Christmas is Coming!

Yummy Turkey dinner! Uncle Tom after sledding a massive scary "off the beaten path" sledding hill

Hello! I have got to tell you, even though posting only takes a couple minutes and I know all of you are chomping at the bit for more pictures of our sweet, precious boy, it is so hard to actually take those couple minutes to post----and for that I am so sorry!

Kinda big plans around here....we are putting our house on the market to sell on Monday. We found a beautiful piece of land (5 acres) about 20 minutes away from our current house that we have fallen in love with. So, we are putting our house on the market and putting an offer on the land so we can build our own "dream" house....wish us luck!! While winter isn't the ideal time to be selling your house, I do think that our house looks so beautiful with our 15 foot christmas tree, so hopefully some other family will feel the same!

Benjamin is doing really well. His Uncle Tom came out to visit last weekend for Thanksgiving and he is just in love with him. Of course the "he" in that sentence refers to both of them...Tom absolutely adores Benjamin and, well, let's just say that Benjamin would only let Tom hold him when we went shopping. It's wonderful to see how much people care for your child.

I could go on, but I assume that you all just look at the blog for the pictures :) so let me spend my time posting those. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the holiday season! Colorado is beautiful this time of year (and the rest of the year!), so feel free to come visit anytime!

Benjamin is a big cousin

Hello all-

Yes, our household has fallen off the planet! I'm so sorry that there haven't been any posts lately.

Guess what? Benjamin became a big cousin yesterday to the newest member of our family, Tanner Thompson Smith (Matt & Amy's baby). He was born at 7:02PM on Nov. 5 and weighed 6 lbs., 13 oz. Both mom and baby are healthy!

Benjamin is walking like crazy now--too quick for Andrew and I! He spends all day climbing and descending the stairs and chasing Stella. Needless to say he's still a little squirt--he burns about a zillion calories a day!

Our Halloween last week was quite uneventful. Benjamin had a fever most of the week and then bumps showed up on Friday-turns out he had roseola, which is kind of like chickenpox. So we didn't do any trick or treating...it was his second Halloween and he has been sick for both of them..hopefully next year he'll be up for a fun time!

Andrew and I are doing well. We are both keeping busy with work, as always, and enjoying the fall weather. We have a vacation in Breckenridge for 2 nights planned in February and are very excited to enjoy some time alone without work!

Sorry there are no pictures of Benjamin...our new camera's battery is dead and I just noticed, so I can't even turn it on. I'll get a new battery this week and post some pictures...I hope! :)

Updates

Yikes, it has been a busy month!! Sorry for the lack of posting!
We have been busy with visitors this month, and with teaching Benjamin how to walk and dealing with him getting two molars...ouch. He hasn't even gotten all the little front teeth yet and those big guys are coming in 2 at a time in the back...poor guy. He is learning to walk, but still won't really do it. Last week for about 2 days he would get going if he had his boots on. Now, he is perfectly ready and capable, he just won't do it! Little booger :) Nah, it's ok...in his own time. He's going to visit his 2-and-1/2-year old cousin Morgan in a couple weeks, so he better figure it out soon if he wants to keep up with her!!



Alright, on to the pictures. We went to this fun place last Sunday called Miller Farm. There are lots of activities to do at the main area (petting zoo, helium balloon jumping castle thing, train rides, corn maze, etc), but the really fun part is going in a hayride around this humungous farm and collecting your own vegetables. We picked potatoes and carrots out of the ground and gathered tomatoes (yum, yum), gourds, peppers, beets, corn, cabbage, and okra. Also, I picked gladiolis (sp?), so I have fresh flowers and I cut off the bulbs so I can plant them next year. It was a fantastic time and we came home with so much food we could have single handedly fed Somalia. :) All for $7. Pretty ridiculous.

AJ's 27th birthday is this Sunday. We are going to head up to the mountains with our friends Jamie and Doug for a parents day out...scoping out the changing aspen leaves and closing up their cabin for the winter. It oughta be a nice day to recharge our batteries.

I have just started my new part time job. I know, you are wondering, when does that crazy woman have time to have a job? I wonder the same thing! Seriously, though, it'll help bring in a little extra dough and it gets me a few hours out of this house. I started Monday and will be working either 5-10pm or 4:30-8:30am 4-5 days a week. Oh, by the way, it's a Starbucks, so the free caffienated drinks I get help me get through those hours. :) It's actually a great schedule because between AJ's schedule and mine we never have to get a sitter or daycare and I can still do StrollerFit during the day. And it's only about 2 miles from my house. Can't beat that!

I hope you are all well. For those of you that we'll be seeing soon, can't wait!!

Go Broncos

Ok, ok, enough about that child of mine---does anyone care what's new with his parents? I'm sure you're all thinking "yes, of course" but what you really mean is "no, not so much"..... :) It's ok. We're boring.

Seriously, though, life has been pretty good around here. We've been taking nice evening walks, we both love our work, and we've been sleeping through the night consistently for about 1-2 months now. We actually even went on a double date last night with our newest and bestest friends Jamie and Doug. They have two young kids--Jamie is now an associate StrollerFit instructor and Doug and Andrew have a lot in common as well. We had a nice night out on the town without the kids. Grammy D watched Benjamin and she said that after not eating his dinner, he wolfed down the ice cream cone she bought him. Grandparents. They are all crazy and follow their own rules for your children. (Of course we love you all--especially the free babysitting ;)

Alright, I guess I can't say nothing about Benjamin. He learned to go the stairs today. He's been going up them for a couple months now, has fallen down a few stairs several times by accident, and finally today practiced a great deal and became a professional-come-down-the-stairs-er. We're so proud. Still no walking though. He's doing just what he did with the crawling....taking his time till he can figure out how to do it like a pro from the get-go.

I hope everyone's well. I'd love to hear from you all and hear how you're doing. :)

It's Zoo time

Benjamin has been to several petting zoos and regular zoos this month. Here are some pics from our visit to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs last weekend. This is the coolest zoo. It's got great exhibits and it has the largest giraffe population in the country....and you get to feed them. Doesn't it look like fun? :) Also, Benjamin and Andrew had a close encounter with a

vulture (fake, of course--yikes!)

The other pics are just some randoms that I haven't posted before. There's also a short video of our little one...a new feature on blogger.

For those of you that read this that I don't speak with often, Benjamin is quite the busy-body and keeps me VERY busy. He is not walking yet at his ripe age of 13 months...but I have to be honest--I'm almost dreading those crazy-boy-chasing days. He will really wear me out when he's on two feet. I think it will be any day now, though, because he's definitely been thinking about it for several weeks now...I think he'll build up the courage soon!

Enjoy the pics and happy end-of-summer!

Traveling man

Wow, we've been busy the past couple weeks. First Grandma Tricia and Grandpa Earl came out to visit for a week. Uncle Tom also came out to visit. It was very busy around the Harvey house. At the end of the visit, we (Grammy, Uncle tom, and me) took Benjamin to South Dakota to explore. He got to visit Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, Custer State Park (absolutely beautiful), Old McDonald's Farm Petting Zoo, Devils Tower, and eventually--and unplanned- Sturgis. Yes, Ben's mother was the first to introduce him to a motorcycle rally. Go figure. Actually, we were only there for about an hour, but in that time we saw many life-changing things--such as topless women with nothing on but chaps...and only chaps. We also saw Billy Lane of Choppers Inc and got a picture with him. As you can see, Benjamin was quite interested in his tattooes and rings.

After 2 nights of camping and 3 days of driving, we decided to get a hotel room and let Benjamin run wild--and that is exactly what he did. He was a crazy man crawling around the room and went swimming with uncle tom. It was a much needed break from his car seat.

Now we are all back home, back to work, and enjoying the idea of life settling back down for a while. I am looking forward to the fall and look forward to seeing some of you in a couple months when we venture out to WV, IN, and OH!!

Hope everyone is well. :)

Our little camping man

Benjamin loves camping. He has gone camping 5 times so far this summer, and we are taking a nice 4 day trip (Grammy, Uncle Tom, me and Ben) with the tent somewhere next week. He loves the tent and the outdoors...just like his daddy, I guess! :)

Ben has started thinking about walking. He definitely wants to, but is being a scaredy-cat. He intentionally falls anytime he's even close to braving it alone on his own two legs. Soon enough he'll be going, though...and we're in no rush--because walking only means that soon he'll be running!! We can hardly keep up with him now because he crawls so fast!

We went to Kiddie Kandids last weekend for his one year portraits. If you'd like to view or order them, here is the info:

http://www.mykkstudio.com/

sitting#: 510037786

code#: B88W2

Enjoy!

I hope everyone is enjoying the slow winding down of the summer. We've got lots of visitors this week, so we'll be busy. Hope everyone is well. :)

Goodbye to a dear friend

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delays in posts....we've been really busy around here camping and stuff--living the hectic summer life. Benjamin is doing great. He now says Daddy, Stella (or at least a VERY clear version of it) and just yesterday he said "titty" about my mom's cats. We'll need to work on that one...but at least he's not calling everything with four legs Stella anymore :)

Thanks to everyone who sent presents or money for his 1st birthday. It is very much appreciated...he's been playing with everything he got and I'll be using the money to get his one-year portraits done and get prints printed from the past 12 months for his scrapbook. So thanks everyone very much!!! :)

Now on to the bad news. Andrew and I had to make the very tough decision to find Dex, our 5 year old puppy, a new home. Yesterday we brought him to the Dumb Friends League, a local animal shelter. It was really sad and we missed him before he was even gone. He had started to growl sometimes at Benjamin and usually nervously paced around him in circles, so we were attempting to prevent a possibly harmful situation for our little boy. Unfortunately, all yesterday and while we were at the shelter he was his usual angel self, wagging his tail and offering us much love....that only made it harder. We miss him very much and it will be a very sad couple of days for us. The shelter felt confident that they would be able to find him a good home without any children. I hope so. He'll be a wonderful dog for the right owner.

Thank you all for your support during this time. I appreciate anyone who emailed and tried to find him a good home. Thank you very much for that. You are good friends.

I hope everyone is doing well. I'll try and write again soon, but we have overlapping family visits next week that will keep us busy for sure. We are taking Ben and Grammy camping over the weekend, so I hope we'll have some good pics from that to post.

My First Birthday party!!

Well, Benjamin doesn't officially turn 1 until 1:19pm on Tuesday July 17, but we celebrated with friends and family on Saturday July 14. We had 9 little kids and 12 adults come over and we had a baby pool, cake, and lots of fun! Benjamin loved having all of his friends over, although he didn't take a nap all day, so he left the party after his cake.....went for a bath to get cleaned up, and never came back to the party! :) He went to bed at 6:30pm and slept until 6:30 this morning....boy, he was tired out from being the man of the party!


Enjoy the pictures from the party!

1 week to go!

I can't believe my little boy will be celebrating his 1 year birthday in a week!! It is crazy! Not much is new around here....Ben's 2nd tooth has come in and he ate his first hot dog on July 4th. He doesn't look big, but he is definitely growing....and eating like a college football player! Of course, with the amount of calories he expends in a day, which is more than I can bear to count, he burns that food up right away! I'm glad he's so healthy, although his energy levels can be a bit exhausting! :)

We are celebrating his birthday with a small get-together next Sunday, July 15. I got an idea from a friend to put together a time capsule that represents this time in his life and the year in which he was born. The time capsule will be given to him on his 18th birthday. What a fun idea, huh? If you have anything you'd like to contribute to the time capsule, please feel free to send it to us! 3372 Prairie Vista Drive, Castle Rock, CO 80109

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the summer. I know we are!!

Jillian

HALLELUJAH!!!

The baby gate that this baby has climbed up (and almost over) since day one of learning how to pull to standing!

Who's my cutey?
Bedtime story with Daddy. Benjamin is finally starting to really like books. Our favorite is "The Flea's Sneeze"
Napping....rump up!

Little bruiser. The mark above the right eye of this pitiful face is the cut Benjamin got while pulling up on the dinner table chair. He fell backward, and the chair fell right with him...well, on top of him. I wish I could say he hasn't tried it again. Silly boy....

Playing in my changing table...what fun!
Mommy, look at the beautiful leaves!
Sleeping in the tent..in my favorite spot...cuddled between mom and dad (who didn't sleep a wink the entire night for fear of rolling on him) :) What an angel!
Mom, I can reach it, I can reach it!
My favorite new toy....yellow flashlight. Daddy hangs it from the middle of the tent ceiling and I just gaze at it...or try and get it!

Thank goodness, my pictures are working again!!!! YEAH!! I know you all are as excited as I am!

So, here are some pictures to recap the past few weeks. I can't believe this little boy turns 1 in 2 weeks!!! How crazy! The time truly flies!

We went camping this weekend near Vail, Colorado. It was such a great trip. The weather was beautiful and we went to an awesome trail and camped along the river. Benjamin had a great time in the tent, and slept really well. A short recap of the trip: well, we brought the camera AND the battery charger this time, however we left the memory card in the computer at home....so no pictures. Also, we (I) packed the bag with Ben's clothes, my clothes, toiletries, and Ben's diapers.....we (I) also left this bag at home by accident. Soooo, we stuck him in his Bear snow suit that was packed separately for sleeping and we had 2 diapers that I had stuck in another bag for "just in case." Boy, I didn't know "just in case" would really happen. :) We all made it just fine...had plenty of food, warmth, and love to get us through the night! I so wish we had the camera because our little bear was absolutely ADORABLE...which I'm sure you can imagine :)

Enjoy the pictures! Sorry it's taken so long....

Sorry for the delay!

I am so sorry to all those of you who check the blog regularly. I have not been able to access my memory card drive in the computer, and therefore can't access pictures on my card. I'm not sure how to fix it...so for now I will just post a little bit about what's been going on.
Well, Benjamin is officially a mover and a shaker. He is crawling on all 4's, standing and climbing EVERYTHING--including the stairs, and enjoying every minute of it! He went camping for the first time a few weeks ago--yes, I have pictures that I'll post sometime in the future--and has just generally been enjoying every second of his life. He's such a cutey pie...we just love him. His tooth is getting much bigger, and I hope there is another one coming to explain these midnight wakings we've been experiencing! :)
I hope everyone is well...I'll write more when I can get the pictures up. I'm sorry that it's been so long since I last posted. Take care!
Jillian

My First Tooth!

Hi everybody!

At long last, my son has gotten his first tooth! Unlike every time I thought he was cutting his first tooth (since he was 3 months old!) he has actually been very happy---sleeping and eating fine...no fussiness. I just can't believe. I can't get a picture of it either...this was my best attempt. :)

He's also pulling up on EVERYTHING. We also learned that he can indeed crawl on all fours...apparently he chooses not too, because he still does the army crawl. We let him crawl around naked the other morning and the second he hit that cold tile, he was up on all fours. We couldn't believe our eyes...that little buggar.

I'm so proud of him. He is so adorable and smart and funny...and did I say adorable? :) I love him so much and am having so much fun watching him grow and learn.

By the way, (new topic) I have become an independent sales consultant for Discovery Toys, so if you ever need any of these AWESOME toys (birthdays, Christmas, etc) you know who to call!!

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying early summer! :)

Benjamin can Swim!

Benjamin took his first dip in the pool yesterday. The water was freezing, but to our surprise he didn't cry at all. I'm not sure I would say that he enjoyed it, but he definitely didn't hate it. Next time the water will be warmer and I'm sure he will really enjoy splashing around. I got some smiles when we would bounce. Daddy held his front and I kicked his legs....he's learning young. I think eventually we might have a little flipper on our hands.

He's also pulling up and SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT. He's really trying to stand too. It's possible he may skip the crawling and just start walking. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Still no teeth, though...I can't believe it! Soon enough....and he'll probably get a few all at once! :)

He's a little cutey pie and we love him :)