All Day Long it's Somebody's Birthday...

Handsome Ben in his new shirt...poor teething Dylan tried gnawing on the table & high chair!

Goofballs!

Beautiful blue eyes, just like his Dad.

Kaleb was so excited about Ben's birthday cake. All afternoon he told me how he liked every little part of it, and I had to try to keep his little fingers out of the chocolate frosting! We could hardly wait for Ben to get home at the end of the day!

Ben turned 30 today... finally a year older than me! ;0) We've had a great fun family weekend celebrating his big day! We tend to stretch our birthdays out a bit, so our special "day" sometimes lasts up to a month of fun! Highlights so far: boys in bed early on Fri. (so nice, a rare treat), rootbeer floats & shopping on Sat., finding a new BBQ place...Logan's Roadhouse (family friendly & yummy!), a nice Easter Sunday, lunch together on Monday and touring Dad's office so he could show off our boys to friends, and Ben's favorite pasta for dinner followed by yellow cake with chocolate frosting & sprinkles. Ben said this was his best birthday, so hopefully they'll keep getting better & better with each passing year. He sure does! We REALLY love you, Michael Benjamin!

Happy Easter!

We had a great Easter this year. Kaleb had several Easter egg hunts and really enjoyed coloring Easter eggs together. He's asked for 3 days in a row now if we can color Easter eggs again. We checked out our community Eggstravaganza and it was really fun! I braved the petting zoo with K (not my fav. thing to do) but it was worth it. He was able to pet a few bunnies and other animals, too. You know how much he loves animals! He also had fun in the big bouncers and was able to sit in Big Red (any firetruck is named Big Red from CARS to Kaleb) and talk with a friendly firefighter.

Sunday the boys wore matching outfits...love it! They woke up to Easter baskets brimming with fun goodies. We had Easter egg shaped pancakes, a nice meeting at church, and were joined by Ben's Grandpa Jarvis (aka KJ, and our white haired grandpa) afterward. We made a nice ham dinner, although I tried to shop the sale & bought the wrong kind...this sucker had skin on it, a layer of fat, & looked disgusting, but tasted good. We then hid eggs for Kaleb in the backyard and just hung out together outside. Since he was the only one in on the hunt, he took his time opening & eating each candy filled egg before finding the next one. Can't wait for Dylan to give him some competition next year! Dylan loves being outside & is enthralled with watching his big brother. We web-cammed with both sets of grandparents & just had a nice, nice day.

Picture Tag!

TOP TEN FAVORITE PHOTOS

I'm missing a few, but these ones are pretty good.

Hmm...any guesses on which baby boy this is?

Kaleb has always wanted to be just like his daddy.

Dylan is such a happy baby boy!

My 3 stooges!

Proud big brother & grandma checking out our precious baby D. for the first time.

Ben took & left pictures of himself doing random things and left them all over the house for me when he had to leave on his first business trip. This is just one of them, but they're some of my favs. because it was such a fun surprise to come home to!

Smily happy boys of mine!

This is one of my favorite Dylan pics. Sorry I couldn't flip it for you!

At the zoo... our favorite family place in Phoenix!

I love, love, love this photo! Why did we cut his hair?!?

I'm tagging anyone who feels like browsing through their photos... have fun!

Kindred Spirits

It's funny how when you meet new people, sometimes you feel a connection like maybe you've known them forever. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to the temple (thanks so much, Bobyn) and while I was there, I met a wonderful woman, Jane Robertson. She is one of those people for me... I just felt a connection, like we could be the best of friends. The funny thing is she is in her 80's! I guess you could say I have an old soul. She is a temple worker who has volunteered her time and talents serving at the Mesa Temple for over 15 years.

I first noticed Sis. Robertson while I was waiting for my session to begin. She was with another white-haired gal and just happy as could be. They were both smiling, joking about being able to get up off the cushioned bench they were sitting on, and for some reason I couldn't stop listening in. You could tell they were loving life, and making the most of each minute...definitely "enjoying the ride."

Luckily for me, she was the worker in my session. As I studied her appearance, she had more wrinkles than I've ever seen on a person before, short bobbed, grayish-white hair, with not a stitch of make up on, but a real beauty just the same. She had a great smile with twinkly eyes and you could tell she'd had a lot a laughter and joy in her life....smile lines. When she spoke to you, she had a certain lilt in her voice. A way of making everything she said really meaningful and almost story-like.

As I got to know her a little, she told me this fabulous story. There was a name that we read, and it reminded her of her growing up years and so she shared: You know when I was growing up, there was a girl in my neighborhood named Donna May. Donna May, Donna May. Whenever anyone called her Donna, she was real quick to correct them. My NAME is Donna MAY! Well, you know what happened? This girl grew up and fell in love. She married a man whose last name was Leak. Well, you never saw a girl drop a middle name faster than Donna May Leak!

I got such a kick out of this story, the circumstances, and this lady...she totally made my day! I felt a little like Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes as she's listening to Izzy tell her stories in the nursing home. As I was getting ready to leave, I thanked her of course, and she said maybe we would meet again next week. I really felt like I had made a true friend and left completely rejuvenated, and feeling more like me than I have in a long time. It was just so refreshing to meet someone so comfortable in their own skin, that it made me want to be like her. Hopefully sooner than later I will be able to let go of caring what other people think, without letting myself go, and truly enjoy the ride.

Laughter, the Best Medicine!

For a few weeks there, I was a pretty grumpy gal. I don't really know what it was, but I was in a real "funk" as Ben would say. It may have had something to do with the stretch marks I recently discovered, and looking through my college scrapbook and wedding album realizing I'm not the cute, young girl I used to be. But I was also feeling lonely, frazzled, and just a little down all the way around.

I'm happy to report that I feel like me again, and have had quite a few laugh out loud experiences to help pull me out of my slump. They're just too good not to share.

We went to visit my grandma, found her house THUMPING,
country music blasting, playing so loud I'm pretty sure the windows were rattling.
We knocked, and of course she couldn't hear us, so we just walked in. With a big grin on her face she asked, "How do you like my new surround sound system?" I loved it of course, but not as much as finding my 78 year old Gramma rocking out!


I've decided we have a sponge for a son right now. He often repeats anything and everything we say. This became quite obvious when I noticed him mimicking his dad while watching TV. We watch a lot of AFV, and it's on during what I would consider prime-time family hours. Well for whatever reason, they've started running a Vagisil self test kit commercial in the midst of this family friendly show. Whenever it comes on, Ben immediately says, "That's disgusting!" I agree with him of course, and apparently so does Kaleb, even though he has no idea what it is. Now K says, "THAT'S DISGUSTING!" whenever this commercial comes on, even if Ben's not around!

We live next door to a plumber and pulled into our driveway while he was outside. Grandma said, "Look, I think he's sick!" So I turn to look, and he is bent over (examining a plant I think) just in time to see a REAL PLUMBER'S CRACK! Ahhh... I was so embarrassed (he probably thought I was checking him out), but giggling madly!

The last night Grandma stayed with us, we were playing a tickling/pinching game with Kaleb and having a good old time. Everyone's laughing and getting in on the fun, but Kaleb unintentionally took it a step too far. He did a "short-stop" (for all you Seinfeld fans) move on Gramma-Gramma and I will never forget the surprised look on her face!

"And, finally, in all of living have much of fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured" (Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley from Ensign, May 1996, 94).

The Writing on the Wall...

Let's just say he's lucky it was in our room...the only unpainted room in our house. Any guesses on what we'll be doing this weekend? :)

My Handy Man...

So for Valentine's Day Ben made me a gift... new shelves above our hidden desk in the nook. They are perfect and so well made! He really spend a lot of time, thought, and effort into planning and designing them for me. Just what I need to help get myself organized and find a permanent place for things. I feel like I'm constantly moving stuff from place to place because I don't have a good place for them. I love the paint job too, also new, and now I think I've caught the home improvement bug once again. Poor Ben... now that I know what he can do, the "honey-do" list just got a lot longer!

Birthday, Bunco, & Bangs

Jen, Suzanne, Sarah
Chrissy, Robyn-Bobyn, & Jenna

Jen using the worst scissors ever to cut, & Chrissy saving my clean floor!

Talissa & Terrell...check out the earrings!

Jen & me

Today was my Mom's Birthday! She's so amazing and I still hope I can be just like her someday. Even though we're states away, we still seem so close and talk nearly every day... sometimes several times a day! She 's the most thoughtful, patient, loving, & service-oriented person I know and we all just love her so much! Kaleb called and sang her his own version of Happy Birthday, and I threw a Bunco party on her special day. Too bad she couldn't be there!

Bunco was a hoot, as usual. We had a St. Patrick's Day theme complete with green food (veggie tray, spinach dip, shamrock pistachio cookies, chips & green salsa, limeade, & potato candy) and a dress up contest on the side. Whoever wore the most green got an extra prize. My 'copa girls are a ton of fun, but I had NO idea how into it they'd get...11/12 of us were in green. My friend, Bobyn, wore SEVEN layers of green including painted face, hands, arms, and a green comb in hair (you know how black people wear picks)! She won, of course...hysterical! Terrell took 2nd place with green all over, awesome retro green jewelry, and 6 week baby Talissa in green as well. Jenna was a close runner up with head to toe green, including jewelry & hair clip. The game was great... we got in 3 full rounds & Chrissy had a record 5 (I think) buncos, with Robyn close behind. Lots of laughter had by all!

Before the game started, I asked Jen for a bang consult. I've been considering a "side-swoop" bang for quite a while, but never really acted on it. I have such thin hair, I didn't want bangs to leave me hairless everywhere else, and of course I can't live w/o my ponytail. Well Jen and the girls convinced me that I could pull it off, and so on a semi-whim, bangs were cut! I'm still getting used to them, but love the change. I haven't had bangs in YEARS!!!

Thanks to Jen for my new look & my bunco babes for a night full of fun, fun, fun!

Out of the Mouth of MY Babe!

Hilarious Husband, with the power to do ANYTHING, & our Super Son!

Ben- my-Love has been cracking me up lately, although he would probably argue this point as one of his favorite sayings is, "Your mom USED to think I was funny." Things he's said to me in the past week or so, "Sar, if you're recording this, I'm giving you a noogie later!" I, of course, was recording this (hee-hee-hee). Singing, "Cinderella, Cinderella" (as I'm scrubbing up the paint mess & mopping the floor after his most recent home improvement project.) Me incredulously, "Can you DO that?" Ben with confidence, "I can do ANYTHING!"

I'll remember that, babe! ;)