Grandpa and Grandma Spoil Bennett

Friday evening Grandpa and Grandma van Leeuwen made the 550 mile trek to Sioux Center to spend a short weekend with us. They always come bearing gifts and we always look forward to them. Dale and I get the most excited about the Rye Bread that they nicely added to our freezer. It is the best rye bread ever. Mom bought me the cutest little tea pot and I tell ya, it makes such great tea! Who knew what tea experiences I had been missing out on all these years. The weather was really nice for the time that they were here. It was really sunny and hovering around the freezing mark. Dale and Dad spent a good part of Saturday driving around shopping for a pick up. He didn't know how serious he was about the actual buying of a vehicle, but he said he brought a check, so that was a good sign. Truth be told, none of us actually thought that he would make a purchase, but lo and behold we were wrong!

Here Bennett is showing Grandpa and Grandma how to drive Grandpa's new pick up. Since Grandpa isn't to familiar with all this technology that these "new" vehicles have, Bennett decided to show him the panic button first. It was loud...and funny.

Bennett is showing off his new rain boots that he got from his Grandparents as part of his Valentines Day package. He also got some new gitches (undies) in which we tried on him and he cried (probably didn't help that Dale and I couldn't stop laughing. He looked so cute. He is sitting on the potty for longer periods now, and we are just anticipating the first pee.... look at what our conversations have become.....

Bennett was having a moment to himself and Grandpa's Maple Leafs Hat.

Still Freezing in February

This is Bennett looking an awful lot like Harry Potter. The glasses are actually an accessory to his Mr. Potato Head, but he insists on wearing the items. He did have the ears in his own ears, but every time he tried to pose for me they fell out:)



Have you ever had something that you were really looking forward to and then when it happens, it is somewhat disappointing? Well, that is sort of how our weekend went. We had been looking forward to this weekend for a LONG time. We had a friend's wedding to go to and so we decided to make a little getaway out of it. The ceremony was going to be about 3 hours away from here, but the reception was only about 1hr 20 minutes away. We made a hotel reservation and the Roetman's happily agreed to have Bennett for a sleepover. Yeah! Well, Saturday morning comes along and Dale comes back into the bedroom in a sweat saying that there is no way he is leaving the house. Turns out, he had been sick most of the night and was not doing well. My first reaction was total disappointment and then I got into the "lets get him better so we can still go mode". I sent him downstairs to sleep while I took care of Bennett and Pete. We eventually got out of the house and we brought Petey to Jill's (his home away from home) and then on to the Roetmans. I decided to go ahead and bring Bennett over there, even if it meant that we picked him up later. This would give Dale a quiet house in which to hopefully start to feel better.
I was realizing that there was no way he was going to make it to the ceremony, as we just didn't have time to get there. I left him to sleep. Then finally around 1:45 I woke him up and much to my surprise he was feeling better. So we packed up our things and headed out to Okoboji. We went to the reception and had a pretty great time. It would have been better if the hotel wouldn't have run out of extra blankets and so we had the temp in the room cranked. It would have also been better had the hotel not mistakenly given us a 5am wake up call. But all in all, we got away and everyone is home safe and soundly. I do feel bad, though, because Mary said Bennett was up at midnight and wouldn't fall back asleep due to coughing. She ended up staying home from church with him and catching a couple naps here and there. Hopefully they all get some sleep tonight!

Here I am with my friend and college roommate, Amanda. We live an hour away from eachother, but don't see one another very often.


Okay, so we don't get dressed up very often, so we thought
we better take a picture.