Just some more dialogue from Benny:

Nathan was combing Benny's hair and getting him dressed in his Sunday clothes when he said,

"Daddy, don't make me pretty... Daddy, don't make me a woman"

which is kinda contradictory because on another occasion before that Benny was watching me put on my make up in front of the mirror as he looked at my coveted make up bag. He had on many occasion tried to dig up its contents only to have them taken away and he knew by now that the make up was hands off. He looked at me and asked, "why are you putting make up on?" I replied, "Because i'm a woman and women can wear make up but boys can't." then he sighed and said, "I wish I was a woman."

On another occasion we were playing a game of pretend. He had recently watched Bambi and so we were all deer. Daddy was given the role of the mean hunter. We were resting peacefully in our little home in the thicket when daddy hunter comes in and announces that he's gonna shoot one of us and eat them. The hunter turns to Benny for advice and asks, "which one should I eat"?

Benny says, "eat something else"!

Hunter says, "no, I gotta eat one of you guys. Should I eat you, mommy, or Ephraim"?

Benny stands by his first answer, "eat something else"!

The hunter is persistent and finally Benny makes a decision when the options are narrowed down to "Mommy or Benny" (Ephraim having walked out of the room during this dramatic scene therefore eliminating himself from the list of candidates). Benny chooses "Mommy".

The hunter begins to chow down on mommy and then Benny, too heroic to just stand idly by, runs and jumps on the hunters back, grabbing him by the neck. As the hunter shrieks in pain, Benny wildly shouts, "I got him! I got the hunter mommy"! The hunter runs off a little wiser and Benny is left to glow in the spot light.

It was so funny because he truly was so proud of himself. He kept talking about it for awhile and had the proudest face on.

Unfortunately this act of bravery turned into a lust for revenge because he ended up stealing the hunters gun, then shot him and ate him....four times!

There's Bambi II for you. "Bambi's revenge: who gots the gun now"

Benny is potty trained!!! After a couple of days with no signs of success, somebody suggested a method that their sister used on their kid and so I tried it and in less than a day, Benny had stopped going in his underwear and willingly went to the potty without me even saying anything. He even did it in public places too. He held it and waited for me to take him to a toilet before he released himself. But let me start from the beginning. On the first day of potty training, he thought it was fun and exciting and showed me that he could go on the toilet but then the novelty of it wore off and he was bored with it by the second day and no longer made any efforts to go on the toilet. He even told me "I don't care about going potty" and candy wasn't a motivation at all. Anyways, for some reason, I thought we should take Benny to church in his underwear. I don't know why, I thought maybe he would be more motivated to go to the toilet with people all around him. But he wasn't and he did it in the middle of the isle too and of course we were sitting in the front that day. He was playing this game with me to see how far he could wander into the isle before I would grab him and pull him back into the bench. So it was when he was in the middle that a very visible puddle appeared where he stood. I dared not look up to see who all was looking while I frantically pulled wet wipes out of the diaper bag to soak up the puddle. Our friends who were sitting next to us became aware of the situation and offered us a tip when sacrament was over. They said their nephew had trouble too while he was potty training till their parents started to give him a cold shower to wash him off every time he went in his underwear. So I gave it a try on Benny and it only took two cold showers before he stopped and now we're going strong on day 3 without any accidents. He's our big boy now.

Behold, our beautiful Christmas tree. Yesterday, we bought ourselves a tree permit and went up to the hills and cut ourselves a Christmas tree. A blizzard had just blown in during the morning and we had given up hope of going out and getting our Christmas tree when everything cleared up and the sky turned blue. We quickly dressed the kids up again and packed in the car. We were so excited. Our vision of a lush and full tree had to be modified when we realized that Idaho doesn't have those types of trees. Either that or we just didn't know where to go for the nice ones. All the trees were scrawny and sparse. So we picked the best one we could and even then Nathan tied some extra branches onto the trunk to fill it out a little. We're happy with it though. We made some Christmas stars but they're a little too big and make the tree look even more scrawny but oh well. I like to call it "quaint". Benny loves it. He wanted to stay up late just to look at the Christmas tree and when he woke up in the morning he cried when he saw the lights were turned off so we keep the lights on for him during the day. He just loved decorating the tree. He would put a star up and Ephraim would take it down. They made quite a team. The stars gradually inched their way higher on the tree so that Ephraim wouldn't be able to reach them. So only the top half is really decorated. She's a beaut!

Today I officially started seriously potty training. I'm kinda excited, but maybe that's only because I haven't had to clean anything up yet. I bought underwear and a little step stool so he can make it up to the toilet and as we speak...or read, he is without protection of his diaper, the safety is off in other words. I've been in denial the last couple of months thinking I could potty train him while still in his diapers but he's too comfortable in his diaper and won't make the effort to go to the potty while in them. The good news is that we finished sleep training him. Now we don't have to go to sleep with him at bedtime and he doesn't wake up and come into our bed. It's already made a big difference in the way I feel. Having uninterrupted sleep is the bomb pretty much.

We got word finally that Nathan has been accepted into the fast grad program so we get to register him for classes this week. We're both very excited.

Anyways, that's it for now.

Here's a bit of dialogue between Benny and Nathan from this morning:

daddy emerges from our room after just waking up and pointing to Benny says, "I'm gonna eat you!"

Benny- "No, I'm too big!" a short pause follows... "Ephraims smaller"

Spoken like a true older brother

Here's some pics from one of my cross country meets with Rachel Fowers, our friend and neighbor. She's super fast too. Sharlee wasn't there unfortunately, she had a knee injury. Anyways, I was really happy at this meet because I made a big improvement with my time. The last meet I had gotten 30:14ish and at this meet I got 27:40something. I was so excited about it. I really pushed myself hard. I've been feeling myself getting stronger and less tired when I run so hopefully I'll be able to beat that time too. Maybe, I've missed a lot of days because of trips, halloween, sickness, and sleep training Benny which has been really sleep depriving so I may have set myself back but oh well.

For Halloween we decided to be the star wars gang from Return of the Jedi. Nathan was Han Solo. I was princess Leah of course. Ephraim was an e-wok and Benny was Obi-one. We had originally planned him to be an e-wok too but his costume fit really funny and he hated wearing it anyways so we did a last minute Jedi outfit. Luckily we had a toy light saber for him lest anyone was confused as to what he was.

Costume in the process. We got a big teddy bear from DI and de-stuffed it basically and inserted baby.
The back of him was the cutest I think with his little bear bottom