Holders?!

I am constantly reminding Kassie to take smaller bites. Mostly so she won't choke, but also because she makes a huge mess when she takes big bites. So today as she was eating Spaghetti-O's:

K: Watch this big bite, Mama!
M: Wow, what a big bite! Make sure you chew that really well.
K: (around her mouthful of food) Don't worry Mama, I put some in my holders.
M: In your what?
K: My holders, see?

She then proceeds to show me that she has tucked spaghetti-o's into each cheek. Useful and adorable!
Her "holders" were about all you could see of her when we bundled up to go play in the snow!

It really happened!!

Things that I have done before owning a house:
-been married for 8 1/2 years
-had 2 children
-graduated from college
-taught school for 3 years
-moved 6 times in my adult life
-lived with my in-laws....twice....for a total of 10 months
-watched my husband graduate....twice.....with a total of 2 undergrad majors and 1 minor, 1 law degree and an MBA


BUT it is all over now!! We are under contract for our first home and if all goes well will be closing on it on the 25th of February! Yay!!!!

While Dad's Away...

Ben (as has been mentioned) is working A LOT these days. He loves his job, but being the newest guy there, he has to work the longest hours. So most nights he doesn't make it home in time for dinner with us. With his parents being gone this week, it's been just me and the kids.

Now, I love cooking. But when it's just me and 2 pretty picky eaters cooking becomes more of a chore than fun. That was the dilemma that faced me last night. As I was looking through the refrigerator and cupboards, I remembered the bag of left over pancakes sitting in the freezer. And the bacon I just bought....and eggs......"Hey kids! Who wants breakfast for dinner?" Hoorays and excitement all around! I LOVE breakfast food. I would rather go out for breakfast than for dinner. Sadly I married a man with very little use for breakfast. And he told me very early in our marriage that his absolute least favorite meal is breakfast for dinner.

So while we missed him last night, I had 2 very happy children and we all enjoyed our dinner (a rarity these days!). May as well make the most of things you can't change, right?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We didn't manage to get Christmas cards out in time this year, maybe we'll make it for New Year's! Our family has been so blessed this year in so many ways and while I haven't been able to keep with our blog like I've wanted to, I did want to share some of our highlights. Goal for 2009: Clean the pictures off my camera more often and do more posts with pictures of our cute kids!

• Top of the list was Ben's graduation from law school in May. He finished his 4 year program with a law and MBA degree and we are so proud of his accomplishments!
• Sadly, we had little time to enjoy him being done with school because he jumped right into studying for the bar exam. He studied 6 days a week, as well as being the course administrator for the evening class.
• On the bright side, the kids and I took a 3 week trip to MT to let him study. It was our first trip driving to MT alone and the kids were outstanding. We spent a week with each set of grandparents and had a great time. We were all ready to get home and while Ben got a lot of good study time in, we agreed that it was way too long to be apart as a family.
• August saw us leaving our wonderful friends in the married student housing complex that we called home for 4 years and our kids entire lifetimes. We miss the people and community there, although many of our friends also found themselves in new homes this year.
• Ben started working full time at the law firm where he was hired and loves it. He says law school is like a pie eating contest where the winner gets......more pie! There are days he can't believe that he worked that hard in school in order to now work even harder. His firm is small, but growing rapidly and has had their best year ever. But we won't argue with the regular pay check!
  
• September and October were busy with Kassie's 2nd and Timothy's 4th birthdays. Kassie had a Mickey Mouse birthday, while Timothy stretched Mom's cake making abilities by requesting Lightening McQueen (look for pictures in upcoming "catch up" posts). The day after Kassie's birthday, we received the fabulous news that Ben passed the bar!
• In November we headed to MT to see my brother and his family for Thanksgiving. My mom joined us there and we had a great time with all of them. Kassie was completely enthralled with her new cousin, Kenna, and treated her like a baby doll.
  
• And now here we are in December. Ben's sister, Kate, returned home from her mission in Hawaii just in time for Christmas. Poor girl! Snow and ice were a real shock after 18 months in paradise! More posts will be coming on Christmas soon.

We hope 2009 brings many blessings for you and your families, wherever you may be. We have 2 years now before we're back to being tied to a school schedule and we hope to take advantage of it by traveling at off times and see as many of you as possible. We love keeping up with your blogs and hearing all the stories of your families.

All our love,
Ben, Kat and kids

It was bound to happen...

Over the past couple of years we have inherited 2 different sets of fish. One is a beta ("Guppy") and the other is an aquarium with 4 fish in it (2 chiclids (Super Why and Slide) and 2 sucker fish (Sneak and Dr. Greene)). When we moved out of our little, always warm apartment, our beta did not enjoy the new temperature variations in our new basement home. So we moved her to a 10 gallon tank with water heater. But it looked strange to have her all alone, so we added 2 neon tetras (Max and Ruby), 2 glo fish, and 2 tiny frogs (Thomas and James).

Now, the kids love these fish (obviously they're the ones who named them) and look forward to watching them and feeding them. I have lived in fear of the day that something happened to one of these beloved pets and the impact it would have on Timothy. Well, it happened. On Sunday, we noticed that Sneak was laying on the bottom of the tank. Bad sign. So we explained to Timothy that Sneak had died and would not be part of our tank anymore. He had lots of questions, of course, but really handled it pretty well. We had the requisite "fishy funeral" and Timothy wanted to know why we couldn't just keep Sneak's body in the tank. Then "Will Sneak get a new body?" Great opening for talking about the Resurrection! I wouldn't take everything we said as Gospel absolutes, but we made it through.

So I was prepared for the next morning being a little hard as he realized all over that Sneak wasn't there. What I was not prepared for was one of his frogs being dead in the other tank! As mentioned previously, Ben has been leaving for work early, so he was not there. So we had another funeral for James Froggy and that one was much harder. These were frogs Timothy had picked out himself and he took it really hard. "I don't want ALL my fish to die!" I so wanted to tell him that nothing else would happen, but how could I? Ben got a very tearful phone call at work that morning, but Timothy seems to have recovered now.

Thankfully, we've had no other fish/frog incidents! Hopefully it will stay that way for a LONG time...I don't know how much more Mom's heart can take!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

So Ben has been working a lot (read: every waking moment) and the toll is showing on the kids. Every morning, they are disappointed to learn that Daddy has left already and more often than not, he arrives home after they're in bed. But this morning he stayed home a little later and we dropped him off at the bus stop on our way to the library. On the way home, Kassie asks "Where's Daddy?" I told her that Daddy had to go to work. Her response:

"Oh, Daddy just stopped by?"

Ben said it would've been a lot funnier if it was someone else's kid saying it! We are so looking forward to escaping to Montana for Thanksgiving! 6 days of "Daddy home days". (Timothy has classified the days into Daddy working days and Daddy home days).

You heard what?

Remember that I said Timothy's imagination is in overdrive? One more example:

I don't know how we managed this, but our children will not get out of their beds. Once they are put to bed, they stay there. Now they may stay there yelling, screaming, bouncing, or a million other things (and every once in a great while, Timothy convinces Kassie to get up and get him a toy or book), but they do not come out of their room. Even in the morning, they will call for us and wait for someone to come tell them they can get up. So, as usual, I went into their room when Timothy announced that he was awake.

T: Mommy, did you hear that?
M: Hear what Timothy?
T: That little tap, tap, tap.
M: (after listening very carefully), No Timothy I don't hear anything.
T: It's little mice with little hammers, going tap, tap, tap.
M: (after listening AGAIN), Sorry buddy, don't hear it.

So Timothy gets up and heads for the bathroom.
T: Mommy, NOW do you hear it? Tap, tap, tap?
M: (Listening) Timothy, it's the clock. Tick, Tick, Tick.
T: No, Mommy it's little mice with little hammers, going tap, tap, tap.

If you say so Timmy! I hope he never loses this flair for imagination! If I could draw, I think I would have to write a children's book about the little mice. Doesn't it just bring great pictures to mind?