duck was a neutral party

This just might be my favorite picture book. We borrowed it from the library recently and Ben and I both had a good laugh as we read it to Benson. I highly recommend it.

we are real campers now

Yesterday we decided to go camping. So we went to Walmart (where I got into a fight with the check out clerk, funny but just another reason to forever VETO walmart p.s. I won), bought a tent and some hot dogs and marshmallows and took off to the Jemez (pronounced HAY- mess) waterfall. Here are some things you should do before you leave to go camping. 1. Check the weather. People, it is not a good idea to set out for a great adventure in the mountains without checking the weather. Did it rain you might ask? Yes, yes it did. Did your $40 tent hold up you might ask? No, no it did not. Thankfully we had an air mattress so it was just a little pool on the floor and we stayed dry. Going back to the list now, 2. Take more things to keep yourself warm than you would ever think you would need. I froze all night and ended up "sleeping" with Banks because he was cold too. Sleeping is a relative term here, because although I was surely not fully awake and walking around, I was definitely not sleeping either. Although Ben and Benson seemed to have faired much better than I. Anyway it was cold and rainy and we ran out of fire wood but this leads me to... 3. Always camp near a whole bunch of nice elderly people. We met the nicest people up there! They gave us fire wood and graham crackers (for s'mores) and even offered to let us sleep in their RV the next night if we wanted. It was a hilarious trip and although many things went wrong we all had a really great time and might even go again soon..ish. The final photo is of us the next morning. Benson sure looks cheery. :)

this little piggie

Last night while I was making dinner (breakfast foods for the 3rd night in a row, mmmmmm...) Benson did the cutest thing. Banks was in his little bouncer chair and Benson went over and started playing "This little piggie" with him. He would say, "This one? (holding a different appendage each time) Okay!" and launch into another round of the game. Banks was smiling so much and it was so sweet to see Benson being the big brother I hope he will end up being.

bibidy bee bop shu-op

Last night we went on a date (with our third wheel Banks) to Seasons (a really nice restaurant in ABQ) to listen to their Saturday Night Jazz on the Rooftop on it's last night this year. Wow. It was so amazing. We sat on the balcony with candles, overlooking cobblestone streets and a beautiful fountain and listened to great music and ate Tomato Caprese and Peach Tart. It would have been a perfect date if Banks hadn't cried almost the whole time but that's what it's like to be a parent I guess. Anyway I was wondering if anyone here listened to jazz and could recommend a good album for us. Jazz, anyone?

a post about banks

Oh Banks. He is so very cute. And that cleft... Anyway I thought I'd do a post about Banks today because he is sleeping so peacefully right now. Yesterday his brother nearly smothered him with a pillow. Benson actually had the pillow on the baby and himself on top of the pillow. Poor Banks. I was standing there doing my hair so I realized after a few seconds that things were too quiet and saved the wee one from suffocation. He was a little bit purple and really freaked out but no loss of brain cells so in the end it was a good lesson learned and thankfully nothing worse. On a happier note, we were a little worried that he didn't use his arms to push himself up at his last doctor's appointment but he has since remedied that. Now he pushes up like a little olympic pusher-upper. He looks quite scary in the picture (kind of like a Klingon) but we couldn't get him to smile (probably too focused on perfecting his technique). Oh and the other pictures of him close up are of him looking like the Phantom of the Opera. You can't see it too well in the photo but he fell asleep on the carpet and had serious Phantom face when he woke up. I wish you could all be here to hear him laugh.

aaaaall right then, I'll blog

Sorry guys. It's been a while. I would like to say that I tried a week ago and got discouraged when the stupid exclamation mark never stopped spinning. So these pics are of the Museum of Natural History here in ABQ. It was kind of cool, but kind of boring for Ben and I. Benson liked it though. You folks have never seen how they got the Mars rover to Mars should look it up. We live in a crazy world if they can do something like that. Who could even think to do what they did? Wow. Anyway the best part of the museum was the plexiglass over "lava" floor because it made Benson FREAK out. He wouldn't let me walk on it. Hahhahaha sometimes the best part of a two year old is razzing them up a bit just because you can. That make me sound like parent of the year, but if you haven't done a little harmless scaring you are missing out. It's pretty funny.

randomness

Look at how Benson is neglected. He fell asleep in Banks' carseat while I was writing this post.

Well we are back from Heaven to the fiery furnace called Albuquerque. Vacation was lovely and but sadly one of the only souvenirs we brought back was a nasty case of the sniffles. We didn't even take our camera out of the bag. Siiiiiigh. Hopefully soon someone will have mercy and post their beautiful pictures so that we can steal them. hint hint.... :)

Something random I've discovered about Benson this morning: One of his least favorite things in the world are towels on my head. I do the usual turban-style post-shower wrap and as soon as Benson sees it he yells, "Mommy don't make your hair big!" and continues to shout this until he pulls the towel off my head. I have no idea why he is so passionate about this but he truly is.

In other news, we discovered, while on vacay, that Benson is a gifted t-ball player. It is actually quite amazing how acurately he can hit the ball. He may have peaked at 2 1/2 but we are going to do our best to foster the budding baseball player. His Nana will be so happy. He will be starting t-ball, basketball, and soccer in the spring and it is all we can do to not lie about his age to get him in now. Hahaha someday he will look back at this and blame us for making him crazy. Oh well. We are still excited. If someone has a secret way to upload videos to a blog without having it take a year I could post his t-ball awesomeness. I'll need some guidence though, because as we all know I am blog -challenged.