Benza Bulletin

Oh my word, I can not believe my sweet baby boy is five years old today, FIVE! He was born after I spent 15 days in antepartum for pre-eclampsia. We welcomed Reese Eliot on February 16, 2007 at 29 weeks. He weighed 2 pounds 2 ounces (975 grams). He spent 58 days in the NICU before coming home on his 2 month old birthday. On that first day before I even laid eyes on him the neonatologist assured us he was a firecracker.

A teeny tiny diaper just like he's wearing in the yellow hat photo above at one month is hanging in a shadow box in his room. Now that he's sleeping on the top of the bunk bed (a low bunk) he can see it at eye level and its teeny tiny size always results in huge belly laughs.

He looks almost chunky in this 5 week old photo.
This is the first time he got to wear clothes about 5 1/2 weeks.

Here is the chunky monkey on his first day at home. Two months old and a whopping 5 pounds.

This is today, February 16, 2012. He now weighs 15 times his birth weight and he more than tripled his birth height. He loves light saber battles and Scooby Doo, his speech therapist, drawing, coloring, superheros, movies and his brother.
I just wanted to squeeze him all day long. Reese has made amazing progress these last five years. He began receiving services for speech, gross motor and a cognitive delay at 20 months. He was over 2 years old before he even said "mama" or anything remotely like it. At is 5 year old evaluation he is officially no longer eligible for OT as his gross motor skills are all up to speed. His special ed classification changed from "cognitive delay" to "Speech Language Impaired." The school psychologist was very adamant that this was a HUGE distinction. So he will continue to see the speech therapist through the school system and we'll continue with his private speech therapist. That's it. We have been incredibly lucky that Reese has had so few problems related to his prematurity.
He is a super sweet little boy. He has worked very hard without too much complaining even when his schedule changed so that September through February he had 2 separate speech therapy sessions and his occupational therapy session all on the same day.
He is still as much a cuddle bug as he was as an infant. I almost wish I could just hit pause and keep him just like he is for awhile longer, but then of course I'm overjoyed that he is growing and progressing just like he is.
Happy 5th Birthday sweet boy!!!

Want to know what cool stuff is in this box? Let's schedule a party!

Dear Friends, I started an exciting new business venture. I decided to become a consultant with the Thirty-One. I've done a couple catalog parties with a lady in Alabama, but I really wanted a home show. I've had difficulty finding someone so I decided to just become one myself. I'm really excited to get this business going and have visions of it being so fantastic my husband can quit his day job to help me out. ha ha! Until such time I'm going to earmark this as our Disneyland or bust fund. I'm really hopeful this business can fund a trip to Disney in 2013.

The company offers some really great bags (you know I love me some good bags!) in super cute fabrics. Honestly, I want just about every single one. Thirty-One's mission is to Celebrate, Encourage and Reward women in whatever season of life they are living. We all need a little celebrating, encouraging and rewarding. We all need help organizing and looking stylish. I'm thinking Thirty-One will be the perfect outlet to let me keep being a stay at home, contribute some income to our family and connect with some great friends.

I really do want you to schedule a party...I need 3 by February 24, 6 by March 24 and 12 by April 24. I'd prefer to front load them so I'm not anxiety riddled about meeting those goals. BUT since you may need some celebrating, encouraging and rewarding I'm not going to make you wait! You can shop and order online for my LAUNCH PARTY!

Follow this LAUNCH PARTY link to view the catalog and place your order online. The special is for every $31 you spend get an additional item at 31% off. If you spend $62 you get 2 items at 31% off and they do not have to be equal or lesser value. You can spend $31 and then get the $149 bag at 31% off. Woo hoo!!!

Once I get my kit all opened and reviewed I'll come back with some cool use ideas for you. Thanks, friends!

Love, Heather

Why yes we did do some wintertime canning...probably more for the enjoyment of the process and the company than the actual product. But I can't wait to make some scones because this lemon curd is going to be divine!

After the ketchup debacle (Anya's take) this was so, so simple! and quick! We zested some lemons and squeezed some juice.

Then quickly moved on to cooking it with eggs and sugar until it was thick. Then we processed it in a normal stock pot. We didn't even need to overwhelm the stove top with the giant canner!

We ended with these adorable little jars of lemon curd! Now they just need cute labels and a basket of scones! YUM!

We love treats around here so we made LOVE treats tonight!

I melted some chocolate chips in the microwave and then stirred them until it made smooth chocolate.

Then everyone got a piece of wax paper to work on. I spread some of the melted chocolate on a pretzel stick.

Everyone got to put their own sprinkles on. We used Wilton's Valentine's Day sprinkle mix.

We slid the wax paper with the pretzel onto a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes.

Then Viola! they were read to be eaten! Everyone liked them so much we made some more to share with our friends on our play date tomorrow!! Ssshh! Don't tell the Monroes, it's a surprise!

I remember when I was little I always loved making snow cream. I thought about it when we started getting snow, but now that I'm the mom I just think...yuck, it's probably all contaminated with exhaust fume particles and other grossness. Last night I heard Gus on the phone with Mimi saying "Eat snow?!!? Eat snow??!!?" His face was all squished up with his head cocked to the side, clearly convinced Mimi had lost her mind. I promised we could eat snow in the morning. So when I noticed the downpour begin I rushed out and grabbed some good clean snow before it was washed away and turned into nasty gray slushy sludge.
My mom's old recipe called for 2 eggs and a lot of milk. I didn't really want to make THAT much and I don't really want to eat raw eggs in these modern times. So I hunted for a smaller recipe. This is what I made.
Snow Cream:
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
4 cups CLEAN snow
mix the milk and sugar and vanilla until dissolved, add to snow, mix, mix, mix until nice ice creamy consistency.

This is Gus' face right before he announced it was too cold.
I am sad to report the rain in washing away our hopes of a 3rd day of being snowed in. Facebook has been overrun with people complaining they want the snow to end so they can get out of their house. I am happy to report we stocked up on the necessities, didn't lose power, and have apparently created a much cozier, comfy home than everyone else. We don't want to go back to regular life so soon! Kyle was really hoping for 3 snow days off from work that would result in an unexpected 5 day weekend. We've really enjoyed this extra time with no time limitations to play games, have light saber battles, bust out the legos and wedgits for building frenzies and watch movies. Except for the occasional need to restock food we could happily stay in our house forever!!

After a lot of fanfare and hype we finally got snow. I was getting kind of annoyed that even Sirius XM was telling me about how much snow we were having when we still had nothing to show for it. But it finally began around 2am Tuesday night/Wednesday AM. We woke up to about 4 1/2 inches in our yard.Right off Gus was having a time of it. He kept saying "Mommy, this hard, walkin' too hard." Eventually he got the hang of walking through the snow. But at first I was afraid he was going to insist we go inside before he even played.

They shoveled for a little bit.

Reese was really having fun. He especially liked stomping around making footprints in the snow.

While Daddy had some energy left he swooped Reese around on the little mini sled thingys. When Gus saw Reese got snow all over his butt and legs when he slid, Gus declined to give it a try.

He also declined photos. He said "don't don't don't take picture, Mommy," but I took it anyway and got this squeezed closed eyes pose.

Reese was doing some major hopping around in excitement to build the Fortress of Solitude.

See that red cooler? It was supposed to be the mold for the snow bricks. The snow wouldn't come out, so we scrapped the fortress idea.

We moved onto building Frosty the Conehead or Jabba the SnowHut.

We survived the blizzard of 2012 without nearly the snow that was promised. We're hoping when we wake up there's a BUNCH more!!!

On Thursday Gus had his 2 1/2 year well baby appointment at 12:30 and all three guys had haircuts at 5:45 in Silverdale. Now I guess we could've gone home in between but in an effort to consolidate our trips we decided to stay. To fill the gap we went to Chuckie Cheese. I took the boys awhile back to a birthday party on a Saturday. CHAOS! It was so packed. We only used about half of our tokens. I promised we'd go back with Daddy and this time slot during the break was the perfect time!

Reese really got into air hockey with another little boy. I thought he was just having fun, but when the other kid had to leave and I stepped in I realized Reese was digging it because he smoked the other kid. As soon as I got ahead by one point he got all grumpy and didn't want to play! I made him finish, but he was less enthusiastic.He moved back onto the exciting riding games.He loved the riding games even when he was just hanging on the back of the chair while Gus drove. Of course neither could reach the gas pedal but they thought it was great just the same.
I could not get Gus out of the little kid rides! We rode this Handy Manny ride about 7 times!!!
Anyway, it was a bit expensive, but we actually liked the pizza (we got a large for us AND a little one for the boys to share so we could have good toppings). I thought they had an awesome salad bar so Kyle and I got salad bar as well. Then we went ahead and bought the snazzy Chuckie cup for the boys...from now on they'll get free refills at any Chuckie Cheese forever! (That's how we'll make our money back!!) We also had to go back and buy $10 worth of tokens. So clearly this will be a sometimes activity as opposed to a regular outing.

By the way Gus passed his well baby exam with flying colors...stellar across the board!

On Wednesday we headed south to the Children's Museum in Olympia. Something we didn't really think through was that lots of people were on vacation, so it was a mad house. Gus took awhile to warm up to playing this time since he was so overwhelmed by all the people.
We headed over to the grocery area first. Gus overloaded his basket with a bunch of fruits and veggies.

Reese kept his basket a little less full. Here he's waiting for Daddy to ring up his purchases.

Then we headed over to the theater and veterinarian clinic. The boys sold us some tickets.

Reese pretended to be a dog.

They spent lots of time in the gears area. They built a ball run with Daddy and had a so much fun I had time to browse the gift shop.

Gus loves driving the truck in the construction section.

Reese and Gus had a great time. They were very excited to play with everything with their Dad.

Christmas morning we headed over to my parents' house for more presents and Christmas dinner.

Reese got the Crime Fighter Headquaters he's been asking for since before Halloween.

These planes are something we bought ages ago and put away, then Mimi bought them too so we took ours back. He's been really excited about planes for awhile and these do cool tricks.

Reese insisted on bringing home his new Captain America suit even though I suggested he keep it at Mimi's since we have a suit at home, but this one has red and white vertical stripes over the ab muscles and he "needed" it at home too.

Again they got hoards of stuff. In addition to the suit and crime fighter headquarters Reese got some Eeboo games and a soccer ball and "Chill Out Scooby Doo", the movie he's been wanting for about 6 months and a Pirates of the Caribbean ship. He's super excited about that. Gus got Magna-Trucks, pattern blocks, a puzzle, animal counters, a sprig truck, a giant teddy bear and they both got fleece blankets Mimi made for them.
We ate so much over the past two days. Both Kyle and I felt sick from eating too much sweet dessert (chocolate mousse from his mom, pecan pie from mom). We need to do a sugar detox to survive our holiday food intake!!
The boys had so much fun. After all the Christmas gift opening was over Reese announced "now that Christmas is over we can buy toys again!" I've been telling him since early October we couldn't buy toys because Christmas was coming and we needed to wait and see what he got. He's totally ready to buy more now. He totally snowed that Santa whose lap he sat on by asking for a silver crayon. That guy had no idea what a greedy consumer that child is! He does love that silver crayon Santa brought though. Mommy loves the other 149 colors!

In the afternoon of Christmas Eve we headed over to Kyle's parents' house for dinner and more presents.

These boys stuffed themselves on candy essentially the whole night while trying out their new stuff.

They got an easel, lincoln logs, action figure legos, neon race car tracks, a Thomas light/talk toy and legos.

We finally packed it in and headed home at 11pm! They were wired! Mommy and Daddy were beat.

Reese went to bed with his new Star Wars sticker book. He also very excitedly told me he wanted more Christmas! Lucky for him the next morning we headed over to my parents' house for Christmas day.