Ben 10

Finally the day is here! Ben has earned his new toy. He worked very hard for this moment. He has lost quite a few stickers along the way only to have to work hard to get them back by doing chores. Here he and Charlie are this morning after they filled the last box in with a sticker!





Of course Charlie has "earned" a toy too. He has tried to go to bed on his own and done very well. He almost screwed the whole thing up for himself this morning when he told Ben to "shut up" but he took his punishment like a man so he still got to go for a toy!


Here we are at the store trying to decide which on to get. We put the best candidates on the floor and as they narrowed it down i hung them back up.

The final selection!

Introducing "Armadrillo", Ben's new toy.

And, "Ultimate Spider Monkey", Char's new toy.

Now here is Ellodie who got dressed up for the big occasion in her new, giant bow from Celia.

Here is some more exciting news to share....Ellodie rolled over this afternoon!

And, rooollllllliingggg....

Finally, the most exciting and most important news of all...our new baby cousin Greyson was born on tuesday!!! We are so excited to meet him and proud of aunt maggie for all her hard work. This announcment has been delayed a few days due to technical difficulties on Uncle Rusty's part, he kept sending pictures of Grey to some random soul out there thinking they were going to me. Now that I finally have a good pic, Here he is....

100% chicken genius!

4/27/11

Well, the boys have found something they love better than dessert! I left them with their father for the evening last night only to come home to the overwhelming smell of fried chicken. I should have known something was up when Scott said, Don't be mad when you get home but....

I guess the 3 of them were driving home from soccer practice when they got hungry and Scott spotted the church's fried chicken. He got a HUGE (literally 15 piece) box of fried chicken and
they all went to town. They absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE church's chicken or if you are charlie it is church shiken. They ate if for breakfast and lunch today!

HONESTLY!

Easter weekend

We had a GREAT day today! It was a really, really relaxing and fun Easter! We ate breakfast together and then went to church. Ellodie looked lovely and as usual the most put together of the entire family, of course, she is a lady after all! It was kind of one of those days when Scott and I let them do whatever, so they ate some candy after breakfast and a donut after church. Then to really reinforce our "parents of the year title", we let the boys choose lunch, which was none other than.....McDonald's! We came home and had a great Easter egg hunt through the house. My Mom and Steve came over and here are some of the pics we took.

Charlie wanted to put his sweater over his head and let the arms hang down so that he could pretend to be an easter bunny.

"Can I PLEEEEEASE have more candy mom?!?" "OK Ben"

Finally, this is how we finished our day. Scott read to the boys in bed while I snuggled with Ellodie and watched a great 20/20 about a hunting accident....or was it really an accident!

Oh, one more hilarious thing....we let chars skip his nap yesterday and he kept falling asleep at the dinner table. Here is the video.

Another Day In Paradise

4/23/11

Not much has been going on here at our house. I have been trying to get back in shape, which if this blog was about me I would have PLENTY to talk about! As far as the boys go, it is just like the movie groundhog day, same week over and over! We are really just waiting for our new cousin Greyson to arrive down in San Antonio so that we can go see him. In the meantime the boys have been playing in the back yard alot. Yesterday they started a new game where Chars puts a bucket on his head and Ben hits the bucket with a stick or another bucket. This was a really fun and entertaining game for a few minutes until Charlie figured out that it hurt!

Another thing they have been doing is going to the YMCA with me during the week. They now LOVE the song "YMCA" and think it is even cooler that the Village people sing it because our YMCA is known as the Village Y!

My sweet Ben is at the age were he wants everything he sees on TV. Although it literally drives me CRAZY that we have to repeat the same discussion over and over about each thing he mentions, I do it anyway and really can do it in my sleep at this point. MOM, I want that! Ok, what is it....It is a dragon that spits up goo....Oh, how cool Ben. Well you will have to wait til your birthday or Christmas. He is on to the fact that I literally pay no attention to what he says about these toys now so he started asking for the larger, more ridiculous items to make sure I am listening. For example the other day it started out the same....Mom, I want that...Ok, what is it...that, you have to look at the TV....Well Ben that is a commercial for Disney World, does that mean you want to go to Disney World....No MOM, I want it, I want Disney World.....Ok, maybe I can get it for your bday or xmas (I am not falling for that)! So now to avoid the discussion altogether we started a game where he gets to earn stickers for going to bed on time with NO FUSSING OR BACK SCRATCHING and for cleaning up his toys. He puts the stickers on a chart and when he gets ten he gets any toy he wants (under $20). This is his chart below, he did have 4 stickers on it but he lost 2 of them yesterday for not minding!

Token Ellodie picture in her outfit from Maggie...

Just some cute pictures

Cute pics from this last few weeks.

The extreme snuggler

4/13/11 Charlie has always loved to snuggle! Ben on the other hand likes to snuggle with me and a few select others but in general is very judicious about it! Honestly, charlie would snuggle with a flea and probably has! Scott and I were nervous about baby Ellodie coming and wanted to make sure the boys still felt very loved and special, so we got them bunk beds to unveil just before she came. Of course our thoughts were that they would love to sleep in them soooo much that they would go right to sleep every night with no crying and that they would in fact run to their beds with excitement just like we do every night! The plan was for Ben to be on the top bunk and Chars on the bottom. Naturally they had different plans! Of course they loved the bunk beds....they loved to hide in the bottom bunk, climb up on the top bunk (not with the ladder but by scaling up the side) and leap from the top onto the floor below! At night the bunk bed just turned into any other 'ol bed, a place your parents force you to go every night for 8 hours! Ben agreed to sleep on the top but chars was NOT sleeping alone on the bottom! At first he tried to be tricky, he would get in the bottom bunk and act as if everything was going according to plan and then as soon as the door was shut he would sneak up into Ben's bunk and "snuggle" with him. 1-2 Minutes after I shut the door I would hear Ben yelling " mooooom, Chars is in my bed AGAIN". Eventually Chars would not even acknowledge the bottom bunks existence. I did not care if they slept together but Ben wasn't a fan. I can't blame him, Chars literally kept saying "nuggle ben, nuggle ben" and would then literally lay completely on top of him. This must have been very frightening for Ben to not be able to move or maybe even be able to breath very well. I tried to teach Char how to snuggle while still allowing the other person to live but he just LOVES to "nuggle". As his mother I love this about him because I could snuggle that way with him forever! After a couple of weeks Chars was back in his own room! Ben has been very happy and sleeps soundly in his top bunk! Chars has taken to "nuggling" with Ellodie now at nap time which I have put a picture of in a prior post. This is sweet but obviously very dangerous and I can never, ever leave the room while they are napping together. He has rolled over on top of her several times in an attempt to get closer! Chars just tries to make do at night with his dozens of stuffed animals. I actually went in last night to turn of his Christmas carols....Chars sleeps to veggietales Christmas carols every night and I go in and turn them off after he falls asleep....and found him asleep with a dragon towel wrapped over his head and around his body, stuffed animals all around, and a book on his face. I took this video cause I thought it was sooo cute!

Charlie's hair cut

4/8/11

Charlie's hair is great. In fact, I love (let me rephrase), loved his golden curls that he had around christmas time but at some point I realized I would have to cut it. Ben was always getting his hair cut because he was born with such a manly head of hair, but Char's took awhile to grow it, and by then I loved it long and put off cutting it. His hair was down below his shoulders when I thought he was starting to look like a girl, so I tried to trim it up. Well, by the age of two kids get really opinionated! I tell you, if you haven't already cut their hair by then they will let you know if they are "ok" with it or not. Chars literally FREAKED OUT when I tried to cut his hair after christmas. We tried candy, games, toys, any form of bribery to get the job done and we ended up with a mess but it was at least "cut". He acted as if he had nerve endings in his hair, REALLY. That hair cut at least bought us some time and I have tried to desensitize him with frequent but brief exposures to scissors! I thought we were ready, so the other day we all went to get Charlie's big hair cut at the salon! We made a huge deal about how he was a big boy now and how Ben loved to get his hair cut and how it did not hurt, etc. When we got there he, again, was not havin it! Kari ( my sweet hair dresser and nearest and dearest friend) was soooo patient and did her best on the hair but the results were not good, AT ALL. What could I expect when she was working on a moving target. He threw his head all over and she just tried to snip at the hair as it went by! Kari is wonderful at her job and has standards for what she will let walk out of her salon with her name attached. She suggested we just shave it clean and move on! So, that's what we did. Chars would only let me do it, so Kari stood over my shoulder and tried to tell me how to do it. The problem was that she and I were both laughing so hard that we were trying not to pee our pants while we did it, so there are some imperfections in the final product. He loves it, of course!

Hello kitty and Micheal Jackson

I have a few cute stories from the boys to share so here we go....

This will be funny for those people who know of Ben's strange obsession with Micheal Jackson. It started a loooong time ago when MJ first died and they were doing a tribute on the radio. The song "Thriller" came on while Scott and Ben were in the car and that was it, Ben was in love! Ben has always loved wolves and coyotes but at this time in his life they were his favorite thing to talk about. When he heard the werewolves on the song he couldn't stand it, he was soooo excited. He wanted to listen to it over and over again. He then started asking questions about MJ and learning all of his other songs. Now, what happened next I still cannot explain. Why in god's name my husband thought this was a good idea I have no clue, but while I was gone one afternoon he sat down with Ben and watched the entire Thriller video on youtube. Now just to clarify, Ben had JUST turned TWO years old a few weeks before this. Well anyways it scared him really badly but he still asked to watch it over and over every day ( which I did not do). OK, so time goes by and my BFF Anthony was here just this November visiting. We were all sitting at the table having breakfast and we were discussing animals. Ben was talking about habitats, etc. and he started listing off nocturnal animals. Anthony then asked him, well Ben what else is nocturnal and Ben responded "Well Micheal Jackson is nocturnal, owls are nocturnal, blah blah blah". We both nearly cried we were laughing so hard. Maybe it is MJ's huge eyes and white skin or maybe it is that stupid video he watched. Yesterday we were sitting in the car and PYT, one of Ben's favorite Micheal Jackson songs came on. He turned to Charlie who was sitting in the car seat next to him and very seriously said " Micheal Jackson lives alone in the desert with a bunch of coyotes, he is kind of strange". I don't know why I find this so funny but I just wonder what he thinks Micheal Jackson is in his mind.

Moving on... Charlie went to Emma's birthday party this weekend. The theme was Hello Kitty and he got a Hello Kitty ring and a Hello Kitty juice bottle as party favors. Well let me tell you, he has not taken off that ring since and he will ONLY drink out of the kitty bottle. It is just cute that he loves Hello Kitty so much!

Today Charlie was trying to sing "he has the whole world in his hands, the whole world in his hands" etc and Ben looked at him and said "Actually chars that's not possible. He doesn't really have the whole world in his hands cause there are roads and streets and pipes under the ground sooo that would just not be possible, it's not true". Chars was like whatever man!