Chunky Monkey

Luke had his 2 month check-up today.

4 shots

23 inches long

AND.....

14 pounds!!

If lugging him around doesn't take the baby weight off, I'm not sure what will! (Wishful thinking!)

**Forgot to mention when I first wrote this, he also has a small umbilical hernia. For now the dr. will just monitor from appt to appt. Hopefully it will repair itself. Not a major concern.

Double Digits!

On December 15, 2000 Brian and I became parents for the very first time. We were THRILLED to have a healthy baby boy! Little did we know how fast he would grow up.

10 years have gone by in a flash. We are so very, very proud of the young man Ben is becoming. Smart, funny, athletic, musical, artistic, loving, sincere, technological, God-fearing and helpful are just a few ways to describe him.

I can't even begin to think about how fast the next 10 years of his life will go and all that he will accomplish.

Happy 10th Birthday, Ben! We love you more than you know!

10 classic pictures for 10 years of life!

Backyard Visitor

For the past couple of months we've been seeing an owl on a regular basis in the same spot in one of the trees. He's a pretty impressive fellow (or gal, not sure which), and today I was able to get a good shot of him.

Not a bad picture for a point & shoot camera through my living room window.

Same picture but cropped & zoomed.

12-11-10

What a weekend! The blizzard that the meteorologists forecasted didn't disappoint us.

*Glad we cancelled the birthday party

*All 6 of us stayed in our PJs basically from Friday night to Sunday afternoon

*Video of Dome roof collapse is pretty impressive!

*Bitter cold temps Saturday night...so we decided to put on all our gear, zip Luke up in my coat, and walk 6 houses up the block to hang out with a few neighbor families until 11:30 at night! We honestly couldn't have driven that far. The car would have gotten stuck in the cul-de-sac!

*Church cancelled

*24/7 Lifetime Fitness we belong to closed early

*Official snow total was 18"

*If this would have been during the week, we would have had at least 2 days off of school!

The view out our front door

Winter Wonderland the next day

Drifts as high as the fence!

Snow piled to the bedroom window

Brian cleared out the hydrant

The For Sale sign across the street from us

What's Happening

A busy month for everyone! Here's the latest from around here:

• Face showing great improvement. It's not over yet, but I'll now go out in public.
• Took Luke to my school to visit my colleagues and students. Can't believe my maternity leave is 1/2 over already.
• Hosted 3rd annual cookie exchange for neighbor gals.
• 3 big boys had annual gingerbread men decorating with Nana & Papa while the cookie exchange was taking place.
• Planning Ben's 10th bday party. The plan was to go snow tubing. Fortunately we have snow, but now it looks like the weekend temps will be sub-zero. Not sure of the back-up plan for the eight 4th grade boys arriving at our house from 3:00-8:00 tomorrow!

**UPDATE** Just got off the phone with the boys who were coming to the party tomorrow. We've postponed until after Christmas. Not only are we expecting 7-14 inches of snow and sub-zero temps, I realized that the place we were going to go tubing doesn't even open for the season until December 17th! That would have been a disaster. Show up with all the boys and no tubing to be had. Party scrapped. We're starting over.

• Haven't begun Christmas shopping yet.
• Baby weight seems to be at a standstill for coming off. Not a good sign.
• Fun visit from Brian's brother and his family from IA last weekend. This is Luke's cousin Amelia who loved holding him!

But the best part of all...

• Luke starting to stretch his nights to 6 1/2 hours!
• Real smiles starting to come through!

He's 4

Adam is acting like a true 4 year old lately. Very independent. Zipping his own coat. Likes to get his own food in the morning. Wants to pour his own milk.

Cutting his own hair.

Writing with sharpie on the furniture.

Thank goodness he's a boy and you can hardly notice the hair cut.

Thank goodness for the Magic Eraser. It worked!