Oh Ben . . .

Ben: I want to watch a show.
Me: No more shows. If you watch anymore shows your brain will melt.
Ben: Don't worry about my brain. I'll keep it safe. I'll protect it.
Nice Ben.

Playing with the Big Boys

 Ben has always LOVED playing with the big kids. Parker and Luke Larsen are by far his favorite. They are so great about including Ben in their big kid battles.

 Sadly, there are casualties on occasion. But they are quick to rescue each other.

Ben and his weapon of choice: his Buzz Lightyear gun.

boy factoids

BEN:

He turns 4 in March!! He reminds me every day that he is now three and will be four soon and then when he turns five he will go to kindergarten and break my heart.

He is obsessed with Octonauts.

He would play Angry Birds and Cut the Rope all day if I would let him.

His favorite color is red.

He still comes in our room a couple of times a night.

He hates pooping and eating.

He is now a Sunbeam and goes to big kid primary with his bestie Brynner.

He loves Family Home Evening. I think it is mostly for the treats. But he asks to do it a few times a week.

He spells his name, "B - E - end(N)"

He is our little debater/attorney. He favorite topics to argue are bedtime, eating, and cleaning up. I know I have a battle coming when he says, "Mom, I have a great idea!"

He calls Aunt Kiersten "Chick" or "Chicken."

COLE:

He is a little ball of sunshine.

He loves to eat anything and everything all the time. 

He LOVES blocks and books.

He is the BEST sleeper ever. 

He obviously loves slippers. He races around in them saying, "VRRMM"

Mickey Mouse is his very favorite show, but Ben rarely lets him watch it.

He just switched to his big kid car seat and is so much happier.

He carries his stuffed penguin everywhere. 

He loves the bath tub. 

He is learning "please" and "thank you."

He can sing the Angry Birds theme song thanks to Ben.
He has a serious shoe fetish. He loves to put on shoes all the time.
He also loves putting on his coat because that means an adventure is coming!
In spite of Ben always picking on him and knocking him over, Cole gets very concerned when he can't find Ben. He will wander the house calling Ben's name while he is at preschool, "Bin! Bin!! Are you?"
He calls Aunt Kiersten, "Bok!" (Like the sound a chicken makes)

Little Artists

 This was Cole's first time painting! I think he really liked it. Of course he tried to eat it and that didn't turn out so great, but he loved dipping his brush in the water and in the paints. I don't think much paint made it onto the paper, but the table and the wall looked lovely.

 Ben isn't big on drawing, but he does like stamps and stickers a lot. Some of our ink had dried out and that was a source of major frustration.

Cole got distracted from his painting by Ben's ink pads. He loves to open and close things. Ben's despair worked for Cole because he got to play with the dried out ink and didn't even know he was missing out!

 

 What happened to Ben's pants? Oh he spilled the cup of water for the paints all over his lap of course. And then refused new pants.

Look at those lashes!!! It is really not fair that a boy gets these!

I believe . . .

The theme in church on Sunday was reading the scriptures. In her talk, Sister Campbell talked about how her three year old came home from school and had the Pledge of Allegiance memorized. She thought to herself, "If she can memorize the Pledge of Allegiance certainly she can memorize the Articles of Faith." What an awesome thing to have locked in your brain from the time you are three years old. You will always know exactly what you believe and what you stand for as a member of this Church. So I decided to start working on them with Ben. After Church I explained what the Articles of Faith are and why they are important and how we were going to learn them. We recited the First Article of Faith a few times and then his eyes lit up and he said,"Mom! I know what I believe!" I thought to myself, "Here it is!! A parenting pay off moment! I taught him something! Something important and good! Yay for me!" And then he said, "I believe in monster trucks. Big monster trucks." Oh. Not what I was expecting at all. But progress perhaps?

(This picture was taken while Ben was playing Super Man with his Daddy."

Playtime

 Why is it that boxes and boys have so much fun together?

 Cole still adores reading. Animal books are always a favorite!

 He is my little sugar ball of sunshine.

 Ben is a great big brother. He is making sure Cole stays up to date with technology.

I know that someday they will HATE me for this shot. But I love it. They can be the sweetest of brothers.

Tent Popcorn Party!!

 Oh my boys. They are wild and fun! Taking down the Christmas tree left a huge void in our front room. ( We haven't moved the chair back that usually lives there.) So the boys thought that it would be a perfect place to pitch their tent. But if you are going to put up a tent. You need pillows and blankets. And if it is going to be a party there must be popcorn.

 So we had a tent popcorn party. The boys pretended to sleep and made a giant mess with the popcorn.

 But they did have a lot of fun together wrestling and loving each other.

 Ben was soooo tired . . .

 Yeah right!

 It is a little bit scary how good Ben is at iPhone games. His current favorite is Cut the Rope. But Angry Birds still gets plenty of play time.

 When Cole went down for his nap, Ben and I searched for pirate things in his pirate book, in the tent of course.

LA Trip

How can you not love LA? Especially in the morning, when the fog is lingering, and it is slightly chilly, but you are standing on the roof of a parking garage about to enter the bowels of the fabric district!!!!! Heaven!

 Of course this wouldn't have been a proper adventure at all without my bestie Megsie!!! I am sure people thought we were freaks standing of the top of the parking garage taking pictures of almost the same thing and switching back and forth between our "big guns" and our iPhones taking pictures. We are definitely nerds.

 The sheer amount of fabric is totally overwhelming. I felt like I could drown in it and nobody would ever find me.

 Oh Michael Levine's!! What a nice break. Everything is organized properly and I could actually find stuff! There was still a TON of stuff there too! I found fabric for quilts for my boys! So happy! Sadly no curtain fabric. Boo.

We planned to eat at this charming French Garden restaurant, but they didn't open until 2 pm!! After diving in and out of fabric stores for hours we were starving!!

So we opted for one of my favorite touristy stops: Olvera Street!

 I love everything about Olvera Street: the buildings, the dancers, the people, the food, the vendors. It is like a mini trip to Mexico!

 Yeah, we got in trouble for this picture. Apparently, you can't take pictures in it unless you buy it. Oops! Oh well we got a picture of my sister in the Nacho Libre mask anyway.

 Aren't we so cute?

 My mom and sister came and met us for our fabric district / Olvera Street adventure.  They just laughed at how nerdy we were.

 Just across the street from Olvera Street is one of my very favorite places in the whole wide world!

Union Station!! It feels like you step back in time when you go here. Back to a time when travel was luxurious and you didn't feel like cattle. Traveling was an experience. Some day I want to go there and just photograph for a whole day.

Kiersten and my mom were wiped out. They haven't been on a Megan and Britta adventure before. After this we stopped by Beard Papa's in Little Tokyo for creme puffs. Yum - o!

 The main event of this adventure to LA was the Rose Bowl Flea Market!

 We were so not prepared for the amount of stuff that was there. I think we walked around in a daze for the first two hours. Then we got our feet under us and started making a game plan for working our way through the maze of tents.

 I really really wanted to take home all the succulents and orchids, but decided against it because traveling wouldn't be so nice to them.

The highlight of the day was that we got to meet Emily Henderson in person!! Her awesome assistant Orlando took the picture for us! She is a designer on HGTV and the main reason we made this trip is because she always talks about how awesome it is! She was right! Megan and I were totally starstruck! But she was so nice and talkative. I loved chatting with her!

Other trip adventures:

My poor little lips have been struggling this winter so I have become a chap stick addict. The sad part is that they were not getting any better, in fact they felt almost worse. I wake up the morning I am leaving for LA and my lips are killing me! I look in the mirror and almost pass out! I look like a botox job gone incredibly wrong. I mean my lips look like Hitch and they HURT. So against Scott's counsel (He thought that,"It didn't look that bad and it would get better on its own"), I dropped my boys off at my neighbors house and rushed to instacare. Sure enough I was having a MAJOR allergic reaction to something most likely in my chap stick. They put me on steroids and two types of anti-histamines. Fortunately they worked quickly so I didn't look so scary when I boarded the plane. I flew into Vegas and Megan picked me up and we headed to LA! We ate at the most delicious Vietnamese restaurant ever that night. It was called 9021-Pho. So so so good. I am still dreaming about it. The next day we hit the fabric district, Olvera Street, Union Station, and Little Tokyo. That night we had tamales with Megan's parents and the missionaries. It was entertaining. One of the elders was convinced he was "fat" while his companion was skinny as a rail and claimed to have already gained 40 pounds in the few months he had been out. Claudia, Megan's mom, did a quilting show for me after dinner and gave me lots and lots of awesome tips and tricks. The next day was the Rose Bowl!! It was so awesome. We were definitely newbies and had NO idea what we were doing but now we know what to do for next year! After the Rose Bowl we drove to Loma Linda to have dinner with my mom and sister. Then we drove back to Vegas! The whole way back to Vegas Megan and I kept talking about how much fun we had and how much stuff we did. We loved every second of it, but we both admitted that we definitely could not get up and do another adventure like that the next day. The next day we went to an awesome quilt store, and shopped a bit before I needed to get to the airport. I love being a mom, but I love getting a weekend to myself to feel like I am a person too. This needs to be a yearly tradition!

Road Trip Quotes:

"I love boobs!!" - Britta

"Well not really naked. As naked as a Mormon gets." - Megan

"He looks like a toad with hair." - Megan

"You are not Lehi. We don't all follow your dreams." - Megan

"We're like BAM! Britta and Megan!" - Megan

"Just saying . . ." it was a great trip!