big snow.

 Time for a snow angel

 

Snowball fights!

A Fall Review

I was looking back through pictures and realized that I haven't posted all that many on here recently. So now you get to be bombarded with them. Here is a review of what all we've been up to this fall:

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a bridal shower for my college roommate. I'm super excited for her and it was great to see some friends from college that I haven't seen in a super long time. 

In my effort to be more creative in my play with Benjamin, we found a fun recipe for super slime and Benjamin loved it! Purple seems to be a favorite color of his these days, so he wanted purple slime. His favorite part of this was making gloves out of the slime and clapping with them.

What is life without fun costumes? A few years ago we attended a costume party as George and Martha Washington. Since that was in our pre-child phase, I had more time to run around to different Goodwills picking things up. We didn't have nearly as much time this year, so I used super cheap cloth, iron on seam tape, and some hot glue to assemble our Fred and Wilma Flintstone costumes. And I totally enjoyed being a redhead for the night!

One of my favorite things about fall is going to a farm or pumpkin patch. This year we went with the mom's group I am a member of. You never know what the weather is going to be like in October, but this year was perfect! We took two of my sisters and had a blast! Benjamin loved the giant air-filled jumping pillow and the huge corn filled sand box. We also all enjoyed winding our way through the corn maze.

Getting covered with corn - this stuff was coming out of his clothes all the way home and even turned up in the washer and dryer. :) 

Loving the Jumping Pillow!

This was Benjamin's first time to be brave enough to feed an animal. We've attempted many petting zoo type things in the past and he has been terrified. This time he was in love with the tiny pony and kept feeding it all evening.

 Taking a ride on the corn train.

 More Jumping Pillow action.

 My sisters Abby and Bekah mid-jump.

In mid-October we took our first family vacation since Benjamin was born. It was wonderful! We rented a condo in Gatlinburg, TN and enjoyed the beauty of the mountains as well as some gorgeous hiking. Again, we were blessed by amazing weather.

Taking a ride on the luggage cart!

On our way to Gatlinburg, we stopped to vist my grandpa and his wife Vivar. Less than two weeks later, the Lord took her home, so we felt blessed to have gotten to see her one last time.

Scenic hiking in Smokey Mountain National Park

We only did one major hike while we were on vacation, but it was an eight mile one. Four miles up and four back down. Benjamin was a trooper and hiked about seven of those miles.

We took a tram from Gatlinburg up to a lookout area and enjoyed some beautiful views.

 This was the view from our condo. It was breathtaking. I could get used to waking up to this kind of view.

I was blessed this fall to get to see a friend I haven't seen in years. Both of these girls were some of my best friends from high school.

I've been on an organizing and decluttering kick lately and one day I looked at our bakers rack and just couldn't stand it. Everything in my house is pretty much dark wood, or dark metal, but this was off-white. So I was looking at it and it suddenly dawned on me that I could spray paint it. It is now a beautiful oiled rubbed bronze and I love it! Yay for only spending $10 to get a fresh new look.

And lastly, we have discovered that underwear makes a great mask. Haha!

Fear

The past couple of weeks have been rough ones. I've had so much fear about so many things. The biggest thing being foster care. I've battled insecurities in my parenting like never before and it's made me question this calling to foster care. The truth of the matter is, I just don't feel equipped. I want to run in the opposite direction. How can I have enough love for these kids when some days I struggle to extend unconditional love to the precious child I already have? How can I be a good mom to a child whose needs are so great when I can hardly figure out this parenting thing with the child I have? I know a lot of my fear is based on lies from the enemy, but I also think it's a challenge from the Lord to be at his feet all day every day. Not just for 20 or 30 minutes in the morning, but continually through the day. I'm not equipped. I can't do this. I have no idea how He's going to do it, but if He's calling me to do it, I have to be at his feet so that He can equip me.

Today I came across this post and it so encouraged me that I had to share it.

Fall Fun

It's been so much fun to be here for all the fall color again. I have to say, that was one of the things I missed most when we lived in Texas. Now that the leaves have fallen and we are predicted to have nights in the 20's this weekend, I'm ready to head back south, but we sure enjoyed the beauty while it lasted.

 Leaf Fight!!!