Happy Early Halloween!

Last fall I bought Ben a Halloween costume.......except I don't think it is going to fit him in October so I dressed him up in it today! Ryan has always been a baseball boy so when I saw this costume I thought it was perfect for Ben's first Halloween!

These are just a few pictures after I took the baseball off! Ben has the prettiest blue eyes just like his sister!

He often has the "deer in the headlights" look in pictures though. Addyson was the exact same way!

I put him in the bumbo for a little while and I looked over and he was sucking on his toes. That is a favorite pastime these days! So cute!

Mmmmm...that looks good!

When I took the above picture it started him and he looked up at me like this. I am sure his is thinking Mom, what are you doing taking my picture so much?? :)

Ben has been SUCH a happy sweet baby lately! He is so content, happy, laughs all the time and gives the best smiles. He is such a little bundle of sweetness!!

Surprise!

Ben and Addyson both surprised me today! This morning when I went in to get Ben he had wriggled his way half way out of his swaddler and rolled over. He was actually being quite resourceful because he had found his paci and put it back in his mouth. Good job Ben! He still has sleepy eyes in the pictures below but he had the biggest smile on his face when he looked back at me! I love waking up to a happy baby!

This evening Addyson was calling my name and I was in my office. I got up to see what she needed and she was holding my diamond ring in her hand and she said, "Mom, I'm just going to hold this for you so that nothing happens to it." Hmmmm.... this sounded a little suspicious to me or like there was more to the story. I said, Where did you get that from? She said, "In your jewerly box mom" and if you know Addyson she always draws out her words and in this sentence it was the word jewerly being drawn out. I went back to my room and the rest of my jewerly was in place. Thank goodness! I said "PLEASE do not get into mommy's jewerly ever again. I don't want to loose it". She agreed, but thank goodness she told me about it and didn't decide to hide my ring or anything! She said the ring was so beautiful and she was just going to take special care of it. Ha!

Another thing about Addyson is that she has really been surprising me lately with all of her skills! Vanessa (who she stays with during the day) really works a lot with them on their letters, words, etc. Addyson has known her letters for a while now and so she has been working with her on reading. She is doing so good! She can read a Kindergarten reader all by herself! Tonight when I was reading her a book she asked if she could read it to me and I said Sure! She really amazed me with how many words she knew and if she didn't know a word she really tried to sound it out. She read and figured out words like wing, flower, fly, going and some others in addition to the basic ones such as the, and, is, it, are, on, etc. The book was about butterflies and how catepillars become butterflies. I was quite impressed!

Weekend pics!

We had a fun weekend! Friday night we had Brooks, Bosten, Parker, Brittany, Dustin, Nana, Pops and Grams all over for dinner and fun playing on the water slide. We had a great time and the kids had fun playing on the slide! Here's Addyson with her ice cream face... :)

Tan little Parker with her ice cream!
The crew sitting outside- it's actually pretty nice on the side of our house. It's all shaded and there was a nice breeze!

Saturday Britt called and asked if Addyson could come to the pool with the kids. I said SURE! Addy loves her cousins so much and she loves to swim, so this was a day in paradise for her! Thanks Dust and Britt for inviting her! I was able to spend lots of fun time with Ben. I dressed him up for some outside pics. He loves to be outside!

You can see his two bottom teeth in this picture!

Smiling at daddy!

Again, smiling at daddy! Since I have been back from Miami, Ben sure likes his daddy!

This and That!

Wow! It's been a crazy week! Just busy I guess, nothing too out of the ordinary. Let's see.... I got back from Miami last Saturday morning. I had a SUPER early flight- left Miami at 5:30 Texas time and landed at 8:30 in Dallas. I actually had a nice time while I was there- ate a lot of really good food, stayed in a super nice hotel, had lots of lemon drop martinis, a beach day and a massage. Can't complain!! I, of course, missed my babies and I was really happy to see them on Saturday. I think a little time away does everyone some good! Addyson and Ben were very happy to see their mommy which was nice! Ben gave me a really big smile!

I haven't blogged much lately because I've been really busy with work and all that comes with that. I'm usually pretty busy at the beginning of each semester getting all of the instructors trained on the technology they adopted, getting desk copies sent out to everyone and making sure everyone is good to go. So, it's been busy!!

Ben has found his feet and he enjoys sucking on his toes! So cute! He now has 2 teeth. Can't remember if I blogged about his first tooth or not but he got that in on August 6th and the other front bottom tooth in a couple of days ago. He seems much happier now! Addyson never had any trouble with her teeth but I definitely know when Bennie Boo is getting one. He is pretty fussy!

The other night Addyson and I made pizza for dinner and she helped me make the whole thing. She loved making it and then refused to eat any of it. Ahhh- 3 year olds! :) She has really been a food nazi lately. Very picky and VERY demanding on what she wants to and does not want to eat. :)

Here's some bath time pics of Ben. I have to hose him down every night because he is very messy with his baby food. He gets it everywhere! It's very cute though! I have been trying for quite some time to get him to eat baby food and just this last week he started gobbling it up. I went today and stocked up on a bunch of yummy stage 1 foods!

Ryan survived while I was gone. Thanks to my mom, Aunt Brittany, and his mom and grams he was pretty well covered the whole week. I knew he would be fine!

Painting Complete!

We got our entire house painted last week and whew! What a week it was! Ben started at Vanessa's house for the first time, we were out of our house for 6 nights because of paint fumes and then I left Monday morning for Miami. We had a busy week! I am actually in Miami right now sitting on my balcony over looking the ocean updating my blog. Not too shabby! Here are some before pictures of our house. Everything was the same color:

powder bath

I had already taken down the pictures and such so it looks REALLY bare!

Again, very bare walls!

And a picture of Ben for good measure!! He loves to sit outside in his exersaucer while we work in the flower beds, etc. I miss my rolly polly baby! And Addyson too! :)
The "after" pics! We painted the kitchen and breakfast room the same color. I love how paint makes everything pop!

The view from the breakfast room

Dining room. We did texture, paint and a glaze over the paint. I love the color!

More of the dining room

Ryan's office

View from Ryan's office looking out into the rest of the house

Powder bath- this is the same color as the dining room without the texture and glaze. It makes it look different but still blends very well! As Ryan said- we don't want our house to look like a crayon box with different colors in every room!

Our room

Our bathroom- we textured in here as well

Entry wayMore of Ryan's office- a little out of order but that's okay!

We are happy with the way it turned out! We also got all of the trim in the entire house repainted. It looks great with a fresh coat of white paint on all of that- makes such a difference!