I'm 2 !!!!!!

I can't believe 2 years ago I was in the hospital giving birth to this amazing little bundle of energy (who's been a chatty cathy all day). We've had a great day---swimming, eating banana pudding out of ice cream cones, all the fun things we like to do :) This summer has been really enjoyable and Ben has had a ton of fun.

Did I mention he is exhibiting signs of being 2? It's been just pleasant so far---NOT! Fortunately for him he is so cute we love him anyways! :) Here is a pic of Ben standing in the corner for being naughty--UNfortunately for us he doesn't quite mind the punishment.

Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes.

We are planning on getting the "flip" house on the market in a couple weeks, and then Uncle Tom is coming out for a visit and we're heading to Yellowstone.....so don't expect any new posts before then (although, I know you all don't hold your breath too long anymore!) I promise I'll post with pics from our trip when we get back.

Woa, it's been a while!

At the zoo with Daddy....

Blogging is really easy, and I don't know why I can't find the time to do it, but it just doesn't get done enough---I know!!!!

Life has been wild around the Harvey house. We have nearly completed the renovation on the upstairs (main) living area of our home, which has been very time-consuming, expensive, and exhausting. But so worth it. Here's a pic of our big helper--

We love the house so much we've decided to stay indefinitely, and as we've learned about the neighborhood we've discovered some fun 4-wheeling/hiking trails and a lake! Ok, more like a really big pond, but you can fish on it so last week we purchased a canoe!! We've had a lot of fun, Ben and Stella included, and feel so cool driving around with a big red canoe strapped to the top of our Jeep :)

Some pics of our summer recreation so far: (canoeing pictures are from a camping trip last weekend...this is NOT the "pond" near our house!)

Some more big news....we've decided to purchase a second home that will serve as our first, true fix-n-flip investment. We've hit some glitches so far with the whole purchasing aspect, but hope to close on the property any day now. Keep your fingers crossed! It is a big and scary undertaking, but we are SOOOO excited to take on the challenge....and who knows, maybe become professional house-flippers! :)

Alright, alright, I know you just want to hear about Benjamin. He is so awesome, amazing, fun, smart, funny, cute, talkative (wonder where he gets that from?), handsome, flirty, energetic, loving, giggly, kissable.....put simply, we just love him and can't get enough of him! He talks all the time and has quite an extensive vocabulary. By far, however, his favorite word (and thing) is "car". He points out cars all the time when we are driving, he stands at the window at the front of the house pointing out mommy and daddy's cars-as well as the cars passing by. Recently, we have introduced him to the movie Cars, which we now watch no less than 3 times per day. He most enjoys wearing his Car jammies to bed and brushing his teeth using his Cars toothpaste while standing on his Lighting McQueen step stool. Could be worse, he could like Thomas the Train. :)

Its really fun watching him grow and learn. He says or repeats new words everyday and has really starting counting a lot. His favorite number to say is nine, but he also likes to pick things up (one in each hand) and say "two (blank)".....such as "two cars," two boots (books)," "two doddy (monkey)". He used to say donkey for monkey, but now he's reverted more to "doddy"....which is closer to doggie, so maybe he's just confused about what monkeys are.

Some pics of Ben walking the dog and being silly!

Ben loves to kiss and has really learned that kissing makes boo-boos feel better. He says "hurt," gets a kiss, and say "bayer" (better). Of course recently he's been hurting mommy so that he can kiss it and make it feel "bayer." Hopefully that phase ends soon!

He's very polite and says "pease" (please) and "ankoo" (thank you) with a big grateful smile on his face.

Well, I hope I updated you all well enough for now. To be honest, it's been a connectivity issue between my camera and computer that has kept me from posting, but now I have that figured out so hopefully I'll be better in the future. Thank you all for your love for and interest in our little angel.

Easter and Chuck E Cheese

Hi everybody--hope things are going well in your neck of the woods!  C'mon Spring weather!!!

Here are some random pics of Ben...some from Easter, where he went on a very extended and exhausting Easter egg hunt through Grandma Tricia's house.  I've also put a video of him playing basketball with the new hoop he got from the Easter bunny.  Please excuse our disgusting house in the video---remodeling is not a pleasant thing.  :)

Ben's also been to visit Chuck E Cheese a couple times over the past month.  He really enjoys riding the rides, both for small kids and big!  I think his favorite, though, is the pizza.  Boy, he can sure wolf that stuff down!

It has been SOOO much fun watching him grow lately.  His is such a joy and keeps us laughing all day long.  He loves to point to your (and his) nose, followed by a cute "no".  He just can't seem to get the "se" at the end.  He also likes to point to your (and his) "beep-beep," code for bellybutton.  Today he burbled me on the belly too, and thought it was hilarious.  He is saying lots of words now---water, bubble, more, please, bye-bye pee pee, car.  More, I'm sure, but I can't think of them right now.  He's still going potty in the potty....every now and then. Maybe once a day at most, but he's still so young we're just excited that he's going at all!

Things are going well around here.  We are hoping to have a livable upper floor of our house in a couple weeks.  It's funny that I say it will be livable in a couple weeks but we've been living in it for 2 months.  Haha, NOT!  Ben has been a pretty good helper.  He LOVES to use tools and help Daddy.  He's a Harvey, that's for sure.  I've posted a video of him helping in the garage with a wheel barrow.  He was pushing all by himself--we weren't helping at all!!  What a big kid  :)

Enjoy the pictures and videos, and please post comments if you'd like.  :)

Very proud boy...and parents too!!

Our first day with a big boy potty, and we are 2 for 2.  Ben is LOVING his new potty and keeps going to sit on it and wave "bye-bye" when he shuts the lid.  It is the cutest thing, and of course we are SOOO proud of him!

Ben has really become such a fun little bundle of joy.  I've probably said this at every stage, but I definitely love the 18-ish month age.  He is so fun and understands so much and tries to help with everything we do.  He is great at laundry, less helpful at dishes, and loves to put away his toys.  We've been having a great time raising our little munchkin.  

He loves the new house.  We see deer everyday in our yard, and he loves to run hot laps throughout the house!  :)  He also  recently went to Chuck E Cheese and has discovered a new found love for slides.  His favorite is to go down a side-by-side slide with Mommy.  

He has quite the vocabulary nowadays....although we only sometimes understand any actual words!  He definitely LOVES the word "ball" and says it every time he sees one, even in books.  He also says "Ella" (Stella) all the time, doggy, kitty, mommy (a), daddy, night-night, and many others that I can't think of right now.  

Sorry it's been so long since an update.  I know the "we're busy" excuse is getting a little overused, but unfortunately it's true.  Every spare moment we have as a family is spent spending time together, so blogging usually doesn't get its face time.  

I hope everyone is well and thanks for checking our blog about our beautiful, smart, funny little boy  :)

Quick update from the woman short on time

No pictures this go round, as the camera is somewhere packed away and I can't begin to wonder where it is!! We are in the midst of a 2-week move into our new house, which currently looks like a pigeon farm since we've successfully scraped the ceilings of their horrendous popcorn (or cottage cheese) ceilings. What a messy, messy job.

Ben has been great so far and is trying to help Daddy every chance with whatever he can help fix. He's such a cutie! He's been going on a lot of shopping trips to the hardware store, hardwood store, cabinet store, etc. For the most part he's a dream, especially if the store has those carts that double as little race cars for the kids. He just LOVES steering the wheel.

He has changed an incredible amount over just the past 10 days or so. Not physically, necessarily, since we just went to his 18-month appointment and he still only weighs 19 lb. 5 oz. He is such a squirt!!! Anyways, lately he has really started to learn and copy what mommy says and does. He high-fives (sometimes), plays messenger of objects between mommy and daddy, marches, roars, and has even started to sing a little. Every once in a while I'll get a kiss too, but he's certainly learning what a shaking head is--he shakes no to me quite a bit. :) Ah, the dreaded "no" phase is no doubt upon us soon. Also, whenever he sees a picture of himself now he says "baby." It's adorable, as you can imagine.

Boy, do I sound like proud mama or what? I truly am proud of how smart and well-tempered he is. He's such a joy in AJ's and my life.

Wish us luck with our impending move to the pigeon camp. I'll post pictures as soon as we're a little settled and I can take a breath! Hope everyone is well!

Hopeful for a fantastic 2008!!

Happy New Year! The posts have been few and far between, I know, but I hope all of you enjoy the excitement of seeing a new one!

It has been VERY busy around here for us lately. Andrew and I decided we wanted to move and found a place over Thanksgiving that we wanted to buy and build a house. So, we put our house on the market the first week of December and sold it after 8 days!!! Obviously, we were in shock. The craziness of it lies in the fact that the place we originally wanted (and the reason we put our house on the market) fell through, as did a couple other places we had in mind---all the while our house was set to close at the end of December!

So here is how things stand right now: we have sold our house --yeah, congrats to us!--and are renting it back from the new owners (who plan to rent it out) and we have decided to try our hand in the real estate business. We put an offer on a house in a very nice neighborhood that was a steal and needs a little TLC, so we hope to be the owners of that house next week. We'll use the time we have two homes to get some icky work done at the new house and then move in sometime at the end of the month. The goal is to finish the house in 3-4 months and sell it. Our plan at this point in time is to fix-n-flip a few houses that we live in in the next couple years, then if we enjoy it and it makes us pretty good money, we'll buy a real house and do f&fs on the side. We'll see---but we're really excited about our new adventure!!!!

Christmas was great. Santa came to visit Benjamin and he had a lot of fun opening presents and playing with all his new stuff. He was just so fun to watch---he's learned so much over the past couple months and is really starting to become a real person---gone are the baby days!! :( and :)

Here are a few pictures and a video or two from the past few weeks. I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday season. I know we did!

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!