October 12, 2013

Today we got to spend a bunch of time as a family!  Woohoo!  This semester has been so crazy busy that this is the first weekend in two months that we have gone out as a family.  It was fun.  We spent the morning at Cornbelly's. I always thought it was just a corn maze, but it was so much more.  There was so much for Benson to do and we all really had a good time (even though it ended with us taking the "emergency exit" out of the maze and Ben with a twisted ankle)

We had to dress him up for the day. The glasses were daddy's touch.

 He has never seen or heard of a pumpkin, but he was SO excited about them. 

 Family

 This kid loves tractors.  He has a toy size replica of this exact tractor so he was extra excited to see the real thing.

 Duck races

 Cow train ride, daddy is a dork, but Benson loved it.

 I could not get him to look at the camera for the life of me.  Story of my life lately :)

 Singing animals

 Sliding with daddy

 This kid LOVES rocks, so a huge trough full of colorful, clean rocks was like heaven for him.

 Cow swings, he wasn't sure he was a fan.

 He still loves balloons

 There was an area with all these garden games, chess, checkers, huge legos.  He loved it!

He has a definite swagger. Glad I caught it on camera.

Corn maze

Benson got to spend the afternoon with daddy as well.  Since he twisted his ankle in the corn maze, I got to spend the afternoon at the Lehi house cleaning and mowing the lawn to get it ready for our renters while my two boys played together.  Benson loves his daddy so much and misses him when he isn't around, so it was a good day for all of us. 

October 11, 2013

Benson loves having visitors.  There is definitely a lot less frustration happening when we have lots of friends to entertain us.  Today was full of visitors.  This morning my friend, Marisa, brought over her 3 kids to come see our new place and play for a while.  We also invited Kelsey and Ella from upstairs to come visit.  It was awesome to just relax and have many other entertainers for Benson.  He has not always done well with people, especially having 4 other kids over, but he is getting so much better and definitely had tons of fun.  He even finally did a full somersault.  He has been trying for about a month now, but he always falls over to the side.  Today, with friends to show off for :), he got all the way over.  It was pretty awesome. Only bad thing about having visitors was the teeth marks he left on poor Ella's arms.  We are still working on that.

 These are the stairs leading to and from our new basement apartment.  I do not love them, mostly for safety reasons, but Benson does.

Me holding the phone while Benson "talks" to daddy.  This is pretty typical as he is just too busy to take the time to hold the phone himself.

The weather has been turning into fall and we are loving the fallen leaves.  He also loves splashing in puddles.  Tonight he got to hang out with his Tita DJ while mommy and daddy got to go on a date. He had lots of fun.

 "Airplane"

He has found his pockets

He LOVES jumping on the bed until it turns into him smashing into the wall.  This was tonight before we went out.  These pictures reminded me of this post from two years ago.  If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the post and check out the last 2 pictures on the post, you will see why.  I remember vividly watching Beau jumping on that bed and how much fun it was and just thinking "this is why we are going home." and here we are with our own little boy, jumping on the bed.  

Life is good

October 10, 2013

Ben is on Fall Break from student teaching, so he was here when Benson and I got up this morning.  Benson ran into the room yelling "Daddy".  The way he says daddy is the cutest thing in the entire world. He says it ALL the time lately.  So adorable.  They got to play together before bedtime tonight too.  Fall break is the best!

Benson's favorite thing lately seems to be hiding in small, dark places.  He runs into the closet and makes me close the door and he will stay in there forever.  He isn't even scared that it's dark.

Then today he crawled into the corner cupboard in the kitchen and just played in there for a while.  At first I was worried he would get stuck, but he got in and out about 10x today no problem

It's so fun to watch Benson develop new skills every day.  He has been trying to build with his duplo blocks for a while, but mostly just gets frustrated.  Well, today he built and built and built and was so extremely proud of himself.  When he looked up at me with this proud face and huge grin and said "mom" expecting to show off his new skill it just melted my heart.  I am the first person he looks for when he does something new and it is the best part of my day.

October 9, 2013

Every Wednesday morning Benson and I go to the Orem Library for laptime.  Although Benson seems totally oblivious or at least uninterested in why we are there, it's a lot of fun and I love that it's something we do consistently.  These are the types of things I could not do when I was working, even though I was working from home.  It's just so nice to be able to go and spend an hour at the library or wherever else we decide.  We usually meet friends there and it gets us out of the house. Benson HAS to get out of the house.  He must get that from me, cause we both get stir crazy if we are inside all day long.  I am not looking forward to the winter.

Today was much better than yesterday.  He was happy and funny all day.  Plus, daddy came home from work early (he had a headache) and Benson just loves when his daddy is home. 

October 8, 2013

Some days are harder than others with a toddler.  Today was one of those days.  I think Benson is getting molars which explains a lot.  But, he is also just getting to this age where he wants to be independent and gets frustrated when he can't do something on his own.  Today there seemed to be a lot of that.  It turns into a lot of yelling and screaming.  But, no matter how hard things are some days, he is my favorite little person in the entire world and being his mommy is my greatest joy.

October 7, 2013

Lately Benson loves books and reading.  Today I walked into his room and found this.  Pretty dang adorable.

He has started to mimic everything we do (yikes) and today I had an "owie" on my foot so I put a band-aid on it.  Of course he wanted one too.  The best part about it is while he was trying to put it on he had this painful face on and kept saying "owie" even though there was no owie there, haha.  Hilarious.

He LOVES to spin in circles, but the best part is when he stops and tries to walk....and falls down.  It is quite hilarious.

Today he decided he wanted to sit IN the box with the toys.  I even tried to empty the toys out and let him sit there and he refused, he put all the toys back in and THEN got back in on top of them, lol.

I figure I should be in some of the pictures since Benson and I are together 24/7.  This was us tonight, winding down and watching The Voice and Dancing With the Stars. This kid loves singing and dancing so much.

This is most of Benson's interaction with daddy.  They can talk for 10 minutes straight though.  My favorite part is when Benson will put one of his toys up to the phone like he is "showing" Ben.  It is quite cute.  Tonight I heard Benson start yelling "DADDY"... and thought it was kind of weird since he had never done that when they were on the phone before, so I went over to check what was up.  He had hung up on Ben but didn't know why daddy wasn't talking anymore so he just started yelling his name.  It was QUITE cute.

This is showing two of Bensons favorite things.  He is playing with these 3 circular magnets that he thinks are so awesome (I know, choking hazard) and he is "hiding" behind his chair.  He runs to get behind it and as soon as he does he starts to giggle until you find him. 

It seems the family magnets are working.  Today at lunch time I asked Benson who the pictures were and he knew SO many more names than I thought.  Some of them he said perfectly (or as perfectly as possible for a toddler) were Cowdery, Jordan, Justin, Lolo, DJ and a few more.  I was so impressed.  I think he especially liked that if he said one right I would give him a high five, he thought that was pretty cool. 

October 6, 2013

General Conference weekend is always good.  It's one of our favorite times of year.  Listening to the Prophet and leaders of our church is uplifting and inspiring and I am so glad we live in a place where we can sit in our pajamas and be edified all weekend. Benson actually sat and listened some, especially to the music, he loved it!  We taught him how to say prophet, and he got to eat ice cream and strawberries so I think he was a happy camper.  It's a tradition in our family to do waffles with ice cream and strawberries on Sunday between sessions, but Benson couldn't have the waffles because they had traces of nuts in them and he was recently diagnosed with a nut allergy :(  We were also lucky to have COCONUT syrup for the waffles thanks to Tia Frazier.  Oh my gosh, so yummy!  I love anything coconut flavored, like Dirty Diet Cokes (coconut and lime in diet coke) and coconut M&Ms and now coconut syrup.  I just feel like coconut flavor tastes like the beach (that sounds weird but I think you know what I mean :))  We had a lot of family time and then tonight we got to skype with our Crisanto Family in Oregon, so it was really a good day.

Playing games Johnson style

Getting ready for the cold weather

 

He loves to sit with his toys in the corner

Daddy/son time (I was sleeping or you would probably hear me telling Ben not to do this in the background, haha.  Benson seems to be quite enjoying it)

One of his favorite activities

He keeps us busy.....constantly :).  Life is never boring, that is for sure.