catching up

Lots and lots and LOTS of catching up to do. I have finally taken the time to download and reduce the pictures (I now have such an awesome camera that I have to reduce the size of my images - yes, each and every one- before I can post them)
First, there was Easter

My friend and her son B. came over for Easter - we had a great time!
There they are - divvying up their booty

Then we got puppies - Midnight and Shadow
You have to guess which one is which

I have a really great video of Benjamin and the puppies, but you have to watch it in the post below. Posting a large number of pictures (especially in a certain sequence) can be a real pain. Throwing in a video in the middle is just about impossible.

Then, Benjamin turned two. His favorite thing to watch is Blue's Clues (even more so now. He walks around with little notepads and a crayon and will flip pages, make a few circles and then flip some more pages and make more circles - he really gets into it when Steve is writing in his notebook as well. Benjamin can even say "notebook" now and that is really big for our ever silent Benjamin). So I made him a Blue cake.

And he really liked the glo doodle he got.

Then, just days after his 2nd birthday, on my first day off from work, I took him to the doctor for his well check up. We were completely ready to go; I had even made the follow up appointment and then he trips and bangs his head on an interior doorway inside the pediatrician's office and cuts his head to the point where he needed staples. Of course, they didn't have those at the doctor's so we had to go to the hospital. It was one glorious waiting room filled day


Then, one of our puppies died. It was a horrible heart wrenching experience for our family. You can't see it in the photo, but Tre wrote "Shadow Our Dog" on this rock that we have always thought looks like a heart.


The next day we went camping with the cub scouts. This a picture of the cubs with a local taxidermist. He brought a trailer full of animals. It sounds grim (especially just after losing a puppy), but it was actually rather neat

Then, after school was over, my mother came to visit for a week with the express intent of showing me how to sew. She and I didn't get as much done as she wanted, but she did show Gabrielle how to make a little doll. That Gabrielle of course gave to Benjamin. My mother made a matching one for a little girl from our Branch who turned two that week

And finally, we got another puppy. When we got Shadow and Midnight, we got them from our neighbors who had found a whole litter left in the ditch next to the street. In Early April, when we first got them, Larry decided it would be better to get two, so that the one wouldn't be lonely. At the time, our neighbors actually had three puppies. Peter really really wanted to get all three and not break up their little band. He was so upset he had to walk home before the rest of us did. After Shadow died, we talked about getting another one. We knew that Midnight was just so lonely. We finally talked to the neighbor again, who still had the last puppy and we got her - last week in fact. Her name is April. She and Midnight are very happy to be together again.

It took several tries for me to get this picture. She wanted to jump up on me and she just wouldn't be still.