Benny

I told myself that I would not call Ben and Sam anything but those names!  Not Benjamin, Samuel or anything else.  Sure enough, Ben is called Benny more than I would like to admit.  I love both of their names, but Ben has always, for years, been my favorite boys name.  Please note, all blog readers, this is not permission for anyone else to call him that! 

Just when I write a post about Sam being such a sweetheart, he's turned quite a challenging kid these last few days.  Ben has upped his game and been pretty helpful and even-tempered.  Except for today when he threw a fit because he wanted a snack on the way to have lunch. 

Two years ago for Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa Bleything gave the boys this talking dog.  You can program him to say names, favorite foods and colors, etc.  He says Bens name and Ben thinks thats pretty darn cool.  Here is Ben snuggling with Scout:

My little Chiefs fan running through some leaves.  I'm gonna be so sad when this little, compact body gets big.  He's just so cute!

Lastly, I wanted to give a big shout out to one of my best girlfriends and her husband.  Lon Bon had twins last week and man, she sure did do a good job.  They are perfectly wonderfully beautiful!  I'm so excited that one of my best friends is also a fellow twin mom now.  And what a good mom I know she will be!  Congrats!

Sammy Sam

I love my Sam.  He is so happy, silly, smiley, and he tells me that he loves me about 15 times a day.  I am such a lucky mom!

Crown Center....again

I've done several posts on Crown Center but it's just because the boys like it so darn much.   On Tuesday they woke up begging to go there.  Not sure where that came from but they were pretty insistent!  Actually, they got pretty mad when I told them that we would not be going that day.  But, being the fantastic mom that I am ;), we went on Wednesday!  We went to the toy store, got a sucker, went to Fritz's - the works!  Of course, they whined half the time because, I've found, the more I do for them, the more they like to act like spoiled brats (which they are not!), but on days we are doing something special - that is what they turn into!

We went to play in the fun kids room that they usually have set up as some sort of theme..Christmas, dinosaurs, animals, etc....but it's closed right now.  I decided to try my luck and call Kaelidoscope and see if they had any openings.  We lucked out and they were able to squeeze us in with a 3rd grade class who was there on a field trip.  We were told we could stick around after the field trip left because we got there late. Apparently, that was not relayed to all of the middle aged, motherly, women who work as staff there.  Kaelidoscope is a play where kids can learn, do art, and play.  What did I learn there?  When a staff woman tells you to leave, you leave!  It doesn't matter if someone else said you could stay - you leave!  Did we leave?  Well....no, but we did get some looks that could kill. 

The boys with their art bags:

Here we are at their favorite spot - Fritz's!  For any normal person, this picture would be of them sharing a huge milkshake.  My kids think I'm super nice because they get to share an apple juice (told you they weren't spoiled!)

Noggin

I love the back of Ben's head. It's so big, flat and square and his hair is so soft.  I find myself always rubbing his little noggin like a good luck charm.

Here he is wearing his party shirt:

Art class

Once a month we get together with my friend, Morgan, and her son, Shaw, and switch off being in charge of an art project.  It has turned out to be a very fun activity and one that I look forward to each month and I know the boys enjoy a lot!

The first month I planned the project and of course, we did tye dye shirts!  If you know me, you know I love tye dye of any kind.  I thought it would be fun for the boys to wear a shirt that they had made themselves.  I was right- Ben and Sam wear theirs at least once a week.

One example of their handy work:

The next project, Morgan was in charge.  Now, let me say I am very lucky to have Morgan as my partner in this because she is a true artist!  She found this awesome project where you glue crayons to a canvas and then use a blow dryer to melt them.  We needed some pictures for our bathroom and these fit in perfectly:

This month I was in charge again and we actually did two small projects.   I had found some wooden trains at a garage sale so I thought it would be fun to let the boys paint them.  All three like trains!

Here are the little artists at work:

Sam is VERY meticulous when it come to painting.  He made sure every inch of that train was covered in paint and then some.  I mean, look at those duck lips, you can tell he is concentrating really hard!

I think Shaw got him Mom's artsy gene!

The other project we did was make caramel apples.  Ok, if you ever try this project with a 2-yr-old, BEWARE!  The caramel gets really hard and difficult for little teeth to chew.  Ben and Sam ended up just eating off all the marshmallows, candy corn, and M&M's. 

The three Picasso's!