it's the final countdown...

hi! it's luke, with a few recent pictures to start things off...

we've been getting ready for our week-long trip to the UP (upper peninsula, of michigan), so things have been a little silly around here, as you can see above and are about to see below... as we've mentioned before, ben loves his "grampee shorts" and here he is pulling them up in a goofy way...

and then wearing them gangster style, which was "cool" for certain boys to do when momma was in high school, but she really hopes this is no longer the trend, although she thought it was hilarious when ben was doing it at the time (diaper and all)...

(that container above was empty, by the way, but that doesn't stop ben from pretending...) and here he is playing with a few letter tiles that momma made for him to practice learning his lowercase letters using pictures of his favorite things (better pictures of those another time). she had daddy cut some wood, then sanded, painted, drew/colored, and mod podged 26 different tiles, which it turns out ben loves... because they make perfect "yellow ones." here he is lining them up just so...

and driving the new car over them (yes, momma is a little worried about his OCD characteristics, but what can ya do?)...

and giving a silly face for all the pictures (featuring daddy's cuero hat - go gobblers!)

more silly pictures of ben...

playing with noah's ark (notice the polka dot socks, clearly momma's, which he's been wearing around the house for 2 days)...

messy face from a "hamburger samich"...

okay, i guess that's all. i realize it wasn't much, but we've been busy packing and getting ready for our big trip and will have much to report and share afterwards!! can't wait to see all our lehman family relatives!! and definitely are missing our matthys family relatives and look forward to seeing you sometime soon after we get back. bye!

who you callin' chubby?

hi! luke here, for a quick update... so, it has come to pass that i'm growing quite well. i'm in the upper 13 lb range - and check out these thighs!! momma still has some pregnancy pounds to lose, so she's started snacking on these instead of cookies and brownies when she gets a craving (can you blame her?)...

but she knows my growth means i'm healthy and doing great (plus ben was a total chunker at this age too, so we expected the same for me), and more luke pounds just means more luke to love!!

but if i am feeling self-conscious about my multiple chins (as seen above), then i just stick my neck out a bit like this and it's as if i really only have the one...

things are going pretty well. i'm happy, healthy, and bright eyed. mostly i still like to be held and given attention during the day, but i am sleeping pretty well in my bed both for naps and at night (although i still wake up a couple times to be soothed and/or to eat), and momma is hoping this will end fairly soon so she can get back to those 9-hour nights of sleep she loves so dearly. i'm starting to hold onto things in my hand but not really reaching out for things yet. i like to chew on my hands and thumb. i don't, however, like tummy time. in fact, here's how i feel about it...

could someone please tell this woman to pick me up and get me off of my tummy?!?!

momma is hoping i just learn to roll over soon so i can flip over myself, plus she knows my muscles need the exercise, so i will endure the tummy time as much as i can i guess...

so what's ben up to, you ask? well, pretty much the usual, wearing things on his head, like blankie...

or this hat momma made as he pretended to make and serve ice cream (just like at the parlor we visited in galveston!)...

and we've been having a lot of rain, so he and momma got out to play in it the other morning. filling up and dumping out containers is apparently very serious business and requires a lot of concentration and tongue sticking-out...

ben also had a great time driving the wheeled cooler over, wait for it, the "yellow one" in our driveway (if you missed the last post, ben is obsessed with speed bumps, which are usually yellow, and which he refers to as "yellow ones")...

he can't get enough, folks...

he also still loves various containers and those continue to be some of his favorite toys... this is a good thing for momma, because our family is going on vacation soon and she won't have to pack many "real" toys because she knows he just prefers to rescue trash and recyclables instead...

well, i've been up over an hour now, so it's almost my nap time again! thanks for stopping by. :)

galveston or bust...

hi, it's ben again! since luke still has to take a lot of naps during the day (and he actually takes them best in his bed, unlike me at his age!), momma and i end up being stuck inside the house a lot more than we'd like but are trying to make the best of it. that means sometimes things get a little crazy in here! for any of you that know me well, you know i love going through the car wash. i'm a bit obsessed with it, you could say, but it's the simple things in life, you know? anyway, i still love pushing around my airplane and wooden wagon and anything else with wheels (office chair, high chair, etc) so momma made my own car wash under the desk!! check it out...

as you can see, i love it and like to keep my vehicles shiny clean with several washings throughout the day (not unlike daddy and grampee with their vehicles, actually!)...

i also recently developed another obsession, which is driving over speed bumps in parking lots. i call them "yellow ones" since most around here are yellow and look forward to running any errands at all that might involve the opportunity for momma or daddy to drive repeatedly over these bumps in the parking lot. if i get to push the shopping cart over them on our way out, then my day has pretty much been made. anyway, i realized that the leg of this desk makes a great "yellow one" and so spend a good deal of time each day taking my clean vehicles over the speed bump and then doing it all over again...

when i'm not busy with that, i still enjoying wearing momma's shoes (and daddy's too of course) around the house, sometimes even without pants on...

and once i even got a hold of momma's camera to snap a few pictures of my own. she was off with luke and i didn't see what the big deal was. she was pretty t.o.'d when she found me, but later couldn't help but laughing when she saw the pics i took. this was one of about seven or eight of my shirt, the ceiling, and up my nose...

i guess it's not terrible that we're inside a lot lately because it really is quite ridiculously hot here in the summer. i actually don't mind it much because i'm a boy, who cares, but momma isn't a huge fan and i've also been getting a lot of bug bites and require bug spray then a bath afterwards and frankly it's just easier to stay inside and eat bon bons (HA - kidding!). anyway, of course i still do play outside some and one of my favorite things to do is play with water in containers. here's just one picture of that from the other day...

speaking of water and getting outside, momma mentioned on a whim that we needed a family get-away and daddy agreed and made it happen, so we went to galveston last weekend to play at the beach and just get away for a few days. i've been to the beach once before but was too young to remember and momma just wanted to play in the sand and water with me. so we took off on thursday and headed to the shore. we had a great time at "the strand" - here's daddy and the water line from hurricane ike a few years ago - crazy!

and just in case we were missing all the "weirdos" in austin, it turns out there are a few in galveston too... if you can't read it, it says "this car is 'green.' in an effort to conserve water, it shall not be washed." momma especially loved it because she used to drive a faded light blue ford tempo just like this one in college! (it probably wasn't much cleaner, either!)

we enjoyed some fresh lime ade and ice cream and taffy at one of my new favorite places ever too - a confectionery!! yum!!

then it was off to our beach house, which some cousins were super nice enough to let us stay in! on friday morning i got to have powdered donuts on the porch with daddy - whoa!

then it was off to the beach with momma while daddy stayed with a sleeping luke. i won't get into the details of the beach trip much or momma might cry, but let's just say it was not exactly the experience she was hoping for for me. i loved playing in the sand! but it was all a bit of sensory overload for my two-year-old self and i wouldn't move an inch from the area where i first sat down (which was about 2 feet from our car and right in the middle of the other parking area for cars because you drive onto the beach in galveston). so i was in the way of other beach-goers and didn't want to move and especially didn't want to get into the water or even walk into it. momma didn't push me because she knows that would have only made things worse, but she was bummed that i didn't explore it more and we didn't have a lot of time there that morning, so that was that. anyway, i'm sure i would love the beach after taking it all in on my own time, but for this trip with a little baby and the texas summer sun, it turned out to be a bit of a "bust." it was, however, great to get out of the house, and i definitely enjoyed all the special vacation treats! and here are some pictures of my relatively short but enjoyable beach play...

and here's what luke thought about the whole thing...

and now, i'm off to wash my airplane... bye!!