Garbage Truck!

The garbage truck comes every morning around 8:45am, and it stops right in front of our apartment! Usually Ben loves to look out the window and watch it, but today we happened to be outside at the perfect time.

He was so excited about this garbage truck, he was laughing on the way there, and started making the cutest excited inhales as we got closer!

Florida Pt. 1 (First stop Sarasota!)

Back in April, we took a trip to Florida. We had three destinations – the Downs family, Grandma Gebeau, and Grammy Caryl!

First up were four of our most favorite people: Paul, Jen, Eric and Sara!

To say we were excited about this trip would be the understatement of the century. We had been looking forward to it before we even decided on a date, so when we were finally on the plane to Florida, we could hardly contain ourselves!

When we landed, we were surprised to find them waiting for us at the airport! Which was good because we didn't know where the heck we were going – we rode the tram a few times before we realized it only makes one stop!

From there it just kept getting better! Even grocery shopping was fun!

We all had a great time together - sharing seats and flowers: 

Sandy beaches and kilwin's ice cream!

Crazy parks and car naps.

And of course, hot mess #1

Here he is sitting at the table of a restaurant we went to:

And then something catches his attention. If you know Ben, I'm sure you know what that “something” is.

The server!

Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures of our trip, but everything else was amazing too: Surprise birthday sprinkles and red balloons, soccer games and alligators that I never saw, seals and sharks, trucks and excavators, staying up way too late, Matt's footsteps in the middle of the night, crazy schemes and daydreams (hey, it worked in Full House!), pizza and smoothies, and so much more! I don't even know how to describe our trip, but it felt like home, and we miss it!

Thank you, Paul and Jen for having us in your home and sharing a little slice of your life with us while we were down there! We love you all so much and are already trying to figure out when we can visit again!

Summer

It's so hot out! We've been cooling off at the fountains and with lots of water!

I've been going through pictures and am going to start posting some from our trips this past year - finally!

Golden Boy

We cut his hair again tonight (after this picture, of course) - it grows so fast it's hard to keep up with!

Like Father, Like Son

Slide!

Ben is such a big kid! He loves to do so many things by himself - at the park now, he climbs the stairs, crawls to the slide, and goes down all by himself... and then does it all again! Our favorite part of that video is his little giggle as he goes down the slide.

Ring, Ring!

The only phones we have are our cell phones, and they never ring because we always have them on silent. I'm really not sure how he knew what to do with this phone... haha! He must have a good memory - the last time we played with this phone in front of him was months ago - probably when he was 9 months or something!

Mother's Day

Building

Ben has been knocking things down since he could move his arms. He loves knocking down towers, taking apart lego blocks, taking out puzzle pieces - he loves tearing it down! Last weekend Ben started putting his "mega-bloks" together! He suddenly realized that he could take them apart and put them back together, and he did it over and over again!

Just yesterday, he realized he could stack things up! He stacked his blocks over and over again, sometimes adding a different toy to the middle to see what would happen. I was able to get a video of him stacking up his blocks this morning:

Family Photo!

We had our pictures taken with Matt's parents while they were here for Ben's birthday, and we finally got the pictures back! We busted open our frame and scanned ours in, but we didn't want to destroy their frame, so for now you'll have to take my word for it that their picture with Ben was great!