MJ and Elmo

It's already July?

This boy loves to get his hair cut

This is shaping up to be the fastest summer ever. We have had visitors every weekend since Memorial day and it has been so fun! It gives us excuses to get out and about and do all sorts of fun things. We've been to the zoo, we've floated the river, and Mason got his long awaited haircut. He has been asking to get one nearly every day for the past month. He had a complete meltdown when Jake went and got one a few weeks ago.

Mason has loved having visitors and we are very fortunate that he is so social and friendly. He calls all women "honey" right now for some reason, including myself, which is ridiculously cute. "Honey? More milk please." "Honey? Mason is tired." And speaking of tired, all of our guests are amazed at the fact that Mason says he's tired and would like to go to bed or take a nap. We take him in to his room and lay him down and we never hear another thing from him. This parenting thing is so easy! :-)

Tami teaching Mason the Star Trek sign

He's a carousel junkie

Fun with Jake's Family

It occurred to me that the last time we got together with Jake's immediate family was before I was even pregnant with Mason. They are located in Montana, Washington, Wyoming and fortunately for us, they all decided to come to the Boise area for a reunion. It was so great to see them and catch up with them. One thing I love about Jake's family is their humor, they are ridiculously funny, often inappropriate and never take themselves too seriously. I wish we could see them more than once every three years and we will make every effort to make them come to Boise again. Ha!

We just couldn't get enough of them over the weekend so like crazy teenagers we drove nearly 3 hours on a work/school night up to McCall to camp with them. Jake and I seriously roughed it without a tent or an RV because we are hardcore campers. Mason got to have a sleep over with his favorite cousins and although we had to get up at 6:00 a.m. and drive home we both agreed that it was totally worth it.

In other news, Mason broke my nose a few weeks ago. Nothing major, just a fracture across the bridge though I have to say that it is still sore. Needless to say, I am cautious when he makes any sudden movements, particularly around my face.

Mason continues his goal of riding every lawn mower he sees...

Mason and Jake before our family canoe trip

Jake's brother, mother and sister

Mason triple loved the tire swing

Mason and his cousinsCould he be more thrilled that we are his parents?

Shakin' things up

Welcome to our newly named blog. I am hoping we have solved the problem of randoms googling our names and reading about our life. Time will tell. But seriously, if you work with me and I don't particularly care for you (you know who you are), stop reading my blog! That being said, I hope you won't mind this tiny inconvenience...

It's been awhile, here's what we have been doing for the past 2 months.

Jake started an internship at Schweitzer Engineering Labs which he really likes. He also finished another semester of school and learned that getting a bad project partner can ultimately ruin your life, or at least your semester.

We went to San Diego in March and while we loved seeing old friends and Mason got to meet another set of Great Grandparents, we learned that traveling with a near 2 year-old is anything but a vacation. Especially when he accidentally sets the alarm in the room for 5:00 a.m. and decides that is a great time to start the day and then refuses to take a nap later. The good thing that came out of this vacation is that Jake and I are more willing to take a "just the two of us" vacation.

Last weekend my mom and I took Mason to Arizona for my sister in law's college graduation. I would actually have to say that Mason was better behaved on this trip than the San Diego one. He fell in love with uncle Kyle and aunt Sarah and had his first dinner at the Melting Pot. I know it sounds downright insane to take a 2 year old to a place that has burners built in to the table, but he was surprisingly good and let me do all of his fondueing for him. The highlight of his trip was riding the bus from the airport to the rental car place. He kept yelling "bus! love it!" and then when we got on the plane, he had a bit of a meltdown because he wanted to keep riding the bus. Every morning he asks me if he can ride a bus and I have to keep telling him "later". I guess we could go downtown and take some public transit somewhere but I can't say that excites me a whole lot.

Mason turned two on the 3rd of this month and of course we celebrated with an Elmo party. He got to spend it with his cousins and friends and got just a little overwhelmed by the craziness of it all. He also rolled his ankle on the trampoline which put a bit of a damper on his day. He is right on track with his growth and progress and is currently growing his 2 year molars. He had his first trip to the dentist where the dentist declared him one of the best 2 year old's he has ever seen. Mason laid very still on the table and kept his mouth open the whole time.

The big news for Mason is that he started daycare last week. The first day was rough for both of us and we both cried when I dropped him off, but by day 2 he was happy and excited to go to "school". We have appreciated the generousity of our friends and family in caring for him for the past year and a half and know that he is the sweet little boy he is today because of the environments he has been in. We decided he would do very well with some learning and structure and sure enough, he is thriving.

I think that is about all for now. Since Grandma Cynthia has been deprived of Mason photos for over two months we made a slide show. Warning, it's long.

Spring? Is that you?

Yeah, I know it's not. I was just checking. In our never ending quest to find things to do inside as we wait for spring to arrive, we decided to go to the hangar and see my company's jet. We just got a new one, because you know, times are tough, and they let us bring our families to see it. Mason loved it, of course.

Speaking of travel, I did one of the most boneheaded things I have ever done while traveling last weekend and it still annoys me to think of it so maybe if I just put it out there I can get completely over it. I was flying home from Las Vegas on Monday and my (commercial) flight left at noon and was the only nonstop of the day. I got to the airport plenty early and noticed my flight had been delayed an hour. No big deal, I call some friends, eat a pretzel, whatever. After a while I notice the sign at the gate I am waiting at does not change to Boise so I went up and asked the agent "Excuse me, could you tell me when the Boise flight is leaving?" She says "Boise flight?" I am momentarily confused and then I look over my shoulder at the screen I was looking at and it says "Arrivals" as opposed to "Departures" on it. She then informs me that my flight at noon was one of the only flights that wasn't delayed. Perfect. She works to route me through Salt Lake and get me home 6 hours later and says "Oh shoot, this flight leaves out of a completely different terminal and it's quite a walk from here. The good news is you have 3 hours to get there!" The ensuing conversation I had with Jake was not one I am proud of, I haven't been that angry for quite some time. After I stopped swearing I said "The worst part about this whole situation is that there is no one to blame!" After a short pause I did come up with "Wait a minute, why on earth would people at the gate care when a flight to Boise is coming in?!? There is no reason for an Arrival screen at the freaking gate!" I stand by that today.

There, I feel a little better and suffice it to say that is one mistake I will never repeat. Here's some happy pictures...

One fish, Two fish...

My parents came to town this weekend for some fun and my mom decided she was going to buy Mason some fish, since I have deprived him of having a puppy. I have had fish twice in my life, both times I became very attached and felt very bad when they died. I felt bad because I directly caused their deaths, the first one by not attaching the water tube correctly, thus causing all of the water to empty out of the aquarium, and the second by leaving tropical fish in the U-haul overnight, which caused all five of them to freeze to death. So I was a bit reluctant to do the whole fish thing again but was willing to give it a shot. We got two orange goldfish and one black one, which is currently dead in the tank awaiting Jake to come and remove it. Mason can barely see it as it is trapped behind the filter, but he thinks it's sleeping and says "Shhh" when he sees it.

Anyway, Mason loves the fish. He kisses them and tried to feed them grapes this morning. We're working on some rules. He calls them "urnge" which is how he says orange and we haven't yet named them anything else. Being as they came from Wal-Mart, we'll wait to see if they live before investing any time and effort into names. Ha!

Mason with "Papa", whom he adores

Showing Grandma how focused he can be when Elmo is on

And these are the "pish"

A new post! How exciting!

Couple of things, Jake and I have joined the throngs on Facebook and instead of blogging we have been looking at friends and family and their adorable, and some not so adorable, offspring. The other thing is that we need to either set this blog to private or change the identifying information so this blog can't be googled. Any suggestions? By the way, I think I should mention this has nothing to do with "Anonymous" from the last post! It actually has to do with people at work finding my blog. Luckily I haven't said anything incriminating, but I sure would like to!

On to the recent haps of the Bennett fam...

We took Mason to the park to feed the geese and he initially loved throwing the bread to the birds. That is until the geese, who were taller than him, were within inches of him. He stopped saying "Geese! Geese!" and started saying "Scary! Scary!".

In an effort to find activities to do on cold winter days outside of the house, we decided to go look at Honda Pilots, as we know we will have to upgrade eventually. When we walked into the showroom Mason was as excited as I have ever seen him. He yelled "Mommy cars!" and then proceeded to point to each one and exclaim "Nice!" He was clearly overwhelmed with the beauty of new cars inside a building. This got the attention of anyone within earshot. We actually thought that bringing him would be a good idea because he has a short attention span and we could just say we had to take him home. Yeah, not so much. We were there for two hours and had to drag him out of there.

It's been a fun month as Mason talks nonstop and we don't have much difficulty understanding him, which is nice. He loves hanging out with other kids, from the babysitters to the gym, which is also very nice as he's perfectly fine when we drop him off somewhere.

Alright, other than that, it's business as usual here. Please let me know any suggestions for keeping the blog unsearchable.

Hat's off to my favorite cousin

I need to give a little praise to my favorite cousin and BFF, Jen. She willingly watches Mason for me whenever I need her to and is willing to accommodate all our needs with our busy work and school schedule. And she makes great pizza -- I had some tonight. To pay her back for all she does I am going to watch her three sweet kids all weekend so she and Cris and have a great Valentine's weekend.

I Love the Sun!

This weekend was my annual winter retreat to San Diego to see my friend Erin and get my hair cut and colored. It just so happened that Boise had been blanketed with a nasty inversion for over a week prior to my departure and everyone was just a little cranky about the lack of sunlight. It was the perfect weekend for me to get out of town. It was about 63 when I landed and Erin was a little late picking me up. I told her I would wait outside and she said "What? It's so cold!" Well I suppose that is all relative.

We have been saying for years that we wanted to try the best brunch in San Diego, which happens to be at the Hotel Del Coronado. It was amazing, it really was. And it really should be for the amount of money it costs for one person to eat there. Since it was a ridiculous price, we decided we would try to get our money's worth and be there for at least 3 hours. We were, and it was a lovely 3 hours of conversation with an old friend. There was so much food and of such a high quality, I left zero room for one of the dozens of desserts. Never fear though, Erin had ziplock bags in her oversized purse so I put some cookies in one and a caramel apple in the other. I am fully aware that this is not in any way classy or socially acceptable but I am also happy that I had one heck of a delicious caramel apple for breakfast this morning.

I had such a great time in San Diego this weekend that we have decided to bring Mason down for a visit in March to show him where his parents met and fell in love. I'm sure he'll appreciate that significance. We haven't been back there together for 4 years and we think it's time. Jake has grandparents down there that have never met Mason and we have tons of people to visit. Should be good/crazy times!

For the Love!

Mason is a fairly easy going guy, he doesn't get upset about much and generally goes with the flow. He started to show an interest in Elmo from Sesame Street a couple of months ago and we ran with it. He got several Elmo themed gifts for Christmas, one of which was an outfit with an Elmo jacket that lights up when in motion. So on a one and a half year old those babies are always on. Well it seems as though our easy going baby has grown attached to his new Elmo outfit and flat out refuses to take it off. That's right, he eats, sleeps, and tries to bathe in that jacket. If we go somewhere he wears a shirt, the Elmo jacket and his coat. We convince him to take it off for a bath and before he's even out of the tub he is inquiring as to its whereabouts. One night it was warm in his room and he had his pajamas and the jacket on so I snuck in to take the jacket off while he was sleeping. Well not only did I not get the jacket, I got a baby who was beside himself at the sheer gall of someone sneaking into his room to rob him of his most prized possession. It took us over an hour to calm him down and I will not be trying that again. It has only been washed once and Mason stood by the washer the entire cycle and then supervised the transfer from the washer to the dryer. He then stood by the dryer until it was dry. So this is what attachment looks like!

After a long hiatus...

We are back! The holidays were hectic for sure and I had no desire whatsoever to blog. Here is a numerical breakdown of the last two weeks of December...

Number of Associates Degrees earned from Boise State: One, by Jake.

Roundtrips to Bear Lake: 2

Number of Xanax taken by Steph to deal with snowy roads: 7 on trip one, and zero on trip two (that is some coma inducing stuff but seriously I wouldn't have cared if I started on fire while under the influence of those babies)

Audiobooks listened to in the car: 1, The Last Lecture, highly recommended.

Wii's given for Christmas: 1, to Kyle and Sarah

Number of hours spent playing Wii with Kyle and Sarah and my mom: 20, easily

Number of movies seen over the break: 1, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, triple loved.

Time we started opening presents on Christmas morning: 9:15 a.m.

Time Mason finished opening his presents: 1:00 p.m. After he opened a few presents he went in his room, got his blanket and said "night night?" So we put him to bed and resumed after his nap.

Number of people that got some crazy flu bug (or were poisoned) on Christmas day: 3, Steph, Sarah and Jake

Number of times Mason brushed his teeth in a day: 4 to 5 on average

Number of fish Mason was obsessed with feeding every day: 2

Number of cookies consumed in one sitting by Kyle on several occasions: 20, and these are not bite sized cookies either. He's a machine!

Hours Mason spent outside on either a sled, snowmobile or 4 wheeler: many

Number of Elmo themed gifts Mason received for Christmas: 6

Days Mason spent with Grandma and Grandpa (mostly grandma) while mom and dad came back to Boise: 4

Hours we spent cleaning the house while Mason was not in it: 8, we're good for a while.

Score of highest game while bowling: 165, earned by my mother.

Number of times Mason said Papa (grandpa) in a day: hundreds, he is officially obsessed with everything Papa does.

Number of new phrases Mason learned over Christmas and uses regularly: 2, "thank you" and "love you".

We had a really great (and snowy!) Christmas and we are very excited to see what 2009 holds for us. We love and appreciate our extended families and friends so much and hope to spend more time with them this year. We are also considering adding a member to our own little family as well, but this is in no way any sort of announcement. I said "considering". Happy New Year!