Owen got his hair cut on Christmas Eve and it turned out much shorter than we were anticipating (a buzz cut). He goes to my bathroom tonight and looks in the mirror and says…

“I got a hair cut. It’s all gone. I’ve got fuzzy hair.”

HA HA HA! He cracks me up!

He also woke up Christmas Eve morning and told Mike…”Dada… it’s a perfect day. It’s raining. I need my rain coat.”

His other new thing is when people come over he says…”Hey, let me show you my room.”

His imagination is running wild and the stuff that comes out of his mouth makes us laugh. He’s at such a neat stage right now. I love it.

WOW… that had to be the best Christmas ever and the great part is, it’s not over yet. We’re going to continue the celebration with Mike’s entire family this weekend.

I took a TON of pictures and don’t have alot of time to write, but I just wanted to share this one picture of us from Christmas Eve before church. The full run down will come early next week.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!

Well, I tried to hold out as long as possible, but it was finally time to get Benny’s hair cut. He was looking really shaggy and the hair was in his eyes, past his ears and down the back of his neck.

We wanted to take him to the kids hair place in town where we took Owen so he could sit in the Jeep and watch a movie, but it was closed due to an emergency. With Christmas coming we couldn’t put it off, so we took him to where we get our hair cut.

He did a great job! We put him in his little booster seat we take to restaurants and he was happy as a clam. I was proud of him. Now Benny looks all dapper and ready for Christmas!

Here we go… the first snips.


He is doing great… so far so good.


He’s not liking getting the hair around his ears cut.

Looking at himself in the mirror.

Almost done!


Here he is… the new and improved Benny Boo!

He thinks he looks good too!

A few quick notes for those relatives that copy the photos from the blog. I have started watermarking them (not because of family) because where I host them online, anyone can access them. And I don’t like unwatermarked pictures of my kids and family floating around the internet should some random person choose to take them…. hope you understand. Family and friends… if you want a picture on here, just e-mail me and I’d be happy to provide it for you without the watermark!

We are in the beginning stages of potty training Owen. He’s doing so-so peeing on the potty, but up until now he has never gone #2. Well tonight he shocked us and went poopy in the potty! WOO HOO!! It also shocked us that he went in his little potty because usually he wants the big potty. Mike and I cheered and clapped for him and he was so proud of himself, as he should be. It’s amazing the silly things you get excited for when you have kids! =)

We had bought Thomas the Train undies as a special gift for when he had a big potty day. We felt this was a big enough deal to finally give them to him. He put them on and was running around the house showing off his Thomas toosh… no pun intended!

He’s going kill me when he sees these pictures when he gets older! Oh well… they will make me laugh someday when he’s not so sweet and innocent.

I just want to start off by saying I did not play favorites with the boys tonight and only get Benny’s picture taken with Santa…

My Mom and I, as well as Santa’s helper, tried to get Owen to go over to Santa, but he was TERRIFIED! I mean he was shaking he was so scared. We got him to sit on a tricycle next to him for 30 seconds, but he started to cry really hard to the point I felt bad for him so we put him back in the stroller to make him feel safe and comfortable. Poor kid. He was so excited to see Santa, but when the time came, forget about it. He did tell Santa though from the stroller that he wanted a Dinosaur and he even said “Please” through the tears. God love him. It’s OK we don’t have a Santa picture this year. No biggy.

Ben on the other hand LOVED Santa. He was all about him. I thought he would be the one to be scared because he’s not around many strangers since he’s home all day with Mike. He’s use to just family. Benny smiled big and thought Old Saint Nick was quite Jolly.

They have a new thing this year where you can buy a USB with the pictures they take so Mimi was gracious enough to get it for Benny. Here is his first ever visit with Santa.

Mike and I don’t need anything for Christmas, because Owen and Benny are our year round gifts. Beautiful, fun, cute, full of laughs and the lights of our lives. We thank god for these two adorable boys everyday.

I got a new digital camcorder as an early Christmas gift and decided to test it out tonight. It was ridiculous easy to use, download the footage and make a DVD. It took less than 10 minutes.

The camcorder got 4.5 out of 5 stars in reviews, so I’m hoping it’s a keeper. The one negative I did read is that the picture quality is so so in doors at night, and I can say that is true after this evening. Not a big surprise. All camcorders are pretty much that way. I can’t wait to test it out during the day. I’m just happy to be able to actually get the footage off the camcorder and burn DVD’s. I have several MiniDV tapes from our old camcorder, which I loved, but couldn’t get what I recorded from the tapes to the PC. I wish I could have gotten a HD camcorder, but they are just too expensive, so this will do for now and our family will now be able to see more live action of the boys, which is sometimes even better than pictures. Being able to see them in motion and hear their little voices is priceless.

Here is Owen… he’s super excited for Christmas this year, as you will be able to tell. He’s a lucky boy because his grandparents on both sides of the family made is 2 wishes come true. He’s going to be sooooo excited!

Oh – and in case you are wondering, the footage is not this pixelated when viewed on a TV. I think it’s Drop Shots that is distorting it.

It took me 310 days to get this… a very long 10 months and 7 days…

It’s a decent, non-snap shot picture of my boys TOGETHER!!!

Now, I know it’s not the greatest pose, but they are sitting next to each other and both looking at the camera. My sister-in-law wanted a picture of each boy and one of them together for Christmas. She’s a simple modern person, so I tried just plain white shirts and the black backdrop. Again, not the most dressy outfits, but I’m THRILLED to finally have a nice picture of my boys together.

Now my mission is to get one of them when they are smiling and at least looking like they love each other. I know Ben loves Owen and I think Owen secretly loves his little brother too, he just doesn’t want to admit it!

AND…as you can see, they look NOTHING alike.

We’ve hit double digits and Mommy is so sad. My heart sinks to think that my baby isn’t really that much of a baby anymore and he’ll be one soon.

He seems so much older to me than 10 months. In addition to all the things he’s learned up until last month, now he is:

• Into everything and moves non-stop if he’s not sleeping.
• Crawling up the stairs super fast and almost always heads to the bathroom. He loves the bathroom. He also loves those stairs. We are constantly having to pull him down and he cries because we take him away.
• Standing on his own unassisted for short periods of time.
• Crawling in and out of his bouncy chair.
• Feeding himself his own bottle.
• Eating stage 3 foods and some table foods like soft breads and tiny pasta with cheese.
• Opening the toy cabinet doors or pulls out the baskets to get the toys he wants to play with.
• Pushing his cars and trains around the floor when he crawls, just like his brother.
• Bopping up and down in his crib, almost like he is jumping.
• Taking a bath in the big tub and crawls all around like he’s swimming. He even stands up and flops back down to his tush so it splashes and he laughs.
• Very curious about the water faucet in the bathroom tub. He looks up it to see where the water is coming from and tries to drink it. He doesn’t even care if his face gets soaked.
• Turning the TV off and on in the family room and laughs at us when he does it like he is thinking….”HA HA HA!”.
• A big fan of peek-a-boo. He smiles and laughs and it’s SOOOOO cute!

Oh and I almost forgot that he got his 2 top teeth, started saying Dada and he now gives High Fives.

This past month also included his first sick visit to the doctor. He went on Friday and has a very bad cold and ear infection. The poor little guy is a snot faucet, but he’s still smiling and happy through it all, even if it is hard for him to breathe.

Even though I want the next 8 1/2 weeks to go as slow as possible, I’m looking forward to him experiencing his first Christmas. We starting putting decorations out yesterday and he’s a hands on kind of baby and wants to touch everything, unlike Owen… he just looked at that age. I think we’re going to have to put a gate up in front of the tree (even though it’s already up on a table off the floor) or he might pull it down on himself. This could get interesting.