FORE!

Dean took Ben shopping a couple of weekends ago for a new baseball mitt and came home with, among many other things, golf clubs for Ben! They are so cute and Dean has been eager to take Ben to the driving range to try them out. Today after church, they seized the opportunity and headed to the Brickyard. They were gone for several hours and both boys reported that the afternoon was well spent and a lot of fun! I can't believe Ben is old enough to go golfing with Daddy!

For the record, Joe and I spent a lovely afternoon ourselves running errands and cleaning the house. What fun!

Go Benny, It's Your Birthday (Party)

We decided to bite the bullet and have Ben's first "friends" birthday party this year. It was a raging success and a good time was had by all. The theme was "pirates," though up until minutes prior to the party starting, Ben insisted it was an Incredible Hulk, Scooby Doo, Power Ranger, Pirates Party. What a wierdo!

Ben was a very gracious host and I was amazed how well all the kids got along. We had no incidents (that I knew of at least!) and Ben remembered his manners and was grateful for all the gifts...and boy were there gifts. He was spoiled rotten! We are so lucky to have such generous friends and family.

Ben and I baked and decorated his cake the night before the big bash. He did an excellent job...even though the top layer of the cake did crack and start to fall off later that night...we decided that the pirate ship had become shipwrecked!






We passed out bandannas to all the kids as they arrived, so there were a bunch of little pirates running around all afternoon!
Pin the tail on the donkey was a hit...here is Hayden cheating!

The treasure chest pinata was also a hit...literally!

Ben had lots of help opening his presents. Each gift was met with lots of oohs and aahs. He was absolutely thrilled with all the loot he scored!Fortunately Ben got 2 pairs of these Incredible Hulk gloves. There has been hours of ensuing Hulk mania!
Ben's actual birthday is Friday and I am so looking forward to spending the day together as a family. I have no idea what we will do to commemorate the big day, but I know we will find some way to make it special! Stay tuned mateys! Arrrggghhh!

Joey--6 Months

We had Joey's 6th month doctors appointment last week...even though he is nearly 7 months old, oh well, better late than never! Joey weighed 19 pounds 1 ounce and was 27 inches long. For comparison sake, Ben weighed 19 pounds 7 ounces and was also 27 inches long at 6 months. Pretty funny that their stats are so close.

Speaking of close...the boys continue to be the best of friends. Every morning Ben goes into Joey's room and says "good morning sunshine boy!" Joey lights up when Ben appears and whenever Ben is in arms reach, Joe wraps his arms around Ben's head and gives him a huge slobbery kiss. It absolutely melts my heart. Ben makes a big show about yelling and wiping the goo off his face. "JOEY, don't slime me!" he says! But Ben always goes back for more. They love each other so much!

Here are some pictures that Ben took of Joe and I the day of his doctor's appointment! He is quite the camera man!

A Summer Saturday

Our Saturday was spent having a garage sale and attending a baseball game...it doesn't get more American than that! For the record, I cannot stand garage sales. Not only do I not like having them, but I don't like attending them. I don't buy into that whole "one man's trash is another man's treasure" philosophy. I think junk is junk. Toss it and go. My pack rat son, Benjamin, could not agree with me less. He was in hog heaven today with all of the garage sale goodies (junk) spilling out of my garage and halfway down the driveway. I'm pretty sure Ben brought items into the house faster than I was able to sell them.

Like the sucker that I am, I hosted the garage sale in the first place because my mom attempted to have a garage sale 2 weekends ago and it poured the entire time and she made $8.00. She is so organized and had worked so hard and I felt sorry for her and volunteered my house. What is wrong with me?

"Everything must go"...except for Joe Joe!

For all of my complaining, it actually ended up not being too bad. As I said, my mom did all the work and it was probably the most organized garage sale on the planet. It was nice spending the day with my mom and sisters and we even made a decent amount of money. A succesful day indeed, though not one I care to repeat anytime soon. My garage is closed for business.

In happier news, Benny had his first t-ball practice today. He is on the Angels (HA). It was so much fun and I felt so bad for Dean that he had to miss it. He is at a race in Iowa and would have loved watching Benny fielding, throwing, and hitting the snot out of the ball. He did a really great job and I enjoyed every second of practice... I can hardly wait for the first game!

Check out my little slugger!
Swing batter batter!


SWING! Look at that ball go!

Ben is all about the action. The position he liked best, other than batting, was "pitcher" (which is a bit of a misnomer since it is t-ball and there is no actual pitching). Most of the kids could not hit the ball past the pitcher so that position was involved in every play. Ben wants to be pitcher or 1st base...he was not a fan of the outfield and would sprint to the pitching mound everytime the ball was hit in an attempt to beat the pitcher to the ball. Perhaps we need to discuss teamwork!

Ben is the youngest on his team, but his friend Hayden is on the same team and is only a couple months older than Ben so they will take care of each other I am sure. I really don't worry too much about Ben however. Though he was the youngest, he definitely had the biggest mouth (my kid) and arguably the most confidence. While all of the other kids kind of hung back and were quiet during practice, Ben dove in and was talking his coach's ear off within minutes and informing her that he intended to "bring the heat!" Watch out!!

Ben and Hayden

A Crazy Busy Week

I am exhausted. I don't really remember the last time I was so tired. My body is tired, my brain is tired, my eyes are tired...I am tired! It has been a really busy week...and it is only Wednesday! I am helping out with Vacation Bible School at our church from 6-8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday this week. At first I wondered how I got suckered into this "job" since I willingly gave up a Benjamin free evening in exchange for spending my nights with 10 other people's children who are much older than Ben, mostly 9 year olds, but have ironicaly similar behavior! I have a new found respect for teachers. I really do enjoy my group, they are just extremely "spirited" and wear me out...much like Ben, but bigger!

My favorite part of VBS, however, is watching Ben interact with his peers. He is in the preschool group so I am only in the same room as him at the very beginning and end of the evening. I love being a fly on the wall and watching Ben and all his friends. I feel so lucky that we have found a church that really feels like home and made friends that feel like family members. I love so many of the kids in Ben's "circle" and I got emotional tonight watching them all and imaging what they would all look like and the kinds of people they would become 10 years from now.

It is not really VBS, however, that has made me so tired, but rather the sleepless night that Dean and I had on Monday night. We have had an unprecidented amount of rain fall in Indiana the past couple of weeks. There has been massive flooding throughout the state and many people displaced from their homes. On Monday night I did some work after VBS and had just gotten into bed at about 11:05 when the sky opened up and started pouring down rain and there was more thunder and lightening than I have ever seen in my life. It was a truly massive storm. At approximately 11:15 the power went out. Dean and I got up to check on the boys and I went down to check the basement. There was only about 4 inches of water at the very bottom of our sump pump. Approximately 5 minutes later Dean went down to check the basement again and there was water pouring in through the window wells and the water in the sump pump had at least doubled.

Our basement is finished, but fortunately the window wells and sump pump are on the unfinished storage side of our basement. We started moving things off the floor and brought down towels to mop up the water. After securing that area, we again checked the sump pump to find about 18 inches of water now at the bottom and it seemed to be rising rapidly. We grabbed 2 one gallon buckets and 1 two gallon bucket and a pitcher and began bailing water. We made many trips and though we didn't seem to be making much progress, at least the water wasn't rising. It really wasn't so bad carrying the water up the stairs and dumping it in the kitchen sink for the first couple of hours, but still frustrating since we had no idea when the power would come back on and IPL offerred no estimation of time. To add insult to injury it would not stop raining. I shifted my prayers from pleading for the power to return, to pleading for the rain to stop!

At about 2:00 a.m. I was getting tired and frustrated...so you can only imagine how annoyed I was by 4:00 a.m. when we were STILL bailing water. At this point we were no longer staying ahead of the water and the level had risen about 4 more inches and was getting really close to the top. At this point we started calling our family members to see if they had a generator. No one did, but Dean's sister Barb came over to try a car operated power thingy (it didn't work) and.

By the grace of God our neighbor across the street just happened to be outside at 4:45 a.m. (they were taking their son to the airport for a 6:00 a.m. flight) and they had power so Barb and Dean ended up running 6 extension cords from their house across the street and down into our basement to the sump pump. I continued bailing water while they set this up and at about 5:45 a.m. the sump pump kicked on and I nearly wept with joy! I never in my life imagined I would spend over 6.5 hours bailing water. This was not my idea of a good time, but was certainly time well spent as our basement was not flooded.

Dean and I crawled into bed with Ben (whom we had put in our bed earlier in the night after discovering that our neighbor's tree had lost 2 huge limbs right outside Ben's bedroom window) and passed out for about 45 minutes. Believe it or not, both boys slept through the storm and the commotion all night and awoke in great moods to MORE rain and storms. Our power kicked on shortly after 7:00 a.m.

We are now the proud owners of a battery operated backup sump pump so I should never have to spend another sleepless night bailing water. Thank God! Dean and I are are so sore today. Our calves and knees hurt the worst, along with our upper backs and shoulders. But we are counting our blessings and so happy that our "wounds" are nothing that a little rest can't heal. Our hearts go out to all the storm victims who faired much worse than us. We pray for some relief from Mother Nature's wrath and peace, comfort, and security for all.

Here are a couple of cute pictures of the boys...they have nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but are sweet nonetheless!

CJ in the House

I lied in my last post when I said my only regret from the surprise party was my lack of photos...I also regretted that my best friend of nearly 20 years couldn't be in attendance. Dean tried to fly her in for the occasion, but Cherrylynn was in her cousin's wedding in St. Louis...so close, yet so far. I obviously completely understood that she coudn't be there, but I was bummed and know she would have loved to have been a part of the fun, as would I have loved to share it with her.

Once again though, my sneaky husband had a surprise up his sleeve. Cherrylynn, her husband Ethan, and their daughter Cadalyn Jane got up bright and early to drive from St. Louis to spend the day with us! I was so shocked to see her pull into the driveway and so very excited! We had a great day just catching up and watching CJ play with the boys. Cherrylynn and Ethan went out to dinner that night for Ethan's grandmother's birthday and Dean and I got to babysit CJ.

It was a great night and the kids all clearly enjoy each other. I love watching the three of them interact and seeing the boys already "fighting" for CJ's attention. She is an equal opportunity lover though and shared her time rather equally. It was a busy evening of food, baths, and snuggling but I loved every minute of it. It was such a treat to be able to spend time with this little person who is a product of 2 people I love very much. Cadalyn is such a smart, friendly, curious little lady and it was so nice having another female in the house...though she did fall in love with her Uncle Dean and I had to force her to snuggle with me instead of him.

Ben fell asleep before Cadalyn last night and when he awoke this morning and realized she was gone he was very upset and said "I'm not ready for Cadalyn to be gone yet. I didn't even get to say goodbye!"

SURPRISE!!!

My amazing husband threw me my first ever surprise party to celebrate my 30th birthday on Saturday night. I was definitely surprised and the party was so much fun. Dean did a really incredible job. Who is the event planner in this house?...I always thought it was me, but I now stand corrected! Evidently sneaky Dean has been planning the evening for many months. We were counting the guests last night and determined that there were 40 adults and 21 children (all under the age of 7) in attendance. Thank God the weather was awesome, because I don't think our little house would have held that many guests!

My day started off with Starbucks (yumm) and then my mom treated my sisters and I to lunch and a spa day (facials for Mom and Michelle and manicures and pedicures for Mal and I). We also managed to squeeze in some shopping and my mom and sisters spoiled me...and I spoiled myself too! It was a great day and I was sufficiently exhausted by the time we got back to my parents, where my dad and brother had watched the boys all day since Dean was supposed to be working that night.

Much to my dismay, my dad and brother insisted that we go out to dinner. I pleaded with them to let me take the boys home. I was really annoyed at the prospect of heading out to Outback at 6:00 on a Saturday night with 2 little boys...one of whom goes to bed at 7:00. My dad refused to back down, but was willing to allow me to go home to change my clothes since Joey spit up on me and I had a leaky breast issue that needed resolved!!

Little did I know that my insistence upon returning to my house fit nicely into my husband and parents plan to lure me home for the party. I was loaded down with shopping bags and my mammoth diaper bag when I opened the door into the house and saw tons of people in my kitchen. All that really registered was that there were a lot of cameras in my face. I quickly slammed the door shut and started laughing. My sister suggested I go back inside, which I did and despite the leaky boob, I greeted all the guests. I was still shaking about 20 minutes later from the shock of the surprise.

What in the world?!

It was so great to see so many people I love in my house. There were old friends, new friends, work friends, family friends, neighbors, all kinds of fun people. Dean had tons of food and decorations, including the largest cake I have ever seen that is not of the wedding variety with a picture of me when I was 4 years old on it and an awesome poster featuring a collage of pictures depicting "30 years of Melanie."

My sweet Molly

I miss Craig already...he was home for a week and spent TONS of time playing with the boys and I

Me and my sissy

Dean clearly worked so hard on pulling off the surprise party and I was so touched that so many of our friends and family members had chosen to spend the evening with us. I definitely felt loved and so very grateful to my husband and his many helpers for making me feel so special.

My only regret from the evening is that I took NO pictures. I was having too much fun to stop and grab my camera evidently and I am so ashamed of that as I would love to have gotten pictures of the kids playing in the bounce house in the back yard or the boys playing corn hole. I would really love to have a picture of Dean, the boys, and I from the night. Fortunately my some of my friends shared some of their pics with me so I could share them here.

the troublemaker

It was a great night and, though I am not officially even 30 yet until later this week, I am so excited for what the future holds for me. I am in a great place in my life right now and am so blessed. I hope the next 30 years are filled with as many adventures and good times as the last 30 were. Thank you, mom and dad, for having me! I love you!