More news!

Some of you know that we have had an extra dog around here for almost 3 weeks now.  We have kind of been acting as a "foster family" for one of Chloe's pups from 2010.  Things didn't work out and she found her way back here.  I had a "nagging" feeling that I should make a phone call to another one of the puppy owners ever since I got the news that Piper was coming.  Last Monday I listened and made the call.  They were on vacation so they called me back on Monday.  I explained the situation and told them to take whatever time they wanted, she wasn't going anywhere for now.  Wednesday night I got the call and she has a family waiting for her and her full blood sister can't wait to play!  I'm so thankful and sad all at the same time.  3 dogs is a little much for us....but we have grown EXTREMELY attached and when the final days come, its going to be a rough goodbye.  I'm so thankful though that God cares about the little things.  He seems to be showing me this a lot lately!  They are going to call Sunday with a date that is good for them and then I'll make the drive down there and we will have a play date.  As long as things go well, she will stay!  They are super excited!  I have a lot of emotions, I'm trusting in the fact that I feel this was a God thing from the get go.  

Wednesday night after my phone conversation, we started preparing Piper for her new home.  Their current pup sleeps with them and they want to do the same with Piper, so we gated off our room so she couldn't get to the cat in the girl's room and we slept in a very full bed.  LOL  I woke up extremely warm, sandwiched between Piper and Molly.  Molly was all warm and toasty...she had somehow wedged herself in between Doug and I.  Thursday agenda included training her to the underground fence system, as that is what the new owners use to keep their pup contained as well.  I'm very excited for that day!  I'm anxious to see how the two get along, see if they remember each other, and I'm super excited to see another one of my pups again!  I'll of course remember to bring my camera and take lots of pictures!

Mom and Daughter 4 years later :)

Surprises...

When I was about 15ish, my Dad was an over the road truck driver.  Sometimes he would be gone for 3-4 weeks at a time.  I'll never forget the feeling of hearing that jake brake kick on as he passed the house and his horn blowing.  We would have no clue he was coming home sometimes and we would all tear out of the house and run down to his parking spot in our little town.  I loved that feeling.  It's a feeling you can't really describe or re-create....

Until now when I have a husband that does the same thing!  LOL  

Tuesday night I called Doug.  I could tell by the way the phone sounded that he was driving.  I asked him where he was heading at that hour and he said they finished their farm they were working at, and they were heading to their next destination.  We chatted for a while and then he lost service.  About 30 minutes later, the dogs started grumbling and I see back up lights come on.  We were his destination!  :)  I love it! 

Of course he asked if there was vacancy for the next 5 nights, because he needed an extended stay room.  LOL  

I love surprises and love Doug being home even more!!!

More big news!

When my sister came home at Thanksgiving and announced she was expecting, the girls both put in their guesses.  Madalyn said boy, Marissa said girl.  

Yesterday my sister found out she is having a BOY!  

Seth Kyle :)  

Both girls are sooo excited and the first thing Madalyn said was I get to hold him first!  LOL  

That was the agreement.  Whoever guessed right got to hold the baby first, after me!  Of course I have already heard how its not fair because I guessed wrong, but still get to hold him before Madalyn.  Aunts just trump in some ways ;)

We did some shopping for little Seth last night and I'm super excited for the shower now!  The girls each got to add a little something to the gift that was very important to them as a baby.  They are both sure that Seth is going to need it as well.  Madalyn was super excited to hear that he is a thumb sucker already...she thinks all babies should be!  Marissa loved that they caught him playing with his toes. :)  Both girls can't wait to go to SC this summer to meet him!  I want him to stay cooking as long as he needs to, but can't wait to hold him!  We love him so much already!

Big news in the Benedict house!!!

My 1st baby is all grown up...its official!  

The harness has been reinstalled into Marissa's car seat...

...because she outgrew the booster!  She is so proud to be sitting with her feet touching the ground.   :)  It's weird to look in the rear view mirror and not see her seat...almost gives you a panic attack that you left her!  Madalyn sits taller than her in the car now LOL!  Marissa is getting too big, too fast!  (Don't mind her pants...they are her favorite play jeans!  I promise she has pants that fully cover her knees available to her!)  

So I have a spare seat at the house now for my extra kiddos.  It feels weird to be down to 1 car seat in the car after almost 8 years of having 2.  She is loving it so far!  (Although she said it feels really weird.)  It will definitely make our trip south easier this summer since we will have my Mom with us.  1 car seat instead of 2 = a LOT more room!

I can't wait...

...until my husband comes home!   It's been a long week!   I thought he was coming home last night, but plans changed.   I'm not sure what we have going on this weekend, but I'm excited to spend it with him.
If you think about it today, please pray for a friend of mine.  She is 25 weeks 3 days and is looking at having to deliver very soon, looking like tomorrow.  Just pray for everyone involved, wisdom and the safety of non and baby.

Anyone have any good recommendations?

Last winter I frostbit the tips of my fingers.  This winter, I just feel like a big wimp out there snow blowing.  When I come in, I can't feel my fingers for a good while, or they ache really bad.  I need some good gloves.  I would love to find some mittens/glove combos where the top part comes down.  I have ones like this now and I love the concept, but I need more warmth.  In the end, it doesn't matter what they look like, I just want my fingers to by warm.  Even hand warmers don't cut it, although they do help.  So let me have it....you all have a wealth of knowledge so share away ;)

A day of fun...despite the cold!

With this week being break for the public school system, my after school kids have turned into all day kids a couple times this week.  I'm used to having toddlers and babies here at the house as my extras, but I wasn't too sure what I was going to do to keep them occupied all day and out of trouble! ;)  My original plan was to send them outside to play in the snow, but with out temps here lately that was quickly removed as an option.  

So I decided to make slime with them.  

I put all the ingredients in a quart size freezer bag so they could mix it mess free.  We still managed to make a mess, but it could have been a lot worse!

 They seemed to enjoy it!  It didn't work out quite like the directions so we had to add a little more starch to the mixture, but of course we learned that the hard way.  LOL

Then they went off and started playing with the animals.

At some point in time I got called in to take a picture of the whole clan...(they thought they should go get the cat too, but I opted for leaving her out of it!  I'm sure she appreciated it!)

Someone decided they needed to do wheel barrow races...I've never laughed so hard!  

Poor Zach!

We had a great day and I know the girls can't wait to do it again on Thursday!

Winter

I love all my seasons.  I'm not one to wish a season away so that we can get the next one quicker.  However...I'm feeling at a stand still here! 

 With the cold weather we have been having, we have pretty much been stuck indoors.  I'm quickly running out of ideas for creative ways to keep the kids busy, things to blog about and all around ways to keep us from going crazy!  

LOL  

Anyone have any ideas for us???  

I'm all ears!

Sometimes the littlest things...

Friday I was feeling down...hence the no blog post.  I felt blah, like I had nothing worth giving.  We had a V-day banquet at church that night and I didn't even want to get dressed and go.  I don't know what my problem was.  So I took a shower and went to do my hair and that was the cake topper.  A quick call to my hair dresser and I had a 1:15ish appointment.  I got 4 inches taken off and I felt like a million bucks!  Amazing what something so little can do.  We ended up having a great time at the V-day Banquet and even got everything cleaned up for Sunday that night.  Saturday we had a relaxing morning, before heading to Watertown.  We are in desperate need of replacing the flooring in our whole house, but especially our bathrooms.  We decided between our heating system (in-floor heat) and Molly, tile is our best option.  We picked out tile for out bathrooms and at least some of the rest of the house.  I'm not 100% sure what we are doing for flooring colors ands such in the rest of the house.  Where to start and stop flooring and such....we have some time to decide on that since we are going to start with the bathrooms and go from there.  Overall we had a great weekend!  It was fun to just go look and get a price idea on what we are looking at....which was a lot less then we had figured it would be!  Now onto another week!  

I wonder if we will make it out of the negatives this week? 

Thoughtful...

I was going to write today's post about something else, but I changed my mind last minute.  We were doing some shopping around online this morning for a gift for baby Liliann.  The girls were both pretty firm on what she needed.  Thankfully Aunt Liz said that pretty much anything girl they could use so it fit into their needs.  Their very next thought was that Daniel needed one.  They didn't want him to be left out!  Madalyn said, "You are going to get Daniel one too right?  He needs one so he won't be alone!"  I love how thoughtful they both are.  Last Sunday, Marissa "bought" something little for a little girl at church from her Junior church class with her points.  She could have bought something for her, but she didn't.  Its so neat to watch them care so much about those around them and thing about their needs and feelings.  I hope its a quality that they keep as they grow!  They have both turned into little mommies and I love watching their caring side as they play with our extra kiddos during the week.  I'm so thankful that God has blessed me with these two little girls and so thankful for their thoughtfulness!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

I can't believe that its even possible for Arya to be 2 today!  I actually had to go back in posts and make sure I had the right number!  Time flies :(  And I hate it!  Happy Birthday Sweetheart!  I hope your day is super special!  Can't wait to see birthday posts/pictures of your big day!

We love you!  

~Uncle Doug, Aunt Sarah, Marissa and Madalyn

Another thankful post...

In the past few days I have had a few prayer requests that I almost didn't pray about because they just seemed like something that didn't really matter.  I mean seriously, God has bigger issues to deal with than these!  But in the end I kept thinking about Philippians 4:6... "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."   It doesn't say in some things it says in EVERY thing.  So I prayed about it.  God was so gracious and saw fit to intervene and work all the details out.  I'm thankful to be serving a God who cares, even about the little things!

Youth Group

Another youth group has come and gone and we pulled off another good one!  We did a green screen activity this month.  Doug put a video above their heads and they had to ask questions to figure out what it was.  They seemed to enjoy themselves.  This was our set up...

The kids had a lot of fun on this one.  Some of the questions that he asked to figure it out were hysterical seeing as who it is!  We ended up turning up the volume on the video and his response was...I know that voice!  LOL  He got it right after that, but we lost it laughing anyhow :) 

She wasn't smiling as big when she finally realized what was behind her ;)

We didn't know that he hated snakes...it was very fitting.  I've never seen so many!  The teens expressions on this one should have been video taped!

We ended up turning the volume up on this one as well as a hint...the kids got a kick out of listening to the service!  

Doug did another great devotional and we enjoyed good food and fellowship!  So thankful for each one that comes and I'm enjoying watching the group bond closer and closer.

Awesome field trip!

Yesterday went amazing!  We started off watching the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  

After the movie was done, Peter Ostrum showed up.  He was so good with the kids!  He talked about his experience, some of the things that he dealt with and then opened the floor for questions.

The kids had a lot of questions!  

We learned that the movie was filmed in Germany.  He was only 12 years old.  He was offered to sign up for 3 more films after Wonka, but turned it down because he didn't know what the films were.  He was just signing a contract to an unknown 3 films and he didn't like that.  He still see the other 4 kids at least once a year.  This year they are meeting in September in Florida! :)  He explained how they did some of the scenes which was really cool because they didn't have the technology that they have today.  When Augustus gets stuck in the tube after falling the chocolate river, the kids asked how they got him up the tube.  In all actuality, they couldn't suck him up the tube fast enough so they dropped him down the tube and rewound the film!  LOL  Violet's scene of eating the gum and ballooning up was done by wearing a wet suit and she had air forced in the suit to make it expand.  Once it got to a certain size, it would put pressure on her so they had to stop the scene, let the air out and then they had a huge styrofoam ball that was cut in half so that one side fit on either side of her.  It was tough to get her in so once she was in there, she had to stay in there for a long time!  When Peter, aka Charlie, drank the fizzy lifting drink, there was no safety net under him.  He was held up by piano wire...one on either side of him, and the machine producing the bubbles under him was real with metal blades and everything.  He said he remembers thinking once he was up there that if the piano wires didn't hold him, there would be no more movie!  

He had a chart of all the life lessons you could get from the movie...

 He was super good with the kids and really easy to listen to!  He is so humble about the movie and I think that only made it better to listen to him!  He said his movie kind of took a back seat until Johnny Depp's version came out and he said that boosted his movie a ton.  Pete told the kids that making a movie is really tedious.  They had to get two good cuts of a scene before they were set with that one and could move on to the next scene.  He said the worst scene to make was the one with the Wonka Mobile that ran on the foam.  They had to redo that scene quite a few times and each time the car had to be cleaned, the scene area, and all of them before the new scene could start.  He also said that his director was a screamer.  He said it reminded him of how some basketball coaches are with their team members.  He had never experienced anything like that before so that was tough.  So many things I never thought about before!  I'm so thankful he was willing to take time out of his busy schedule for us!

Excited...

The girls are super excited!  Today they have another field trip.  They have been waiting for this one for a while because we were supposed to have it last month and it got canceled due to weather.  This afternoon, we are heading over to our church and watching Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

  "Charlie" one of the main actors, is played by Peter Ostrum in the movie and he is a vet in our area! 

 So after we complete the movie, he is coming to talk to the kids about his experience in making the movie and answer questions the kids might have.  It should be a lot of fun!  I can't wait and I know they can't either!  I'll let you all know tomorrow how it goes :)