Emergency Room Visit!

Ben, looking like Moses in his hospital gown!

Well, we made our first visit to the ER last night. That sure was FUN! Beforehand, we were enjoying a nice birthday party, when Ben decided to swallow something he shouldn't have!!!!! They did an x-ray to make sure the item wasn't doing any damage on its way down. All seems to be good, for the moment. We are still on "alert" and are waiting for that "item" to exit!! Fun stuff, I tell ya. He's in good spirits as you can see from the photo!!!

Ryan Dam

The Falls at Ryan Dam

Me and Ben at Ryan Dam (the actual "Great Falls")

Ben Rocks!

We were all outside and Ben was collecting little rocks

and placing them on the step of our porch

Ben's little "collection" of rocks

4th of July

One of our fireworks!

We had a spectacular 4th of July weekend!! We initially decided to go boating and then decided to instead go to Bozeman, MT and stay overnight. We went to see the Dinosaur Museum at the University and played at the indoor pool of the hotel (we had it all to ourselves!!). On the 4th we had some friends over for some really cool fireworks. It was a perfect night -- it wasn't too hot and was actually a bit cool. We even got to see the city's fireworks from our deck! Yesterday, we went to the actual "Great Falls" of Great Falls, Montana! It was the first time we'd been there since we've lived here. I couldn't believe we hadn't gone before -- it was AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL. You cross a bridge to a little island that is directly in front of the falls and there is a beautiful park there where you can picnic or throw frisbee or whatever! As you can see, Ben is getting bigger and bigger every day, it seems. He's added "tick tock" to his vocabulary - we sing it ("Tick Tock, Tick Tock, I'm a little cuckoo clock......", just in case some of you didn't know!)every week at the library and of course he hears it a million times at home too! He says no, but not in a defiant way........yet. He's a funny, warmhearted little man that we love so much.

Home Depot Project

Ben hammering in the nails on his birdhouse

Helping daddy

Our Flag Cake

Water Park & New Stuff

Ben at the waterpark

Ben and me under the "waterfall"

Ben and daddy

Well.....I'm trying to get the hang of this new blog, so we'll see how it all goes. Since we last blogged, Ben has grown so much. He is OBSESSED with clocks and points to all the clocks (anywhere they may be), and says "CLOCK!" So that's kind of fun. We have been enjoying summer, finally. We found a little water park besides the main one in town and really like it. It is made for little people, but we all had so much fun there together. There are 4 slides of varying shapes and inclines. The pool simulates the beach experience -- it slowly gets deeper the farther you walk into it, but the deepest it ever gets is knee high. Perfect for little ones! It's like our own little paradise here in Great Falls, Montana! Other than that, we have been working on little projects around the house and we've been getting ready for a yard sale we need to have!

Mario, Benjamin, and Jen in Corona del Mar visiting the ocean and the tidepools. It was Ben's very first time to the ocean!