Too cute

I couldn't resist these fun pictures of Bennie... I'm sure it's sort of a "you had to be there moment", but he was belly laughing so hard in these!

Daddy's & Mommy's weekend

I had my first girlfriends getaway up to Paso Robles this last weekend and Steve had his first "all daddy, all day" weekend with Bennie. They did great and I had a great time and did just fine away from my boys for the first weekend! Traci & I met Dawn & Lori (who came down from San Francisco) in Paso Robles for a really fun weekend of wine, wine and more wine! We went tasting all day on Saturday at some gorgeous vineyards, went to an olive oil ranch and did a wee bit of shopping... had a fabulous sushi dinner and well... let's leave the story right there... I love you girls... & looking forward to next year's trip where we'll be more "contained"! :)

A glimpse into Ben's world...

This kid is soooo ready to walk! :)

Reading in Bed

One of the things that Steve and I love to do is read in bed in the morning on the weekends if our time allows... we've obviously missed that immensely this last year, but Steve found a way past it this weekend... this was the scene when I entered our bedroom on Sunday morning at 8 am! They were reading together for a good 20 minutes... ahh, our little boy is becoming so independent! :)

"Tea Fire"

It's been a wild ride for the last 48 hours here in Santa Barbara... the fire was directly above our house and for all of Thursday night into the early morning hours of Friday we were able to see flames from the fire from our guest bedroom window, which was quite scary and very intriguing to say the least. The area that we live in is just on the periphery of where all the evacuating was happening on Thursday from 6 pm - midnight. Steve and I put Ben down around 7 and waited, watched, lost power numerous times, lost cable and internet (YIKES) and then sat in the car eating dinner listening to the radio for a while until we realized that we too might need to leave, so we gathered the items that we needed (amazing how our life was deduced down to 2 gym bags of clothes and toiletries, one bag for Ben with toys, diapers and clothes and one box full of a few files of important documents, a backup harddrive with all of our pictures, financials and documents and our laptops.) Really makes you realize what's truly important. We had both cars packed and ready to go and then we waited, talked with neighbors, and waited some more.

Around midnight, we decided to lay down to try and get some sleep as most of our street had evacuated and we were still wondering if that was our best bet. With waking up Ben, trying to get him re-settled somewhere else, we realized that we'd be in for an even longer night than we already were, so we stuck it out (despite the sheriff coming onto our street with a bullhorn shouting "Santa Barbara residents in this area - this is a mandatory evacuation - please leave your homes immediately". We had a plan, knew we could be out of our house easily within 2 minutes after grabbing Ben if we needed to leave suddenly, so we stayed. We slept fully clothed, with the radio on and set the alarm for every 90 minutes to be able to check on things and listen to the latest. Finally we got up about 5 am and the haze over SB was like nothing we'd ever seen before... and the smell... OY!

Here is a picture from the pier in Santa Barbara around 8 pm.

All in all, we were safe and glad that we didn't leave. Ben woke up at 7 am and had no clue as to what happened all night and I'm surprised he slept so well with the helicopters literally RIGHT over our house all night... it was crazy. But, we're safe. However, so many people are not safe and they've lost their homes and all of their belongings. I think the current count is 225 homes. So sad.

Thanks to everyone for your calls, text messages, emails and kind offerings of support, help and a place to stay. One really finds out how much they are loved during a situation like this and we felt REALLY loved, so thank you!

Ben's New Chair

For Ben's birthday, Steve and I got him his own chair!
Needless to say, he loves it! :)

The final birthday celebration...

after the official birthday on Saturday - we continued the celebration today & had a little cupcake party at the zoo with some friends of Ben's (and ours).... it was a beautiful day & we felt really lucky and blessed to have met some wonderful people this last year... here's some of my favorites from today!

Birthday weekend pictures...

Bebo waking up on his first birthday! (first shot of the day!)

birthday breakfast... banana waffle & a banana! (the kid loves banana's)

Proudly displaying his medal from the 1/2 marathon!

getting lots of love from the women in his life

opening his birthday gifts -- he was way more interested in the boxes!

The adult cake...

During his cake fest!

After the cake fest!

It was a "tubber"... notice the blue-ish frosting hue of the water.

Ben is officially ONE!

Soooo, the weekend of Ben's birthday... what a whirlwind. First the marathon on Saturday morning, then a party with Steve's family and CAKE! Oh my... Ben did a number on the cake! Steve made a short video for your viewing pleasure... it's a bit long, but we wanted you to get the point... of course he played more with it than actually eating it!

1/2 marathon

We had an awesome birthday weekend with Ben... there is so much to blog about, so I'll break it down because many special events happened this weekend... the first special event this weekend was Saturday morning.... Steve participated in his first 1/2 marathon. He has been training hard for many months and the goal was to push Ben on his birthday. Of course Steve had T-shirts made for the big day... :) He did great... it was a bit rainy at the start, but then the sun came out and both Ben & Steve did great. Steve finished 13.2 miles in 2 hours 25 minutes. Pretty darn great! Sooo proud of you honey!

7 am - pre-race!

back of the t-shirt he made

waiting for Daddy at mile 5 to be picked up!

mid-race - looking good!

the final home stretch!

post-race