Nursery

Ben loves Nursery. He want to take himself every Sunday (we follow to make sure he actually gets there). His nursery leaders do so much to make the kids feel comfortable and happy and also to teach a little lesson every week about the gospel.

Spelling Bee

Ben was one of the two winners for his class Spelling Bee, which means he got to go on to the School Spelling Bee. He was in the younger grade Bee: Kindergarten through 3rd grade. He got out on the word, "brew" but I was proud of him for getting that far. Last week he finished the book, "Ender's Game." Dad told him if he read it that he would take him to the movies to see it. It just recently came out in the movie theater. Ben got that thing read in about less than two weeks, so he and Dad had an outing at the movie. Ben said Dad bought him a big soda and they shared a popcorn together.

Fall Soccer 2013

Ben played another season of soccer - this is his 4th season now. His coach was Craig Weston (whose son, Nick, has been on Ben's team for two other seasons and was also in Ben's class last year at school). He moved up to U-10, which means he started playing on the bigger field using goalies and off-side calls. Ben took a turn as the goalie a couple of times at the very beginning of the season. He did pretty well, but I think he would rather run the field. As the season went on he was better about running hard through the whole game. He scored a couple of times (once on the last game of the season, along with a good assist too). He loves it. We've thought a little bit about getting him signed up with a competitive team because he seems to enjoy it so much, and although AYSO is a great program, it is run by all volunteers and I know he could improve his skills more with a private program. We'll see - he likes the friends he has made on these teams and enjoys the more relaxes environment too. He got this crazy rash under his skin guards after about the second or third game. We put cream on it and guaze over it. It seemed to improve for a while and then it would flare up again. Then it really started to dry up by the end of the season. Hopefully it will go away soon.

Messy Face

Over the past year and a half or so Ben has definitely started showing more of an interest in older movies - he still likes the cute, fun animated Disney flicks, but he also likes the Super Hero movies and Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Sean took Nathan and Ben to see "Man of Steel" at the cheap theater one night, which Ben totally loved. They went out for Baskin Robbins ice cream afterwards. Sean looked over in the car and Nathan was clean as a whistle and Ben looked like this. HA! Totally uncharacteristic of him. He also has become quite the reader. He's read three of the Harry Potter books and is anxious to get the others from the library. He read The Hobbit. Actually he came to us and asked us if he could read Lord of the Rings. We suggested that maybe he should start out with The Hobbit first. Dad went out and bought him a nice, hard cover copy of it. He got right to it - finished it in about a week. He's done that with several other books as well. I love that he enjoys reading so much!!

State Fair

We took advantage of School Days at the State Fair again this year. We saw a Cirque Nirvana show, a Wolf show, pig races, Chinese Acrobats, Native American Fire Dancers, saw the model trains, went to the McDonald's Farm fun zone for kids, got a milkshake from the Dairy, saw a cow get milked, checked out the arts and crafts (including the Lego displays), played on John Deere tractors, went to the petting zoo (complete with all the normal animals as well as an ostrich, zebra and baby camel), ate a picnic lunch.....a full day of fun. And all of that for me and 6 kiddos for a whopping...$4. Yes, my friends, that is how it is done.

Dirty Dash

We saw a groupon for the Dirty Dash race a few months ago and we decided to buy tickets. It was held at the Wild West Zoo right here in our own town of Edgewood. We got a deal on 4 tickets so we asked Caelan and Ben if they wanted to do it with us. They decided to. It was a fun race through mud puddles, over rope walls, through mud tunnels, sliding across blow up slides, etc. We did a lot of walking through the course, but we all made it. Ben was a pretty good little runner. We walked a bunch, but he and I ran ahead at the end. He was a little nervous on the high rope walls, but he was a trooper. At the very last puddle he completely dunked himself all the way under. He was a disaster!

Fun times.

Back to School

School has started again. Ben is in the third grade with Mrs. Vallejos as his teacher. Caelan had her last year. She's great. A couple of Ben's close friends switched schools to the charter school, but he still has some good buddies in his grade and/or class this year: Josh, Jonas and Nate.