Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday Matt and I celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary.  Three years!  Wait, only three years??  Thankfully the weather this week (70s and 80s) has felt nothing like the days/blizzard surrounding our wedding :)  But what a perfect weekend it was.  Next to Benjamin's arrival, our favorite.

We feel like we've been able to do so much during our relationship (over the past five years) that we've lived, in some ways, a lifetime full of memories already.  I'm so thankful for such a perfect match to my craziness.  And somehow, our perfect insanity produced a perfect and wonderful little boy. 

Blessed.

Given our interesting financial situation as of 2012 (i.e. me not having a job yet), we smartly decided to keep our celebrations very low key.  No gifts.  We even were able to use an old gift card we had laying around for a great restaurant in Boulder (Ten Ten Brasserie), and it was a gorgeous afternoon to head back to the very town that holds all our wedding memories.  After perusing the Pearl Street mall, we headed to the restaurant and enjoyed drinks with an old friend who stopped by as well.  (As a sidenote: Spring Break in Boulder is THE best time to go.  Period.)  It was a great evening with great company and awesome food :)

Benjamin soon wasn't interested in celebrating much... just being held by his momma so he could sleep:

The cards we exchanged and how we addressed them (see, perfect match):

 

Happy three year anniversary to my very best friend!

Smiley Boy!

This is what I walked into after Benjamin's morning nap.  Talk about swoon!  He's got some great smiles going on here for those of you that haven't seen them yet (he likes to make you work hard for them!):

It's Spring!

We had a beautiful weekend here in Denver with temps in the upper 70s most of the time.  What is this, June???  We had a huge to-do list to get done (you know, with important things like finishing our taxes and changing the batteries in our beeping smoke detectors), and somehow we managed to get most of it accomplished while squeezing in some fun times too.  I guess that's our ultimate goal in life: get all the necessary stuff out of the way so you can squeeze in as many fun times as possible! :)

Saturday got off to a slow start but I got a call from an old teacher friend who wanted me to take pictures of her daughter for a pageant she'll be entering soon.  So off we headed to the Botanic Gardens!  It was our first trip there (and at $12.50/person, I'm thankful my friend paid for us!), and despite the mostly brown exterior, the place was beautiful and relaxing.  We could only spend so much time in the tropical indoors or Matt would melt.  :)

closest thing to cherry blossoms we could find (apricot blossoms)

 

"mom, i don't care about plants!!!"

Saturday evening we decided to stay in and make a nice grilled dinner for ourselves... it was fun getting to spend time outside (and in a few days we may know if we can FINALLY get the alley behind our house to give us some sort of semblance of a backyard!).

 Sunday afternoon we met the Westras at City Park for a fun picnic.  The dads threw a baseball and frisbee around (not simultaneously), while the moms caught up and hung out with the sons.  What a change this is from last spring!  :)  Benjamin is definitely thankful to have a friend in Boaz!

BW was having a great time on dad's belly!

Boaz likes to suck on his dad's nose!

Afterward, we hit up the Uptown Tavern to watch an exciting Tarheel/Jayhawk Elite 8 game.  Thankfully, Benjamin brought his KU shirt and was ready to cheer them on nap. Kristyn and Andrew stopped by, so it ended up being a great day!  See you in the Final Four!!

clearly BW is excited about the win ;)

11 weeks old... yikes!

Benjamin, you are eleven* weeks old today!  Woah.

It's been a fun week and the weather just seems to be getting nicer and nicer.  Along with this, Benjamin seems to be getting better and better at sleeping, so we're happy for that!  Since my last post, we have in fact had two more long nights of sleep out of him, and while he often wakes up to fuss to himself for about 20 minutes at a time, he hasn't cried out crazily for us and he'll generally fall back asleep til the magical time of 6:45am.  I have a feeling these stretches will get longer soon enough, because after eating he'll usually go back down for another couple hours!  It definitely helps to have more of a routine, which sadly means these selfish parents will have to give up some of their late evenings occasionally to make sure we can get good sleep later on!

Nothing much new to report from Larsonland... just hanging out and enjoying time with our fun little guy.  He's still loving walks in the Baby Bjorn, which is great since it'll be such a nice weekend (80 in March!).

Sometimes he awakes from naps like this (melt my heart!):

Just hanging out:

He also got to meet his Uncle Jacob last night when we went out to Aurora to see the Bethel Choir perform.  We ate dinner afterwards and enjoyed catching up with the youngest Larson sibling :)

first time wearing real kicks

Benjamin actually did a great job during the concert (and thankfully I got him out of the room fast enough to avoid his embarrassingly loud bowel movement ruining the quiet part of a song!!) and finally fell asleep towards the end:

I've also been reminded just how extremely blessed we have been... as I was going through and organizing our TUBS and trash bags full of hand-me-down clothes, I realized this boy will be clothed for well over a year and in some pretty sweet threads too :)  Most of these awesome clothes are from his good friend Bode, whom Benjamin will be writing a very nice thank you note to when he's old enough.

Seriously, I'm SO in love with this little man.  His smiles are my favorite thing in the world, which sadly I still don't have many pictures of.  But soon enough!

* yes, if you read this post earlier, it said 12 weeks... no, Benjamin, your parents aren't crazy.  We are just apparently bad at keeping track of the calendar!

We have a sleeper!

Guess who slept for almost NINE hours last night??

This guy, that's who!!

Now, I don't want to jinx it, and I know it was only one night, but still... we can't help but be excited!!  We've been implementing a new 5B nighttime routine (bath, book, bottle, bedtime for benjamin), so who knows if it's thanks to that or thanks to the better daytime routine we've been in for the last week or so.  Plus, of course, it's thanks to a much better tummy now that he's on the expensive right formula.  He's also been super happy in the mornings lately with tons of smiles and giggles/coos!  It's my new favorite time of day.

We call these his Cee Lo Green pajamas :)

We had a fun day yesterday going on a walk (he's loving it in the Baby Bjorn these days!) and then heading to Louisville to meet Aunt Amber at the mall (where I purchased some extremely adorable hats for BW with left over gift cards and BW hung out with AA), and to see daddy play music at the Empire.  That could have been what tuckered him out!  Whatever the cause, we'll take it!

Also, I keep forgetting to mention that I finally added a "Follow by email" widget to the upper righthand side of the blog for those that have been asking.  Feel free to enter your email address (and then I think you just have to click a link to verify your email once they send you a tester or something).  So far, it's been working well, though the emails come out about 12-24 hours after I post.  (Oh, and a subscribe widget should be there too...) Thanks!