Boys

 All I wanted to do was get a couple nice little pictures of me with my boys....

 

Movie

We had a family movie date for Ben's bday...and decided to test the waters with Zach in a movie theater... he did great.  There were as few 'ancy' moments (wait...that wasn't so much with Zach as it was with Ben...doesn't it ever get easy for little boys to sit still??), but we sat in the back row so I don't think we disturbed anyone's viewing.  We watched 'Escape from Planet Earth'.

 

 

 

 

 

Ben hits the big SIX

I feel like the clearest proof in the passage of time is through watching your kids grow.  The years seem to go by in the blink of an eye...sometimes it's sad to see the time pass, but each stage brings a whole new adventure so here's to being six Benjamin Nicholas!

(Something was messed up on my phone camera settings so some of these didn't turn out great.)

We started birthday day with a birthday maple bar...might as well get him all sugared up before school.

 

I guess being six makes you affectionate to little brothers...at least for these few minutes. :) 

I sometimes think about what it must be like to be the oldest child...to be the one to blaze the trail of all the '1sts' of parenting.  There have certainly been some challenges, I just hope that I'm doing the best by you Ben!  You are such a bright, bold, energetic, curious, inquisitive kid with a big heart.  I love that you are a leader and have always been brave about trying new things and meeting new friends.  I know sometimes we have to rein in some of that (no, it's still not ok to stand on the table during library because everyone thinks it's funny), but never lose your 'spunk'.  :)  

 

 

I can still remember the day you were born like it was yesterday...

 

 

My dad said all I kept saying that day was 'he's perfect'.  :)

 



Big Boy

We've been working on the potty training on and off for the past few months, but in the last couple weeks we decided to get serious about it.  We had a couple weekends where I felt like we were in the bathroom all weekend...Zach sitting on the pot and me on the bathtub just chattin about life...bonding time I guess.  :)  But it seems to have paid off because we were finally able to dub Zach as 'ptty trained'...and yes, I mean nighttime and all.  As his reward we made a trip to Target where he got to pick out whatever big boy undies he wanted... there were a lot of good choices, but it was over as soon as he found the Mickey ones.  :)

Proud of his new collection.

 

 

Yay Zach!

 

Ben's Class Valentines

 One of Ben's homework projects was to hand make all the Valentines for his class.  Granted teacher gave us 2 weeks to do it, but of course we crammed it into about 4 days...that's a lot of patience to muster up for as Kindergarten boy!  He did a good job ith it though!

There are 20 in Ben's class, 14 girls, 6 boys...so with Mrs. Burke he had to make 20 of them!

Pretty proud of himself...now that they're finally done.

Of course we had one that had to be 'extra special'.  :)

 

 



As we were making them I got some pretty interesting information out of Ben.  He was telling me who all the boys' girlfriends were.  When I asked about some of the other girls he said 'well Mom, we ran out of boys'... guess that's bound to happen with only 6 boys to 14 girls!

Zach had already went to bed when I took these pics, but here are the Valentines he made for all his friends at Lisa's!

 

Riley's 1!

We had a few people over for Superbowl so during halftime (in the midst of Beyonce) we hasd a little 1st bday celebration for Miss Riley!

Sorry Riley...the boys were big 'helpers'....don't think you cared this year, but you can tell them to back off in years to come.  :)

Now we know what to get Ben.

Riley will be one decked out little girl!

Come on, keep up Beth!

At least Riley was amused with the help.

Bring on the sugar!

Of course princess was all 'dainty' about it.  :)

Zach waited all day (weekend practically) for Riley's party and to have cake...unfortunately he couldn't even hold out past presents.  Poor guy.

Little Maliyah was over too so Riley did get in a little girl time too.  :)