Ben's tooth

Here is a closeup of Ben's new smile! This was taken during one of his adventures with pudding. I didn't mind since he was at the table and we had time for a bath afterwards. He had a lot of fun smearing that pudding everywhere especially on his face, hair and the table.

After I posted the garden pictures I realized there is one that shows Ben with his missing tooth and realized I never posted about such a significant event in his life. In September 2009 we noticed Ben had an infection in his mouth. We tried one dentist that was crazy and gave us an antibiotic and the infection went away and so we decided not to worry about it. Then with our move on Oct 2010 the infection came back. This time we found a child specialist and they immediately said it needs to come out. I was really sad thinking about my poor boy having to go through all that and losing a tooth so early, but a friend told me that her daughter had the same thing and it suited her and she was right. I miss his cute smile, but his new smile is super cute too! At the dentist visit he was given a medicine to sedate him and then he played for 45 minutes in the waiting room. I didn't really notice a difference in his behavior until we got into the room. In the play room the other kids were all getting loopy and one kid fell off his chair randomly while playing, but Ben seemed to be his same energetic self. In the room they gave him laughing gas and he loved putting the mask over his mouth and he just lay there not moving. They cleaned his teeth first and he was so content. Only one parent was allowed in and so Ricky waited in the waiting room. Then he slightly freaked out when they wiggled his tooth out, but it happened so fast and he had all that medicine to calm him that it was not really a big deal. We told him how cool he was to have his tooth out and he slept the rest of the day. We also had this done 2 days before we flew out for Christmas!!! When we got home he put his tooth that was inside the treasure box under the Christmas tree for the toothfairy. At first we were going to do his pillow but I thought there was no way it would stay under the pillow of a 3 year old and he'd probably end up swallowing it!! :) So, the toothfairy brought him the talking Woody doll (also what would a 3 year old do with money!) He was so excited to get the "present" from the toothfairy and a note (that Ricky wrote up) from the toothfairy.

The tooth in its treasure box under the tree.

Ben and Woody the next morning

Awww...hugs...

Gardening together as a Family

We are so excited to have been blessed to be out of apartment life and into a home that we couldn't resist doing a garden even if its a tiny one. We did tomatoes in pots about 2 summers ago and it was amazing to have fresh tomatoes. Although we had to fight off deer! This year we're pretty sure no deer, so we're excited to grow. We actually are so excited that we started planting elsewhere from our garden too. LOL! You'll see in the pictures. It has already been a great family activity and gets Ben outside each day to see if his seeds have grown. :)

BEFORE: This is a before shot of part of the backyard! Yikes!! We had to prune back trees and dig out a lot of dead bushes and bush stubs. On the very first bush Ricky tried to dig out he busted the borrowed shovel. So off to the store to get some tools! We moved alot of rocks that day too.

Digging Trenches and moving so many rocks!

Putting in the little fence around our garden

Ben was such a great helper!

It took us about 3-4 days to get the garden prepped. Ricky turned the dirt and we added composted manure and some planting mixes to add nutrients to our soil. Then watered it and had to let it sit for 2-3 days before we could plant.

Now we have to download more pictures to show our garden updates. And we have endless weeds to pull up still. We found out that Ben and I are highly allergic to something in the air and while trimming the trees he developed this horrible allergic rash on his arms and legs. But it has been fun!