our april, part one...

hello! well, we had a wonderful time with our visitors last weekend and will be sure to share pictures of that soon. but first we are a little behind and need to catch up on the rest of our april. this first one of me is fitting, though, because it's a heart cookie i made for aunt aimee a couple weeks ago. actually, i ended up eating it myself, but i was thinking of her when i made it (and ate it!), so that counts. and i'm missing her now that she's gone, so that counts too...

here i am in my cute underwear anticipating the arrival of our visitors...

me and luke outside on the playground... he loves swinging just as much as i do, but you can tell in this picture that he was a little nervous about me pushing him i think!

momma loves the zip line the most, but on this day, i was having such a fun time with it...

(check out this face of excitement!!)

...that i then decided to try it all on my own for the very first time! usually daddy is right there with me, as you can see in the first picture. and although i am all boy about some things, i am in a bit of a timid phase about some new things, and so i liked daddy to be right there... until now!

that was so much fun! and as usual, i was so glad i went out of my comfort zone a bit and tried something new! luke, on the other hand, was not nearly as impressed...

did you notice his chunky legs in that picture?!?! can you believe those? (or can you believe that they've actually trimmed down a bit since he started crawling so much?) here's another look... momma has a hard time not munching on those all day, but she's had to stop teasing about that, because luke started a biting phase, which he thought was a game since momma "bites" him all day. whoops.

moving on... i can't remember if i've talked about how we started up school time again here... i think i did. we have a neat area in the playroom where momma and i sit down to work on things together. here i am practicing my letters...

i was required to include this picture because momma loves it so much. she loves getting a good, clean, close-up of my face, even if i'm not smiling... something about my eyes and that serious look on my face, who knows...

this is what luke usually does while we're having school time...

or he crawls over to see momma (he's cute, folks)...

you may remember our visits to the strawberry farm and pumpkin patch in a place not far from austin. well, we were excited to learn there's a similar (and even bigger!) farm just outside of magnolia too! we went to pick strawberries a couple weeks ago. truth be told, momma did all the picking, but luke and i did have fun...

okay, luke, not so much fun in this one... it was pretty hot that day and he didn't like being stuck in the wagon. momma did let him out after this and we crawled around in the dirt while she picked...
and i pulled the wagon all the way from the patch to the building where we weighed and paid - all by myself. i was very proud of that...

well, that's all for now, but stay tuned again soon for another look at our april fun, and then some pictures from our weekend with visitors! sorry to leave you hangin'!!! :)

in case you ever wondered...

what i'll look like when i'm 25 and decide to grow a goatee a la johnny depp...

so... hi... the last of the march pictures are here! we'll post these fast so we can move on to our next post with pictures from a fun place we visited last weekend!!! i'll keep you on the edge of your rug, kind of like i was here, waiting for some cookies in my oven...

check out luke in the background - lately he's been crawling around like a lion stalking his prey... seeing what thing he can find on the floor to chomp on (or actually eat, whether food or not)...

and here he is going after momma and camera (not unlike i used to do at that age, i'm sure)...

this is a face we've been seeing too much of around here lately!! laid-back luke has hit the fussies... maybe he's nervous about turning the big 1, feeling that old age setting in already! he's not going to be a "baby" for long and has apparently wanted to make the most of his last few weeks...

i sure do love him, though. we like to "share the chair" a lot, and here we are cute-ly squeezing into this one. momma wanted me to include this picture (which probably seems a little boring, right?) because it cracks her up everytime, to see me squirming in next to chubby luke...

he loves me too...

favorite activity with daddy (guess how much i love the dump cart/trailer!)...

and another fun outside picture - we have a great local park here, and it includes a little water splash-pad area - so fun! it has already been hot enough to enjoy it too - crazy! we'll definitely be going back here often... (i'm in the upper right, in the brown UPS-like outfit)...

and we'll close with some very serious outside faces...

bye!!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s. hApPy BiRtHdAy BeAmEe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we LOVE you and can't wait to give you (and grampee and gabbee and aimee) some awesome hugs when you get here!!! SELT, feel free to surprise us at the last minute (really, really, pretty please!). but if you really can't make it, just come visit in the summer and stay longer then. :)

bye!!

hello from austin?

whoops. we still had some (cute, if i do say so myself) pictures from our last good times in austin. here i am all bundled up for the winter, enjoying some play time in the basket of a target cart...

and we also visited on more "austin-y" thing before we moved. it's called the cathedral of junk and had always been on momma's list of things to do there. if you've ever heard of (or even if you haven't until now), it's exactly what you would think. piles of junk in a guy's backyard. he built "sculptures" out of all kinds of (mostly broken) trash and crazy stuff. some would call this weird (as in, "keep austin weird."). weirder still that people drive to this man's house to check it out. we thought it was cool but didn't really think it was that strange.

this is ben holding a broken computer mouse. funny thing is, he brought it with him. he had been playing with that broken computer mouse all day. he didn't want to leave it in the car, so momma avoided an argument by letting him carry it around. you see the irony here, right? momma had a moment when she wondered to herself (and then later told me about it, obviously) if ben would be the "cathedral of junk" creator of the future, living a life in a "weird" part of a "weird" city, building sculptures out of random things he's collected his whole life. probably not. but if he ever did, he'd never let it be open to the public because he wouldn't want anyone touching his stuff, of course. :)

moving on...

and speaking of moving on, i sure am! after all this time of not crawling, i am now officially on the move - constantly!! there's all kinds of things for me to get into here, and i sure do.

if you are beamee or mimsie, avert your eyes...

check out what ben drew on the easel the other day!!! momma added the 4 legs and the eye. so cool.

mimsie and grandpa came to visit, which was awesome! they were our first visitors, very exciting. ben and mimsie did a lot of swinging...

i crawled in the grass...

and that's about it for now!! we have more pictures from march and promise to post those by at least june. we can't really be bothered to keep up with any blogging schedule now because i have too much crawling and talking and teething (and fussing!) to do. and ben spends all of his time riding his tricycle around in the driveway, using all of his breaks to ensure he hasn't missed out on any eating going on inside. but thanks for checking in and we'll try to see you back here again soon. :)