Happy 50th Birthday Dad!! We love you!

And here is the Birthday Man himself!! Look at all those candles... ;-) And yes, he did get them all blown out!

We had tons of fun going bowling! Here's my dad:

Michael:

Lauren:

David:

Bryan:

Amy:

Me (Emily):

Benjamin's first time bowling! (I've discovered I rather enjoy all of his "first" activities):

Benjamin and Emily watching the bowling ball roll (very slowly) away...

Jonathan:

You can get some excellent pictures of people bowling. Both expressions and poses are priceless. ;-) Here are Jack and Benjamin being cute:

They are seriously adorable:

The whole birthday party bunch! (Minus the babies who were sleeping at this point!):

Random Odds and Ends... Mostly of Benjamin... he's the cutest one anyway.

Benjamin's First Haircut:

(He had quite the "baby comb-over" by the time I got around to this... Amy's job was to make sure he stayed entertained and didn't fall off the chair!)

Benjamin and Jack's first piano duet ;-)

Bryan and Benjamin:

Benjamin's new airplane toy:

Note the cardboard around the back wheels so it doesn't go too fast, it prevents face planting. ;-) These "training wheels" have since been removed, and he LOVES to walk with this toy! He just needs to figure out steering... right now he just runs into walls and remains stuck until someone turns him around...

I have no idea how he got here, I just found him...

So I've heard before that once you have more than one child, the older child (or children) teach the younger ones... well, it seems that our older "child" Lady has taught Benjamin that this is a great way to get your toys from place to place when you're crawling about! Works just as well with burp cloths, socks, blankets, etc... ;-)

This, my friends, is why you don't buy lots of toys when your kids are little, I think he played for this measuring cup for a good half hour!

It's kinda hard to see in this picture, but since it's gotten colder Benjamin doesn't like to crawl on his bare knees on the tile anymore, so this is his "crab-walk" crawl!

Benjamin walking around in his genuine Dutch wooden shoes!! They bang together and make fun noises each time he takes a step! Thanks Lizzy!! :-)

This was very funny to me, Benjamin "found" Lady sitting on the back porch... he he he. He was so excited!

NOTHING is out of reach anymore...

This is what we resorted to, in order to keep my sanity and prevent me from chasing Benjamin away from the Christmas tree 857 times a day... and to further ensure he didn't manage to pull it on top of himself...

More Christmas pictures to come soon!! :-)

I LOVE Halloween!

Frankly, I don't even care that Christmas is over, I am still posting these because I think they are fun! (My goal is to get Christmas posted before Valentines day!)

Jack-o-lanterns:




Jenny and I can pretty much take credit for the jack-o-lanterns, although Noah did help take some seeds out. ;-)


Curious George, the Man in the Yellow Hat, and a Nurse!


Aren't they SO cute?! I love it!!


My little Monkey and me:



With my sister Amy (Belle) :


With grandparents:





And the kitty cat:



And with NOAH!! RAWRRR!! (Yeah, couldn't get them to do that in the picture... or much of anything for that matter!)


Courtesy of Jenny's blog:

CA Part 1: San Diego and LA

Remember those long ago promised pictures from our vacation in California? Well, here they are! We had so much fun, and looking through all of these pictures just reminds me of that, it was so awesome. :-)

This first picture is one of my absolute favorites:

Here is Benjamin's first introduction to the ocean... he doesn't like it so much!

I think it's time to go visit that ocean again... isn't it beautiful?!

Here is Benjamin's SECOND introduction to the ocean... and it didn't go any better than the first one!

My cute little snuggle bug:

From left to right, Jonathan, my mom, and my sister Amy:

Amy (She's so brave, it took me much longer to get used to the water!) :

Emily (on the left) and Amy (on the right) :

Amy leaves us in the dust on the best tan contest:

While we were in LA we went to my cousin Amy's wedding, she was beautiful! I stole this picture from her sister Kristen's blog... thanks! ;-)

Including overnight stops while driving, this trip went from South Jordan, to Las Vegas, to San Diego, to LA, to Yosemite, to San Francisco, to Sacramento, to Reno, and back to South Jordan... so there was a lot of driving! Luckily Benjamin was a trooper and did very well! We tried to schedule driving during naps and night time when possible to make it easier for him: