I'm a little late in my weekly post, mostly because I wasn't sure if I had anything interesting to say. On Facebook I recently did a posting (that nearly everyone on that site has also done) called 25 Random Things, where you list 25 things about yourself that others may or may not know about you. Anyway, one of my items was that I'd like to be able to write witty and entertaining blog entries. Instead of coming on here and writing what we did all weekend, I wish I could write funny anecdotes about our lives like so many successful bloggers. Our life with Benjamin is full of funny little situations, which I know people would like to read about, but I'm just not confident enough in my writing abilities to expand on most of them here. I guess it is something I'm working on, so bear with me.

I'll get the weekend report out of the way - Mike's parents came down Friday night to visit and to celebrate Bert's 64th birthday. Chef Mike made a delicious meal of sausage and peppers for everyone. They stayed until Saturday afternoon, so we accompanied them to a furniture store to shop for entertainment centers for their new tv and they took us to lunch at one of our favorites: Jimmy John's. Mike and Benjamin spent all afternoon at a friend's house making cookies to auction off at the Lace Up Against Breast Cancer run on February 15th. This gave me the opportunity to spend some quality time at the movie theatre. I saw Frost/Nixon and Revolutionary Road back-to-back. Both movies were outstanding. On Sunday we lounged around the house and only left the house for a couple of hours to have lunch at our home-away-from-home. We caught some of the Super Bowl inbetween watching the more family friendly Puppy Bowl and dinner. Benjamin and I tried to wear the 3D glasses for the halftime extravaganza, but the experience was nauseating at best.

Monday evening, I took a solo trip up to National Camera Exchange in Roseville for my camera class Christmas present from Mike. I took the Digital SLR 2 class and was very impressed by the knowledge presented. I'm trying to learn how to use my new camera and up until now didn't even know what ISO or Aperture meant. I know more than maybe I even need to now! Hopefully I'll be able to show off everything I learned soon.

Benjamin has been very curious about death lately. I suppose all of this started when he came with me to my Aunt Mollie's funeral a couple months ago. He was full of questions, which I really tried to answer in a sensitive enough manner for his age. Now everytime he hears one of us say dead, dying, die, death or any variation, no matter the meaning, his ears perk up and he says, "WHO died!!?!?" I don't get the sense that he's scared of death or that his curiosity is morbid in anyway, he just is talking a little more than usual about it. We've been trying to hint that maybe it isn't appropriate for him to use words about death so much, like when he's playing with his toys, but that plan may be backfiring. While taking a bath, he was playing with some Elmo and Ernie pirate ship figures and was saying (what Mike thought was), "You're gonna DIE!" So Mike told him to not say that. But it turns out that he was saying, "You're gonna DIVE." as they were taking turns jumping off of the boat. And of course, to a three year old, the more you focus on something that they can't do, the more they want to do it. So because Mike put an emphasis on the whole "DIE" word, now he's testing us and saying it more and more. This morning he was singing songs for his friend Salty who "died, is under the pillow and is all yucky." He told Mike that if they play games and sing, Salty won't die and won't be yucky anymore. Fortunately for us, he doesn't seem to understand the permanency of death. Therefore, Salty was brought back to life and all is good in the world again. God help us when he decides to sing songs for Aunt Mollie...