Pals, Preschool, and a Pregnant Belly...

Just a couple of pictures of Ben and his pal Nate from a week or so ago when Nate came over to play. The two of them sat at the top of our basement stairs for a good 30 minutes telling "scary" stories to each other. I opened the door to check on them a couple of times and was promptly told to "shut it"...apparently it was a boy thing?! :)

Ben started preschool at the beginning of September (2 days a week for 2 1/2 hours at a local church). I attended class as a "parent helper" last week and took the pictures below. I gotta be honest, the transition has not been easy for him. He just hasn't been in a lot of structured settings or around a ton of other kids on a regular basis. He's having a hard time staying focused on the activity at hand and is disrupting other kids during some of the less active times (story time, devotion, etc). Oh GREAT?! Is it bad that I've already had some sleepless nights over his preschool behavior?! What am I in for? I've been told by many to relax and not worry...that he will figure it all out with time...but I just want so badly for this to be a good experience for him and for his teachers and the other kids to LIKE him! He really loves going, but I'm not quite sure they like having him just yet. We are working on it!

Lastly, a picture of me, my belly, and my buddy from this evening. :)

He did it...26.2 miles!

Mike ran in his first ever marathon today! He did an AWESOME job! His official chip time was 4:06:11, which was better than the average for the Akron Marathon. He came in 617th out of 1581 finishers...not too shabby for a brand new marathoner (or anyone for that matter)! :) I am really proud of him. Papa, Brad, and Christina all ran portions of the race as well (relays, half marathon, etc). Papa and Brad both ran with Mike for part of his race and I know that really helped him keep going! Here are a few pictures from the race....not the best picture of me (I'm feeling awfully chubby these days!) and Benny refused to look at the camera, but you get the idea!

Here is Ben sporting all of Daddy's race medals. He thinks his dad is pretty cool! The second shot is the position Mike is currently in on our living room floor...so worn out he hasn't even taken a shower yet....ewww! :)

Lazy weekend...

We had a nice, relaxing weekend. Benny sported his "Go Bucks" gear on Saturday for the Ohio State game and took an afternoon nap with Lucy. We headed to downtown Akron that evening to tryout a new restaurant and spent a good 30 minutes sitting on a bench watching cars go by afterwards (so fun!!?!). Ben was in heaven. Today we went to church, played in the basement with the fun "gears go round" toy Ben got from his Uncle Eric for Christmas, and then went out for ice cream and to the park. I love lazy weekends!

This video was taken Saturday morning. Benny and I were watching YouTube videos of Scrat the Squirrel from the movie Ice Age and found a WEIRD video of Scrat with gross "bathroom" sound effects added in. For those of you who do not have a little boy living in your home, this will likely not be all that amusing to you...sorry! Of course, Ben thought it was hilarious! :)

Yearbook Yourself!

Ok, so I had a little too much fun at yearbookyourself.com recently. It's a website that lets you upload your face and morph it into various "looks" throughout the years. Here are some LOVELY shots of me from the 50's through the 90's...and a couple goodies of Mike too. I gotta say, I'm really glad I live in today's day and age...I might have really scared people away "back in the day!"

True Love...

This song was sung at church on Sunday and I really, really loved it, so I thought I'd share it here. It's the song "True Love" by Phil Wickham (from his album Cannons). The words are awesome and it really touched me. I hope it does the same for you.

The county fair...

We spent a couple of hours at the good ol' Wayne County Fair tonight. Ben rode some rides and I enjoyed people watching. I am always amazed at the variety of "unique" people you can find at a county fair and I mean that in the nicest way possible. :)

No fair post would be complete without at least one photo of some kind of animal. Here is, what I believe to be, the world's largest steer (and a patriotic one at that!). It was $15 to get your picture taken with him....uh...thanks, but no thanks! :)

Sugar and spice...

...and all things nice! I found out today that I'm having a little GIRL (and she's healthy, looking great so far, and a major wiggle worm)! There had been many predictions made and none of them were thinking I'd be having a boy...so I guess I should trust the masses more often?! I'm excited for a fun, new challenge and for some more girl power in our family. Now we just have to agree on a name that isn't Louise! :)

Here she is...staring right at us! I have to admit...a little creepy...but pretty amazing! :)

Oh...and in case anyone was curious what identifies a girl...it's those three little lines. I'll spare you the exact word used by the tech, as I'm not sure it's blog appropriate!

Friends!

I spent the last three days with four of my favorite people on the planet...my college girlfriends. We met in Michigan and stayed at a cottage on a really pretty lake. It was so fun to just relax, shop, laugh, and EAT (with an emphasis on this one)! :) We have made every effort to get together as a group at least once a year since college (and it was extra special this year because we got to celebrate Jenny's birthday together!). We know the good and bad parts of each others personalities and we love each other regardless. Life really wouldn't be as fun without them. Here are a few pictures from our weekend!

Heidi is due in early October and I'm not due until January, but it was fun to compare bumps. :)

Just wanted to explain a few of the pictures below. The picture in the middle row/far left is me and Heidi with our "Hooter Hiders"...Jenny, Abby and April bought them for us so we could nurse in privacy without worrying about any inappropriate exposure...ha! The picture in the bottom row/far left was in a kitchen store in downtown Saugatuk. Abby is proudly holding a spice mix of some kind. I can't remember what it was called...but it's slogan was "Spice up your sex life, and your casseroles!" Woohoo! :)

Who knew? :)

My friend, Erika, did this with her family (Sommermeyer blog on right) and I thought it was funny. I did it with some different photos of us the first time and Ben looked 7% more like me, but apparently in this photo he looks equally like both of us. :) Just gave me a little chuckle! What do you think?

Nothing like a good book...

Ben loves books. He LOVES a good story...scary, funny, weird, or classic. I pulled a stack of books from the bookshelf today and we sat down on the couch to read a "few." I was thinking he would pick three or four from the stack and we'd be done. Well, one hour and forty minutes later we had read every single book in the stack (see below). It doesn't seem like it could take an hour and forty minutes to read these books, but there are a lot of words and details contained on those pages and, of course, I had to stop occasionally to answer questions or listen to funny observations he made. My voice actually started to go hoarse near the end from non-stop reading. It was fun and I got to snuggle with him the whole time...that's the best part for me!

Happy Labor Day!

We had a fun, relaxing Labor Day weekend. We headed to Mike's uncle Kevin's new house on Sunday after church and Ben had a blast in the huge backyard and, of course, riding on his tractor/mower all over the yard. As is Moser tradition, there was enough food to feed three more families...but it was yummy! :)

Yesterday, Mike, Brad and Papa all ran in the Labor of Love run in downtown Akron. It's a five mile race and they all three did a really good job. Nana, Ben and I cheered them on (actually Ben was very grumpy, tired, and hot...but he cheered up after I waited in line to get him a balloon animal for 30 minutes).

Daddy pinned his race bib on Ben afterwards and he and Papa had a mini-race!

This is a completely unrelated picture, but I took it earlier this week and thought he was cute just hanging out in his stuffed animal filled tent in the basement. :)