Thankful for church family!

Today has been a great Saturday.  The kind where you feel tired at the end but only because it's been a full day of fun and productivity.  We had a lazy breakfast then I went to Albany to run a few errands while Ben napped.  It was great because I was really able to catch up with my Mom...I love that!  We can't wait for Thanksgiving next week when we'll get to see our families.

This afternoon we had a Community Thanksgiving dinner at our church.  Everyone worked really hard to put together an amazing spread of food, with great decorations, etc.  It was yummy stuff and we had a lot of our regular church members come and also a lot of members from the community, which was awesome!!  It was a great opportunity to meet and talk with new people who may or may not know about Jesus, and to be able to just share life with them.

Since it was at 3:00 Benjamin didn't really have an afternoon nap but he did really good despite that.  He enjoyed the food (of course!) and had a grand old time playing with the kids.  The teens love him and are always anxious to hold him and take care of him.  If they insist!!!  I didn't get any pictures at the actual dinner but here's the little guy afterward.

 he's looking so old!

we wore name tags at the dinner, and our pastor made this one for Benjamin.

"Benjamin the Magnificent"  :-)

We came home and played for a bit, gave Benjamin a lite dinner and then gave him a bath.  He was loving bath time tonight as is obvious in these pictures....

I can't believe how big his teeth are getting!

Now, I've been working on getting Benjamin to clap for a little while.  He loves to watch me do it and thinks it's funny but he's never actually done it.  Until tonight!!

We wrapped him up in his towel after bathtime...

dried him off, then let him admire himself in all his glory.  He must have thought he was looking pretty good because he started clapping!

He kept clapping and clapping and it was so fun to watch him finally learn this new skill!

Well, after the clapping he seemed so wired that we gave him a little crib playtime before his bedtime bottle.  He literally jumps up and down in his crib and finds great delight in it.  He is such a busy, busy crazy man.

Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy!

We finally convinced him to stop playing so he could drink his milk and go night-night....but even after that he was still a crazy man and we could see him going a little nusto on the monitor.  20 minutes later he fell asleep and will (hopefully!) give us a good night of sleep tonight.

Hope you had a fun Saturday too!