Ketching up or Catching up? ...Ben says:

Ben loooooves ketchup. I know a lot of kids do. I like it on fries and burgers and hot dogs. Matt won't touch the stuff and neither will Josh. But Ben, well, he dips everything in ketchup. He even dips his fingers in ketchup and licks them, which almost gags me! He just love, love, loves it. Here we go:

"Why is part of the word 'ketch'?"
"Why is part of the word 'up'?"
"This is deWISHus!"
and, my personal favorite... "I'm gonna need a lot of ketchup to get through this [meal] without complaining!"

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Josh talked Ben into getting rid of all of his plastic train tracks and the old metal Thomas die cast trains. Every last bit of them. We did save his wooden track and train, and Matt likes to play with that. But all of the other train stuff is gone, and some of the race car stuff too. The tradeoff? Josh bought him a Lego set. I'm not sure who was more excited! Ben and Josh had an absolute blast putting together the set. It was a truck pulling a trailer that had two motorcycles on it. I couldn't get over all the tiny details, too cute! Ben went to bed that night and had a hard time sleeping. He called me into his room and said, "Mom, I just can't stop thinking about Legos!" Ha!

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We were driving to a birthday party awhile back (May, I think?) and I noticed a lot of wildflowers on the sides of the road. I said to Ben and Matt, "Look at those purple-y blue flowers. Aren't they pretty? I love those." Ben said, "Then stop the car, Mommy! If you stop the car I'll get out and pick some for you." How sweet is that?

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We almost always have a few bees' nests inside the doors of our shed. We knock them down several times a year, and I don't mind doing it if I catch them in time... meaning, if they aren't huge and swarmed with bees. Even so, I have to kind of talk myself up to do it. I REALLY don't want to get stung. Ben knew I was about to knock the nests down with a stick, and I told him to stand back in case a few bees came flying out. He took a few steps back, but he stuck around - and when I knocked down the nests, he said, "Good job, Mommy! You did a good job with that." It was kind of cute.