A Penny a Day?

It's been a long time since I've been in the blogging world! Hopefully, I can ease my way back in and keep this thing updated more often.

Our latest news is that Benson decided to eat a penny on Friday night. He loves to play with what he calls "money" and so we've been letting him play with pennies. On Friday night I noticed he put his "money" in his mouth, so I asked him to spit it out. All of a sudden his eyes grew really big, he opened his mouth and pointed down his throat. I started freaking out and called the Dr. He told me that as long as he was eating and breathing fine not to worry about it. So, yesterday I started my diaper diving. I have to say that this is one of the most disgusting things I've ever done. I didn't find a penny all day! This morning Benson threw up and thinking that it must be stuck in his esophagus, we took him to the hospital. We took X-rays and guess what? No penny! This did not sit well with me because, I never saw it come out. So, I found the old diapers and started round 2 of my doo-doo digging . It was far worse the 2nd time around. A few dry heaves later and I found the penny. I'm so glad to finally be rid of this situation. It has been a long weekend!

On a lighter note, we now have a hole in the ground and cement poured for our new house! We are on track to move in sometime in July! We are very excited!

Our Summer in a Nutshell

It has been a long, long time since I last posted, so I'm going to do one big post to try and catch up. We have been all over the place this summer and Benson was such a good traveler. Our first trip was to Utah. We visited our Aunt Debbie, Uncle Brent and my brother Andrew in Las Vegas, my Mom, Dad, and sister in Cedar and my brothers in Cottonwood Hts. We were all over the place, but we had lots of fun. (I forgot my camera so these are some pics. my brother Andrew took. He is so good at this stuff.)

A few weeks after we got home we took a trip to Pennsylvania for the annual "Albrecht Family Summer Vacation." This year we went to Allentown and stayed in a beautiful historic home close to Dutch Wonderland, which is an amusement park for kids 12 and under. Benson had a blast! He got to go on almost all the rides. We also went to the Crayola Factory, an amazing Farm Park that was just like an amusement park, Amish Country, and the Hershey Factory. Of course, I forgot my camera:(

Our next stop was to Oregon for the Smith Family Reunion. We stayed at my Uncle Aaron and Aunt Syd's house. They have lots of land, where they built a fourwheeler/dirtbike course. They had chickens, cows, dogs and cats on the land too. Benson loved the cows and learned to say, "moo" whenever he'd see them. My favorite thing to do was pick the wild blackberries they had growing all over their property. Yum! It was so good to see family that we hadn't seen in a while. We had a great time!

Our last trip for the summer was to Chicago. Just Lundon, Benson and me. There was so much to do there. We stayed in a really nice hotel that was by a huge mall called the Woodfield Mall. The hotel was 30 minutes outside of Chicago, so we took the train in everyday and rode with the locals, there are some crazies in Chicago, but Benson loved it and learned to say, "choo-choo" by the end of the trip. We stayed for five days which gave us just enough time to do all the things we wanted to do. We took a double decked tour bus to get everywhere, and had some pretty funny tour guides. Some of the trip's highlights were the Shedd Aquarium, a river boat ride on the river and Lake Michigan, the Navy Pier, the Children's Museum, Italian beef sandwiches, Chicago style hotdogs, Gino's East Pizza, and the Garrett Popcorn Co. I actually brought my camera this time. Here are some pics.

Benson's Birthday!!

I can't believe our baby is one year old!  We decided to have a little celebration with friends and of course cake and ice cream.  Benson seemed to have a good time and just loved being around lots of people.  We gave him a cake to smash and surprisingly he only pecked at it.  I would have thought that with his personality he would have had it everywhere.  I think he was more interested in getting out of the high chair and playing with the kids.  He received some great gifts including a car, bubble machine, swimsuit, finger puppets, shoes, just to name a few. They have been keeping him very busy this past week.  Thanks to everyone who could come and help make our little boy feel special.  Happy Birthday Benson!  We love you!

PICS FROM THE PARTY

I thought it would be fun to list some of the things that Benson has accomplished in the past year so that we can always remember (I'm totally copying you Krista).  Here goes, 

Benson ...

• has 8 incisors and 3 molars, the 4th will be breaking through any day (Lundon would be proud of my terminology)
  
• loves climbing up onto the couch, into laundry baskets and onto anything challenging, we've found that he is very persistent and won't stop until he has conquered the challenge
• says "daddy" and "duck," tries to say "bath" and knows exactly what it means, he also knows what "go" means and heads straight for the door
  
• is great at sharing food with our dog, feeding himself a cracker then feeding Gizmo a cracker and so on (Gizmo waits patiently for it too)
• can open the front door and will take off down the sidewalk, he is very good at walking and goes quickly 
• waves bye-bye and claps to patty-cake
• dances to music and will immediately start bobbing his head when we go into stores that have loud music