A long time...

Oh, it isn't February anymore?!?  It has been a busy many months. )

Here's the highlights:

After the crash we moved in with my parents while our house was being repaired and enjoyed great fun in the country for 2 months.

Benjamin turned 1 in March (yeah!)

Brian graduated in March (yeah!) and was blessed with an internship that went through September.

Summer was a busy blur, but we did go camping to celebrate Brian's 30th birthday and Grandpa's 60th birthday.  We also planted and harvested a garden (even though summer did not arrive until early July.)

In July Benjamin started wearing glasses.  His nickname for a time was professor Grove.

Benjamin's aunt Lisa got married in September and we all got to dress up to celebrate.  Her husband's name is Ben too but Benjamin prefers to call him Uncle Bobo and looks forward to someday getting to play with a new cousin or two.  A week later we cut off Benjamin's beautiful curls (he was referred to as a "she" one too many times.)

In September we also were able to get away for a couple nights on our first little family vacation and took Benjamin to the beach.  It was the first time he got to play in the sand and he loved it!

Last week Benjamin had his 6th (and hopefully last) surgery.  It was just a clean-up surgery to take out some scar tissue and dead tissue from one of his previous surgeries.  It was the easiest surgery by far, but still made this mommy nervous.  He did wonderful and we were out of the hospital within 3 hours of the start of the surgery!  He has recovered quickly and is back to tearing up our house. :)  We praise God for yet again blessing and protecting our boy.

Our family has been blessed again as it looks like Brian has a job!  It is a very difficult job market as most people know and God yet provided again.  He didn't even have to interview.  Amazing!

Developmentally, Benjamin is doing very well, all things considering.  He started crawling last summer and started cruising around our furniture about a month ago.  He can stand on his own momentarily and he is starting to show signs of wanting to walk.  We just need to work on balance.  He eats very well and loves food with lots of flavor.  One of his favorite sauces is Bullseye BBQ and he also loved Famous Dave's Sweet & Sassy BBQ.  He has not really started saying many recognizable words, but we were told this is to be expected and we will start working with a speech therapist probably sometime after the first of the year.

All in all, life is very good.  Maybe I will post a blog before 9 months pass!