I'm glad we had time to make sugar cookies together. Christmastime does not seem complete without them. I frosted the cookies while Ben and Curt decorated.  Lots of sprinkles and chocolate chips!  Ben loved getting slippers and a robe with his "Christmas Eve" jammies. He does love to be cozy. We decided to move up our present opening a day early because we thought I might end up in the hospital on Christmas. But, today is the 27th and still no baby. So we were a bit off on that one.  Santa brought the Lewis Hamilton car that Ben had asked him for. He was very excited!  The new pirate ship has been a favorite. He has played with it a TON a last few days.  Ben also got a few more pirate dress-up things. I've heard "Aarg!" a lot lately. :)  My parents came yesterday for a visit since my dad has this week off of work. We're hoping that I'll have the baby while they are here, but I'm not sure that is going to happen since they head home tomorrow. Ben ...

We went to the family VB party at the Lutheran Ice Center this past weekend. They had the Christmas party there last year and we had a lot of fun going back again. I had to skip out on the ice skating (with being pregnant and all), but I enjoyed watching Ben and Curt out on the ice. There were also several inflatables for the kids to climb on. Ben had no fear at all this year and went wild on them!  Ben also got to meet Santa. He was really looking forward to telling Santa that he wanted the Lewis Hamilton car from Cars 2. If you have seen that movie and have NO IDEA who that character is, that's because it is only in a few minutes of the movie. It's a pretty cool black race car and I'm glad that Santa (Curt) was able to find one at the store. We're still waiting to see when the baby will be born. I'd rather not spend Christmas in the hospital. That is looking more and more like a possibility. Ben and Curt have picked tomorrow as the day. So, maybe we'll have...

(aka...Ben)

I have been really slow with updating my blog lately. I fear that it will only get worse after I have a newborn in the house. :) I still have a few things that I would really like to get done before the baby arrives, so hopefully she doesn't decide to come too early (although a little early would be nice). Curt got me a new camera for my birthday. I still need to learn to work everything on it, but I am excited to have such a nice one before the baby is born. I took it with when we visited our families for Thanksgiving, but I completely forgot to get it out the whole time we were with Curt's family. I really need to do better with documenting our visits. Here are a some pictures from the last few weeks. (I promise Ben has more shirts than his Detroit Lions jersey, but it is a favorite). :)  Curt and Ben love to play video games together. Sometimes when Ben wants to "play" with daddy, he really just wants to sit and watch Curt beat the levels.  After playing a whil...

Ben...that's who!!! 

Some people (my mom :) ) have been wanting to see pictures of the nursery. We finally have the main things done in there. I have a few little things I would like to add here and there, but for the most part it is done. I did take some before and after painting pictures and I can't seem to find them anywhere. The room used to have pink walls. I felt like that was too much pink for me, so we changed it to a turquoise blue color. The main colors are blue, pink, and chocolate brown.  This is a view from the hallway.  We added the name to the wall last night. I guess there is no changing our minds now! :)  This is the other side of the room. Curt spray painted the chair brown and I love it so much more. I just wish I was a seamstress and could make some cute slipcovers. Oh well. I am on the lookout for a throw blanket to add to that.  I am not really finished decorating the shelf, but this is what I put up there so far. The picture was drawn by my niece Jenna and ...

My camera hasn't been working very well lately, so I've been taking more pictures on my phone. The problem is that they sit on my phone and I don't load them onto the computer. I finally decided to catch up with some of our more recent events that were captured on my iphone.  On a different note, we've gotten quite a bit done in the nursery this past weekend, so I'll load some pictures of how that turned out pretty soon. There are a few more things that I would like to finish up with first. It feels good to be almost done with it! :) When we visited my family in Grand Rapids, Grandma and Gramps took Ben to Build-A-Bear when we were out at the mall. He made a camouflage bear that he named Ben. We were able to visit our friends, the Bairds, during our GR trip. Rachel made us a yummy dinner and had cupcakes for the kiddos to decorate. Ben did not need to be asked twice if he wanted to make a cupcake! On the Friday before Halloween, we stopped in at Curt's wo...

We spent this past weekend in Grand Rapids with my family. During our visit we celebrated Ben's 4th birthday. He asked for a Cars 2  theme for the party. We had fun visiting with my parents, my sister's family, my brothers, and my Grandma Bierema. For food, we had platters of Subway sandwiches, White Chicken Chili, apples & caramel, chips, and finger jello. Those are some of Ben's favorite foods to eat and he ate up every last bite on his plate! Ben sitting with his birthday cake.  I found some little cars to use as an easy cake topper and made a little banner on the computer.  Some of the party decorations.  Ben and his cousins opening up their goody bags.  Ben received a Detroit Lions jersey from Uncle Joe and Uncle Matt. He was very excited to get a LeapPad from my parents. He has been playing with it a lot since this weekend. The nice part for me...he hasn't asked to play games on my iphone at all! :)

We spent this past weekend in Cadillac with Curt's family. We went up a day early to have my sister-in-law, Betsy, take some family pictures. It was cold and raining on and off on Friday, but we gave the pictures a shot and she was able to get some cute ones. The weekend kinda went downhill from there because Ben started a fever that afternoon. It wasn't really high (around 101), so we gave him some medicine and he seemed to be doing okay. Saturday he was okay in the morning when he opened his birthday presents, but by the evening he was really hot. The fever got up to 103.8 at one point! We called Ben's pediatrician's office to get some advice. They said there is a fever virus going around that is lasting 3-5 days with temps up to 104. She said to keep doing what we were doing, so that was reassuring. Thankfully his fever did not get that high again on Sunday. He's still sick today, so we're watching Rio for the hundredth time. :) Hopefully he will be fever fr...

This past week has had wonderful weather. It's been so nice to have lots of sunny days in a row after so much rain. Ben and I took our last trip to the zoo on Thursday. Today was the last day that it was open for the regular season. They do have weekends open for their special Halloween stuff, but I don't think we'll make it out for that. It will be a long wait for it to open again in April! This month is so busy. The calendar is filled with stuff everyday. I'm afraid it will go by so quickly and November will be here before we know it. We also have trips planned to visit each side of the family and Ben's 4th birthday on the 30th. Somehow I don't think November will slow down much either with getting things ready for the baby and Christmas. On Friday, we were able to meet some friends at Leo park. Ben had fun running around with his buddy Austin. He must have gotten worn out because after we came home and ate lunch he asked, "Is it almost my rest time? Be...