Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday, that is. Four years ago, Ben and I were married for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake Temple. And what a ride it's been from there. Thanks hon, for being my best friend, for not laughing too much at my Melinda-isms, for laughing with me til we cry, for becoming a part of my family, for working so hard all the time, for taking breaks to have fun with me, and for making me a mother. Even though we have to work at it, I wouldn't trade any of it.

Cool Dude

He was trying so hard not to smile, but he knew he was cool.

He also tried not to move his head so the glasses would stay on.

Where did this come from?

When trying to put them on himself, he couldn't quite figure out the whole over the ears thing.

So he just wore them on his neck and kept playing.

This is our secret weapon now. Emerson rediscovered these in the deep recesses of the diaper bag. He didn't really know how they worked until I put them on him. He was overwhelmed with how cool he was. Now whenever he's crying we pull these babies out and all sadness ceases. After all, cool dudes don't cry.

Christensen Invasion

Last week, Ben's entire family came to visit (minus his 2 married sisters). There were 15 additional people at our humble abode. It was a little crazy, to say the least, but we had fun. Luckily when they drove out to see us, they towed a camper behind them so 5 or so of them slept out there. We were still pretty full to the rafters.

I could not believe the quantity of food. As the wife and hostess, it fell upon me to plan all the meals while they were here, although we didn't have to pay for all of it. (That surely would've broken our meager food budget!) I think they were all pretty happy to have a few real meals after eating sack lunches in the car all week. Ben and I also had to get used to moving a bit slower. With that many kids, it took us about 2 hours to get ready to go anywhere. We felt speedy for once. :)

After they arrived late on Wednesday night, we shoved off to Cedar Point early Thursday morning. One word: AWESOME. I'm a ride lover, and there was no shortage of thrill rides there. I think our favorite was Top Thrill Dragster. 120 mph in 4 seconds. Yes, 4 seconds. And 420 feet straight up? Yes, that's right. And what goes up must come down--at a 90 degree angle. Pretty wicked. The rides were so great that many times I was unable to scream...or simply ran out of scream on the descent. They were THAT big. E was a really good boy all day long. Ben and I were planning on riding rides for a short part of the day while he went with Grandma and Grandpa, but he fell asleep right after lunch and was perfectly content, so we were able to ride as much as we cared to. We felt pretty beat up by 8 pm and had to call it quits because we were so dang tired. We were able to take him on some kiddie rides and I was super impressed that they had 4 kid areas so you weren't stuck riding the same 6 rides over and over. It was a blast.

E's new t-shirt and stick from Grandma and Grandpa C

E and Auntie Em pointing to the ferris wheel (we didn't take him on that ride though...I was about to throw up I was so nervous at the thought.)

Thrilled on the boat ride. It had been a long day and he had been very good.

E sucking his thumb while playing with his pinky. (He instantly must get snuggly with mommy)

The next day, we all slept in late and had a few minutes to go mini-golfing at the hotel. E really liked the putter that was his size, and he got really good at putting the ball into the hole. Then we drove to Kirtland and had some church history fun. Ben and I liked it better in the off-season with a smaller tour group because they just gave better and more detailed tours and you could actually see stuff.

Miniature golfing at the hotel

The whole crowd (minus Brooke & Tim and their girls and Christine & David)

Tired lil' guy

The whole crowd in Kirtland

On Saturday we took the whole crowd to COSI. They all really liked it, I think. It was pretty busy on a Saturday, but I think we were all able to do everything we wanted to.

Fun facts for Jenny. She's always one to have a fun fact to share, so she was super excited when we discovered this whole list on the bathroom door at COSI.

How many Christensens can you fit in a phone booth?

Even though we wore everyone out while they were here visiting, we sure had a good time! We appreciated them making the drive and doing so many fun things with us.

The Melting Pot and Sleepy Boy

For my birthday dinner this year, Ben took me to The Melting Pot. It's probably my favorite restaurant of all time. I love the atmosphere, the food, and I loved being there on a date with my bestest husband ever without having to entertain my little guy during dinner with goldfish crackers and crayons. Thanks for the romantic evening out, shnookums. (You may vomit now.)

We tried to get some pictures together, but weren't too successful...

...until we decided to do individual shots.

And here's our precious sleepy guy earlier that day. He almost takes up the whole loveseat!

How Do You Capture A One-Year-Old?

Put something he wants in the hamper, of course.

You Light Up My Life

Old chandelier

The brass loveliness

Hooray for new!

Old kitchen fixture

New

New kitchen lighting. Yay!

Although we loved our old kitchen chandelier and brass lights, we decided to update things a little. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the old fixture in the middle of the kitchen because my sweetie was so efficient that he got it down before I could. But you get the idea. We're very happy with our new lights.

Sleep Over/Down

Little Benny ready for the movie

Little E enjoying the mattress in the morning

The other night we had an urge to be fun, so Ben decided to blow up the air mattress that we usually use for camping and put it in the front room. Growing up, my siblings and I would have "sleepovers" in the family room, which meant staying up late, eating popcorn, and watching a movie, with the big kids on the couch and the little kids on the floor. Ben's family also did a similar thing growing up, but they called it a "sleepdown". So whatever you may call it, that is the general idea of what we did. We used to do it in our apartment in Logan fairly often, but we'd drag our queen-size mattress about 3 feet and it would be in the family room. :) I must say though, I must be getting old, because the air mattress just doesn't do it for me. Both of us were really sore when we woke up. E had a great time playing on the mattress in the morning. It was big fun.

Hocking Hills

Our sad/sick little guy. He woke up with croup the night before, but after taking him to the doctor, he slept great. I think the humid night air did him good.

Some of the group

The gimp posing in front of the disabled persons sign

The boyz

The boyz + me. (I don't look so great. And I promise I'm not pregnant even though I look extra-wide here)

E throwing rocks into the pool of water. Also notice his wet pants at the bottom...He made a break for it as soon as Ben set him down. He only got his shoes a little wet.

You thought I was never going to post about this, didn't you? Ha, well here it is. We went camping a few weeks ago at Hocking Hills. It probably has the most rugged terrain and is the closest cousin to any kind of mountains in Ohio. It's very pretty, and the campground was very similar to the ones we frequented in Logan. (We miss Logan, and all the great people there. You know who you are.) We had a great time with the other families that went, and got to know a few a lot better than before. We screamed our guts out at Rocky hiding in the brush, chased a few humongous raccoons away, frequently checked our legs for giant daddy longlegs, and sang a few songs around the campfire. Things went a lot better as soon as little man-beast went to bed. He went down fine, but was kind of a crabby-pants because he was sick the night before with croup. He didn't wake up once during the night, which thrilled me to no end because I had visions of us waking up every camper within a 50 mile radius. Thanks for all the fun, everyone. We'll have to do it again soon.

Fourth of July and Uncle Michael's Visit

E watching the fireworks. He kept reaching for them and babbling about them.

A nice lady took this picture of all of us at the parade

Sneakily eating another tootsie roll.

He loved gripping his little flag. But he didn't wave it once. He stabbed things with it. Does that mean we need to burn it?

Who is that blind-looking woman holding Emerson? I think she's related to that blind man with the sunglasses in all our family vacation pictures. :) (Love you Dad)

As you can tell from both my boys' expressions, the parade was great. :) Actually, Ben wasn't crabby, but he didn't realize I was taking the picture. Emerson WAS crabby.

He also entertained himself by finding his belly-button lots of times. He just figured out that it's always hiding under his shirt.

E was loving life as he got to stand on the ledge and reach his skinny little arm through the holes.

Outside the Columbus Clippers game. We discovered these windows as we were forlornly walking away from the ticket window. And they were FREE.

These pictures are not in the order I wanted them. Grrr. We had a great time with Uncle Michael. We took him to German Village, Graeters, a Clippers game, OSU campus, and of course to the Hilliard parade. Thanks for coming to visit, Michael. I'm still trying to figure out your joke/riddle about how to get out of the house...:)

The Fourth of July was more fun than I thought it would be. I was honestly pretty sad that we weren't going to be in Utah for the fourth, because I love being with my family and I love sharing my birthday with Brad and having two cakes to celebrate. But it was still good in Ohio. We went to the Hilliard parade as I mentioned before, and it was kind of disappointing. There was not one float to be seen. Nor more than 2 pieces of saltwater taffy. They threw Dubble Bubble. Really? Who likes that stuff? I guess at least they threw tootsie rolls and even threw some flavored ones in to mix things up. We were really sick of little league baseball teams by the end of the 1-1/2 hr. parade. But it wouldn't be the fourth without a parade. Then we came home and hung out and let E play in his pool for awhile. Then we invited our nice neighbor and her dad over for a BBQ and had to bring it inside because it started to rain. E was super tired so we put him to bed at his regular time and let him sleep until fireworks and then we got him up when it was time to go. It worked perfectly. He loved the fireworks and was good the whole time and went right back to sleep as soon as we put him in bed without a sound.

I think I get caught up in the festivities of the Fourth of July without thinking about why we're celebrating, but I really am grateful to live in this country. We have so many opportunities and I'm coming to understand more and more how Heavenly Father prepared America for everything that needed to happen to afford us the liberties we enjoy. I'm grateful for all the soldiers who have sacrificed to keep our nation free. I'm grateful that I'm so blessed to live in America.

Birthday

I had strawberry shortcake for my cake on my birthday. But this is just the naked angelfood cake. (And yes, it has 5 candles on it, but it's supposed to be 23...Ben's idea.)

My sweetie lighting the candles

Ben's brother Michael who we were happy to have around to celebrate with

My presents (I'm sitting on one of them too. We finally got patio furniture instead of our tacky camping chairs.)

My birthday was good. We went to Waffle House for breakfast since Michael was visiting and he couldn't leave without experiencing it. Then we went to the movie Up and I absolutely loved it. Ben was kind enough to take Emerson out of the theater when he freaked out. We got out Emerson's kiddie pool during the afternoon and laughed at his little bod in his Elmo swimsuit as he dumped water everywhere with his little bucket. Then we had a nice evening at home with a Papa Murphy's pizza while watching Independence Day. We are planning on going out to dinner for my birthday this weekend as well when we can leave E-man with a babysitter. Thanks Benny, Emerson, and Michael for making my birthday so fun even though I was away from home in Utah. :( And thanks for all the phonecalls, cards, and presents that everyone sent. You know who you are and that I think you're the best.