birthday giggles

what a great birthday present from benny! during one of our breaks from harry potter spencer decided on a little entertainment for benny. this video was taken toward the tail end, so unfortunately they're not the fresh giggles from the beginning. no matter what, i love it!

the birthday

well, the birthday was great! i can't believe i'm 24 years old. it still feels like i'm 21. age is an interesting thing.

we had ordered harry potter 7 from amazon.com who guaranteed delivery on the 21st. it ended up coming in our mail at about 11a - not too bad!

when we got it in the mail.

waiting for us to read it. i was waiting for spencer to come back.

here we are with our new copy of harry potter and the deathly hallows! (i had just taken a shower before it came - hence the wet hair...)

you don't have to worry that benny got neglected that day - even if we had wanted to, he wouldn't have let us - he did not go down for a nap until 4:40p because he didn't act tired all day! he had a lot of fun playing with both mommy and daddy in the room. he even got a bath that day! we took a little time out when we both spent some time on the floor playing with benny. it was really fun!

benny was having a great time with daddy and the easter eggs.

well, again, the birthday was great as was harry potter. we spent most of time reading that day. we went to sonic for lunch (i read in the car out loud on the way there and back) and had average burgers. it was so hot we had to come back home to eat.

we kept reading and went out to dinner at tepanyaki - a japanese grill. that was fun! then we came back home and stayed up way too late reading. if you ask nicely we might tell you...

just so you know, we did go to all three hours of church on sunday and we didn't have to stay up nearly as late to finish the book. we were done about 9p on sunday, 22 july, and boy was it great! i have been thinking that the harry potter series is - in a way - similar to c.s. lewis' chronicles of narnia or j.r.r. tolkien's lord of the rings. it's amazing to look at the world created by j.k. rowling (pronounced rolling) and to see how complete it is. what amazes me the most is that all my questions were answered with book 7, but i'm sure we'll both read the series again (probably not as quickly as we did this last time). i look forward to reading these books to our kids.

hope you have a chance to read the harry potter series if you haven't already!

our california adventure

well, i'm finally making a record of our trip down to california to watch the callister kids. i'll try to keep it fairly brief or i'll never get it finished.

spencer, benny, and i flew down on thursday, 24 may 2007. this is a little story within our story. originally spencer was going to fly down a day later because he was in the middle of spring classes. about a week before the trip he was looking for a place to retake the mcat and the only place that worked timing-wise out of most (if not all) of the western states was in redlands, ca - about 30 minutes from bethany and nate's in fontana - on friday, 25 may 2007 at 8:30a. this was a major blessing for us. we changed spencer's flight to the same as mine and we had a fairly uneventful trip - if you don't consider benny falling asleep in my arms on the plane a major event!

it was nice to have the time to spend with bethany before they left on saturday morning. bethany is usually the one i call when i have questions about kids, pregnancy, meals, etc., so it was nice to have some overlapping time.

i got quite acquainted with some of the freeways down there driving back and forth twice to get spencer to and from the mcat. after the test spencer felt really good about how it went. we've since gotten the score and it turned out to be what we were hoping for. we really feel so blessed with how everything has been going in our lives.

saturday morning bethany and nate left for hawaii. this was the start of spencer's and my having 5 kids (and expecting a 6th! although we didn't know at the time).

spencer was there through the long memorial day weekend. sunday we had quite the experience at church, but we managed to get through it. on memorial day spencer grilled some hamburgers and chicken and we made some ice cream (ben & jerry's mint chip). i must say that it was really nice to have spencer there with me through the weekend with all the kids home all day. tuesday afternoon the major challenge started...

on tuesday amanda and tanner had school, so spencer was able to get all of his stuff ready for his trip back while i watched naomi, chris, and benny. when amanda and tanner got home we were all set to go to the airport so we went straight there. we were just at the exit for the airport when spencer realized that we hadn't brought the laptop... so, we turned around to go get it. we were listening to "joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat" in the car, which the kids love, so they did really well in the car (i got these cute pictures). our timing wasn't too bad on our second trip to the airport and spencer made it on the plane just fine. i am so grateful that spencer had a mwth schedule for spring term because he was able to stay through the whole long weekend while all of the kids were at home all day.

the rest of the week went really well. we got a good schedule going, and by the end of the week i learned that i should have loosened up for everybody's sake. we did have a lot of movie time, which was good for everyone - we even watched the sing-along version of "high school musical" twice!

i learned a lot in my week as a mother of 5. one of the most important things i learned is that i need to relax a whole lot more about things. it's not worth taking every single thing so seriously. kids are kids and it's important to let them be kids - to a certain extent! i hope benny and his siblings benefit from the things i've learned.

some other pictures from our trip...

well, i'm not sure how to get these pictures to look quite right in this format, but here goes...

the picture on the left naomi is holding benny with chris on the left.
on the right is amanda feeding benny (which she was very willing to do!) again, chris on the left.

naomi at the counter coloring.

chris and benny in the kitchen.

amanda and naomi each wanted to try out the camera...

naomi's picture (her finger was in front of the flash).



amanda's picture (you can tell i never really did my hair while i was there...).

bath day for benny!

it really was a great trip and i'm really glad i was able to help bethany and nate enjoy a good time in hawaii! i think i'm finally ready to admit that i would do it again.

ps. in case you didn't catch it, we're pregnant! baby two is due 6 february 2008.