Lynette's Visit

David's youngest sister Lynette just finished her freshman year at BYU and came to visit. We had a great time with her and appreciate her so much! She is a great girl!
David with sisters Janeece and Lynette

Congrats, David!

David passed his prelims, which means that he is cleared to finish up his PhD over the next year. There is almost an end in sight, graduation is next fall! : ) I'm so proud of how hard he works and how much he is accomplishing! Plus, doesn't he look handsome in his new suit that his mother and I picked out without him? It even fits!!! (And, he got a great new red power tie.)

Trip to Oregon

I know I have been terrible at updating our blog, I will try to do better. Benjamin and I took a trip to Oregon to spend a week with David's parents and had a GREAT time. They have the best place to be outside, it's absolutely gorgeous. Benjamin had a great time running in the grass and "helping" with projects outside. We had beautiful weather and Spring was in full bloom, it was gorgeous. Here are a lot of pictures from the trip. We went to see some tulip fields and to the zoo, so those are where a lot of these came from.

Mr. Potatohead

Benjamin loves his Mr. Potatohead, mostly because he thinks the glasses are so much fun to wear.

This is a picture of Benjamin when we were making Valentine sugar cookies. He's a great help in the kitchen.

Children's Museum

We had a great trip to the Children's Museum in Indianapolis. It's such a fun place. These pictures are of Benjamin digging up dinosaur fossils in the Dinosphere. We went with Aunt Janeece, Karl and Phillip and Pam, Miranda, and Jacob Mills. Fun time!

Sledding Fun

These pictures are from a sledding party on a Saturday afternoon with cousin Karl. They were happiest when they went down together.

So, I just want to record some of the funny things that Benjamin has been doing lately. Okay, some of the things are just plain mischevious, too.

1) This morning he wanted to play with a small container of playdough. He got it for Christmas from Santa, who made an appearance at a party that we went to. Well, we haven't discussed where this came from ever, so I was shocked when he started to play with it and said, "Thank you, Santa."

2) This past week he locked himself in his room as he was just playing with the lock, I guess. So, I tried to pick the lock to no avail. Benjamin just stood on the other side of the door talking to me, "What doing, mom?" and "Hold me, mom." So, although I was about ready to break the door down, I decided to stay calm and just take the doorknob off. After a total of about 10 minutes I got to him. We'll likely just turn the lock around so it's on the outside.

3) I'm now babysitting a 7 week old baby, Eli. Benjamin is really good with him and prays for "Ali" at night now. One day Eli was crying and Benjamin was saying, "Shhh, Ali. Screaming outside." Hmmm. I'm glad to know that he really does understand that concept.

4) It's fun to watch his understanding of differenct concepts develop. For example, we were playing with his basketball hoop. We would both shoot a basketball and he would pick them both up and come to me saying, "Choose." Well, just to see what would happen I would always choose the ball I knew he wanted. He would give me the other ball anyway. Well, we need to work on the fact that when you give someone a choice you need to be ready to follow through. : )

5) Benjamin has become downright argumentative at times. For example, if I start to sing "twinkle, twinkle little star" he always insists that it's twinkle heart. The other day we were taking cookies to a neighbor. I told him who the plate of cookies was for and he said, "No, Ben's cookies."