It's Game Day!

The football season has finally started again for Boise State and we here in the Bennett household could not be happier. What's better is that Boise State is playing my alma mater, Weber State, this evening and the score is 56 to 7 in favor of Boise State. In a related matter, I took Mason grocery shopping today for the first time. We were waiting to pick up Jake from school so we ran into the Albertsons near the campus. I haven't taken Mason grocery shopping before because he is extremely unpredictable. He was in a good mood when we entered the store though so I thought we'd be fine. We were for about 10 minutes. Then he started screaming like someone was cutting his leg off. This guy doesn't really have a wind up, he just cries full force as soon as he starts. I immediately head into the checkstand and I am scanning my groceries as quickly as possible. There are four people from the store gathered around him trying to calm him down but he just wasn't having it. Out of the corner of my eye I see a man dressed like a horse (and he was not the Bronco mascot) approaching my baby and he says in a voice to rival Mr. Ed's "Well hello, little buckaroo, looks like someone is having a bad day!" Mason is stunned and immediately stops crying and then starts smiling at the horse. The clerk says as I am leaving "Maybe you should consider grocery shopping dressed like a horse." Maybe I should.

Just Hangin' Out in Our Robes All Day

Our summer party is officially over now that Jake has gone back to school. Mason and I are back to hanging out with each other all day. He's a lot more fun to hang out with this semester as he now does tricks, like grabbing for things and rolling over and he smiles a lot. It's actually hard to get anything done because he's such great entertainment. He'll sit in his robe while I clean the nursery and then he'll play in the bathtub until the water gets too cold. Then he'll cry and I'll put him to bed. I do love our morning ritual.

In other news, I have a part time job now. I decided to utilize my psychology degree for a bit and become a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist. Basically I have one 13 year old client that I try to help with his social and behavioral issues. It's certainly challenging but I have much more patience after giving birth to a child, and I have a different sort of compassion for my client because I have my own son.

Today the mailwoman came to the door with a stack of magazines and said "These would not fit in your mailbox, and for the record, I am not sure I have anyone on my route with more magazine subscriptions than you." This made my day. Like I had just won some kind of contest or something. I decided to figure out just how many magazine subscriptions we actually have. We have 34. Now before you think I am crazy, I have to say that both Jake and I had miles expire on several airlines and at least half of these subscriptions are from cashing those miles in. I think I have several gift subscriptions from my mother as well. But suffice it to say, we have plenty of reading material in our house.

False Advertising

I am trying to be a healthier eater these days, but my weakness is and always has been cake. Cupcakes, birthday cake, muffins (which closely resemble cake), anything cake like in nature. My personal favorites are Mrs. Freshley's cupcakes, Costco birthday cake and Blueberry streusal muffins.

Anyway, I was very excited to see that Hostess came out with 100 calorie packs of cupcakes. I do enjoy a Hostess cupcake, but they are ridiculously fattening and high in calories. These 100 calorie packs are a new phenomenon and I have been happy with some and disappointed in others. I was curious to see and taste these cupcakes, but leary.

When I went to Phoenix to visit Kyle we were in the store with his girlfriend Sarah, and she mentioned that she wanted to try these cupcakes. I explained my concern about them being a disappointment and she convinced me to try them. She opened them in the car because we were so excited and what followed both made me laugh hysterically and become enraged all at the same time.

You see, these cupcakes are so tiny and so not like the picture on the box, it's comical. They are barely two bites and they do not taste good. I do not know what they took a picture of for the outside of the box, but it was not what was on the inside. They are big and fluffy on the box and thin and dense in real life. I am pretty sure I would have to eat all 6 packages to feel fulfilled. In fact, the only thing these imposters made me want to do is go out and buy the real hostess cupcakes and eat them.

One More Trip

Our crazy fun summer is almost over as Jake starts school next Monday. Since we are free as birds this summer we decided to take a trip down to Utah to see some friends. Before we left last Wednesday we had lunch with Jake's mom and Gary, who happened to be passing through on their way from Billings to Washington. Mason was pretty excited to see them, he loves visitors. What he doesn't particularly love is riding in the car. He cried about 5 of the 6 hours it took us to get to Utah. We got to see various rest areas along the way, though we figured out that he just wants to get out of his car seat so we put a stop to stopping. The only thing that worked was for one of us to ride in the back seat with him to keep him company.

Mason had his first play date in Utah with his fellow blog baby Jackson. Jackson was 2 hours of non-stop action and Mason could hardly keep up. In his defense, Mason is 2 months younger (but just as big, if not bigger) than Jack and was fresh off that 6 hour car ride. We'll have to try again later.

Another first for Mason in Utah was being left with an actual babysitter while Jake and I went to Sundance. He did very well because honestly he's not that attached to us yet and as long as you meet his needs, he's your best friend. At Sundance we rode the ski lift to the summit and looked around. It was beautiful but we were hungry so we rode the lift back down and ate at the grill. It was a fantastic date and it has motivated us to start leaving Mason with a babysitter in Idaho.

We spent a lot of time hanging out with friends and saw the Bourne Ultimatum, which was very good. Dana's kids adored Mason and wanted to be around him all the time. Joseph did very well at holding him and although he bordered on being smothered, Mason loved the kids so much. We've actually noticed that he likes to be rough housed a bit.

We have had an amazing summer, with so many visitors and so much fun. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this has been the best summer of my entire life.

I Blame Goldie

Tonight I had a craving for french toast with peanut butter and bananas. I went to the store and got some eggs and bananas, I used actual french bread, I made the batter and I dusted the toast with cinnamon and cooked it to a golden brown. I was super hungry and very pleased with my creation. I topped the slices with a little powdered sugar and sat down to my dinner. I took a bite and right away realized something was very off, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I ate another bite, another bite, and then I couldn't eat another bite. I ate the banana, put the rest down the disposal and chalked it up to one of those things that just doesn't taste the same after childbirth. I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth though. I checked the griddle to see if maybe we cooked something previously on it but it was clean. When Jake asked how my french toast was I had to admit I was feeling sick to my stomach. "I think I may have poisoned myself" I tell him. He wants to get to the bottom of this so he asked me every ingredient I used and checked each one individually to see what could be the cause of my upset. Bread? Fine. Banana? Fine. Peanut Butter? Fine. Milk? Fine. Eggs? Fine. Vanilla? And that's when we saw it. I accidentally used 2 teaspoons of concentrated liquid smoke in my french toast instead of vanilla. You would think I would have smelled it, right? I did, but thought it was the griddle. Anyway, I blame my sister in law Goldie for ruining my dinner because she is the person who brought this substance into our house. I would never in one million years have liquid smoke in my cupboard but she bought it to make some baked beans over Memorial Day. The baked beans were very good. But folks, liquid smoke does not belong anywhere near french toast. Consider yourself warned.

Beach Baby

I'm making a little summer memory book for Mason (because I am so crafty like that) and I didn't have any good beach pictures of him. There are two reasons for that. The first is that my mother's camera broke right after photographing Kyle waterskiing. The second is that Mason did not so much love the beach. There certainly weren't many smiles to be had. He is not a fan of wind and it was hard to escape the breeze that day. So anyway, I put him in his swimming suit this morning and told him to pretend he was excited to go to the beach. This is what he came up with...

Outdoor Recreation

While in Bear Lake we spent a lot of time outdoors. Mason experienced his first hike, secured in his baby pack, to Bloomington Lake. This is a beautiful glacier lake that is only accessable by hiking in. We canoed around a bit and tried to get Kyle to swing off the rope into the frigid water but he chickened out because he didn't want the other rope swingers to see his underwear.

We also went four-wheeling in the mountains bordering Idaho and Wyoming. We decided to climb to the summit (once we convinced Sarah that the cows would not actually charge her)which is where we took these excellent pictures. I promised my mom I wouldn't post the last one, but I figured it was either here on the blog or we'd send it out as the family Christmas card. As we were riding back, a deer ran right in front of us and had he hesitated for one second we would have hit him. Kyle and Sarah were behind us and we wanted them to catch up so we could tell them our cool story about the deer. Well, not only did a deer also run in front of them, their deer was a buck. Oh, the crazy outdoors!

Next up, the County Fair! First I must say that fairs are really lame without rides, and this fair did not have rides. It's not that I have ever had the desire to ride the rides or anything, it's just a very different fair without all the people screaming and the one toothed carnies trying to get you to spend $10 for 2 darts to pop a balloon which will win you a black pane of glass with a rose on it, or your favorite sports team, or your favorite beer. Of course, you could always get that ultra ghetto, ultra hard stuffed animal. But I digress...We went to the fair specifically for the demolition derby and I wasn't quite sure what to expect as I had only been to about 20 minutes of one about 15 years ago. Well, this is pure white trash fun folks! All the drivers drive their scrap metal cars out into a pit of mud and just run into each other repeatedly until their car dies. Last man standing wins. It was great, but the best part was the ATV races wherein there is a driver and a passenger and each of the passengers have a balloon tied to their helmet and a baseball bat. They all drive around in the same mud pit trying to pop the other passengers' balloon. Are you kidding me? I could not believe we could buy a full evening of this entertainment for just $6! In the end, the two finalists jumped off their 4-wheelers and started pummeling each other. Who do I need to talk to to get this into the olympics?


After the arena fun, we had to go to the pig barn because Sarah had never seen a pig. She really seemed to enjoy the experience. Jake? Not so much.

A Baby Blessing

Sunday we blessed Mason at church and he was very good. We had family and friends come from all over and we are very appreciative of them. This will be short and sweet with a few pictures as we have to get ready for the Demolition Derby at the County Fair. Oh, and my mom is currently making homemade raspberry ice cream which I will need to partake of.

Obviously loving his little baby tuxedo.

He's so thrilled that we are his parents.

Everything's Better in Bear Lake

We have been reunited with our son and I am happy to report he appeared to remember us. What a relief! He's just as cute and smiley as ever. We generally take it pretty easy when we visit my parents, though yesterday we kept quite busy. Jake installed a DVD burner into my mom and dad's computer and did a tutorial on burning DVD's. I went shopping with my mom. We can hit every aisle in every store in town in about 90 minutes. After a lovely dinner at the Montpelier Grill, where Jake had a delicious buffalo burger, we hit the 9:19 showing of Live Free or Die Hard. They are very precise at the Centre Theatre and there are no previews so if you get there at say 9:22, you've already missed 3 minutes of action packed movie. Luckily we not only got there at 9:17, but there were only 2 other people in the theatre. We asked them if the seats next to them were taken and then had them slide down a seat so we could be right in the middle.