Treading Water

So it has been awhile since I posted... I will provide you a little recap of our last month.

Charlotte was born on June 17th (see previous post) with in the next week we had found a place to rent in Visalia, moved to a new house. What a whirlwind. It is not your ideal week of post-childbirth recovery or ideal first week of life (Sorry Charlie!) but we made and lived to tell the tale. I have to say that there is NO possible way we could have done this without my wonderful mother. She came to help out with the baby and we put her to work! She helped us pack, move, drive, clean, unpack, clean up the yard ... to mention a few things. She gets Best Mom of the Year award, hands down.

We did take time amid the craziness to get some pictures of Charlotte after her bath one day...

She is about a week old here..

Luke and Noah are very good big brothers to her and anxious to get in on the picture taking.


Anyhow it is now a month later and I have a few random boxes still to unpack, more than a few pictures to hang and other organizing to do but for the most part we are here! We are really liking Visalia and adjusting to the heat. (It was only 90 deg. last week and it felt nice and cool to me.) There are 3 other guys that Ryan works with who just moved here with their families and 3 of the 4 of us are in the same ward! It has been fun to have someone who is in the same situation to hang out with. I am sure they will all make it onto our blog at some point.

The search for a rental house here was crazy... because there was nothing out there that fit our criteria. We were really blessed to find this house. It is in a great neighborhood, is big enough for us all and room for some visitors... hint, hint, hint! And last but definitely not least it has a pool. As you can see Luke and Noah are loving it!

Who doesn't love a good splash?

Luke a bit more cautious than Noah but still loves the water and likes learning to swim.

Noah is scary, in that he has no fear. Give him a set of floaties and you can't keep him on the steps. He just kicks his way all around the pool.

Biscuit likes the pool too. I have caught him taking a dip to cool off during the day. He loves to jump in and join the fun if you let him.

We did have Lee & Rhonda up for the 4th of July/Ryan's birthday/to help out with the kids. It was a lot of fun. We went to Exeter and checked out the 4th of July celebration.

We didn't last long... it hit 100 degrees at like 10am and that was too hot for us!

The boys were ready to cool off after a half hour!

The next day for Ryan's birthday we hit In n' Out and then went and saw Cars 2.

Don't know what Luke was more excited about... holding all the tickets (a very important job) or seeing the new movie!

I will leave you with a couple more pictures of little Charlie. She is growing up so fast. I forget how quick they get big. I love her hair and am hoping and praying that it doesn't fall out!



We are off next week to Utah for a get together with all my siblings... sure to be a weekend of Benson-mania!

She's Here

Luke and Noah would like to announce the birth of their sister!

Charlotte Rasmussen
7 lbs. 8 oz.
1:38 pm
June 17, 2011

Thanks to Grandpa, the boys were taken care of while Mom and Charlotte were in the hospital. We are so glad he was here to help and the boys are always glad to play with their Grandpa whatever the reason.


Due to fact we are moving to Visalia tomorrow this will be a short post. When we get settled a bit I will post more pictures of Charlotte. You'll have to take my word for it she is as cute as a button and we are soooooooo glad to have her here.

Yesterweek

Yesterweek = any time in the past that you can't quite quantify.

This is Luke's go-to term when talking about the past. I think it is going to catch on. A lot has happened in the past month most of which was not documented on film... thank goodness. We had a rash of the flu over our anniversary/ mother's day weekend. We should have known. Ryan has been battling a kidney stone that he had to have surgically lasered. Noah broke his foot slipping of the curb. (Luckily no cast was needed.) Luke turned 3 years old. And me? I have made it to the point of having less that one month left of pregnancy, battling swollen ankles, tiredness and panic about what I am going to do with 3. But enough griping from me. Let's see the highlights...

Luke's birthday was on a Sunday so we celebrated two days. Saturday we went to Gilroy Gardens. We had heard about it and that it was great for kids so we decided to try it out. It was perfect for our family. They had tons of little rides that the kids could go on and/or one of us could go with them.

The carousel: always a favorite.

I love this picture because you try so hard to get a nice smiling picture of your kids and 90% of the time I get a variation of this.... but I remember being a kid and getting fed up with parents wanting you to pose and hold still and smile and so I am sure I have a couple of pictures that look like this.

For those of you who don't know, Gilroy is a huge garlic producer. They have garlic everything and so I, being a lover of garlic, thought that I would try their garlic fries. They were not what I expected. There was like a one to one garlic to potato ratio.

I had garlic breath for days and didn't make it through them all. So warning to anyone trying the garlic fries at Gilroy Gardens, caution lots of garlic.

The next day we dressed the boys up in these suits that Ryan found online. He loves seersucker suits. I have always been skeptical of them, but when we got the boys all dressed up I had to admit they looked pretty dang cute.


All they need are top hats and canes to look more dapper.


Kudos to Ryan and is impeccable fashion sense. I doubt over and over but am constantly proven wrong. You think I kid but that is the truth.

After church we made Luke take a nap before presents. It was one of the world's shortest naps. Here is the anxious birthday boy awaiting the loot...

He was not disappointed. Later we had some friends over for cake and ice cream. Luke has a little trouble blowing out the candles... no wonder look at his form...


Once we got that straightened out thing went along quicker...

Let's just say each candle got some individual attention.

Happy birthday little man!

Warm Weather Fun

It has been really warm lately and so the boys and I have been busy enjoying the sun and warmth.
Especially after my recent trip to Idaho where I woke up to this:
Beautiful and charming in January, not so much in May.

We tried the San Jose zoo this week. Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. It was pretty good. Although all you Idahoans will be glad to know that the zoo park doesn't hold a candle to Tautphaus Park.
There were very few animals but for Luke the little rides made up for the lack of cool animals to look at. He LOVED the rides. I think he got my appreciation for a good roller coaster.

Mostly we have been hanging out in the backyard because I am too hot and tired to do anything else. I count it as multi-tasking: watering the lawn (b/c something is wrong with the sprinklers), exercising Biscuit (running away from the boys) and bath time. Some may just call it lazy but you be the judge.

It starts out like this:
nice cooperative play with a little water..

soon it has progressed to this:

... no clothes, more water, still lots of fun...

Usually this is the end:
Me inside escaping the water, the boys fighting over who holds the hose and Biscuit begging for mercy.

Happy Anniversary!

MAY 7, 2004
BEST DAY EVER

I can't believe how fast the 7 years have gone... yet as I take tally of the years past and look at the coming years I realize that we looking forward to the birth of our 7th child, planning to move to our 7th home, contemplating a 7th (more fuel efficient vehicle), have had 7 pets (counting those kittens that didn't last too long) and I am looking forward to what the next 7 years will bring... hopefully we slow down on the kids, cars, homes and pets!

Sticking with the lucky 7 theme, I feel so lucky to have found someone to take me in, take care of me (and our kiddies) and keep us smiling and laughing along the way.

Catch up

We have been doing pretty good at getting out every weekend since we have been here so I have lots of pictures that tell the story better than I do. So bear with me on the slide show...

Vasona Creek Park: This was a lot of fun with the boys. They had a bit of everything.

Carousels to ride on...

Trains to ride on and whistles to blow...

Geese to gawk at...

and trails for little boys to run on and expend the maximum amount of energy. It was a great park. I think we are going back with our bikes next time.

I got sick and so we had a weekend in with plenty of brother bonding time. Luke showed Noah the ropes on how to operate Mom's Iphone.

Because I was sick, we left the cooking up to Biscuit.


My brother Aaron decided to take his spring break in sunny California, only it was not so sunny, we had a huge series of rain storms roll in just as he got here. We didn't let it ruin our fun. We had one good day and took it to go to Santa Cruz.

Monarch butterflies are supposed to winter here but we didn't see any.... we didn't look super hard either.

We did catch the seals at the wharf. The boys loved watching them and listening to the barking.

We decided to investigate the Mystery Spot on our way home. It was pretty cool. As you can see the laws of gravity don't apply here.

This is rumored to be due to the alien spaceship buried under the spot. Sounds logical to me.

Aaron is a big NHL fan so we got tickets to see our local San Jose Sharks. They played the St.Louis Blues and stomped them. It was a lot of fun. I had never been to an NHL game and haven't followed it much but after watching the game I could get on the wagon.

Proof that we were there!

We took Aaron to Carmel to see the beautiful coast line. It was cold with driving rain but that kicked up the waves and made it quite interesting. We ventured out of the car to get a picture on the beach and not much longer than that.


This past weekend Ryan's sister Callie was coming to town (Laguna Hills) so we decided to drive down and see her and all Ryan's siblings. It was an unofficial Rasmussen reunion. Luke and Kevin became best buds.


They played together so well, it was heaven. Noah feeling a little left out turned to ketchup for comfort...


Always best straight off the spoon.

We got to see all of Ryan's siblings. Unfortunately Jessie flew in just as we were leaving but we caught her at the airport so we could at least say hi and see Haddie. (No pictures of her but trust me she is cute)


We are excited for Jessie to come see us and spend some more time together. April can't come soon enough!!

Jacob & Deidre come to visit!!

So I am about 3 weeks late posting about their visit but it was definitely noteworthy enough for a post. Jacob and Deidre flew out for a couple of days to visit and to watch the kids for me for a couple of days so I could get caught up on some work. What a good aunt and uncle....

seriously.... they were great. I don't have pictures of what they did with the boys b/c they are on their camera but they took them out.

We didn't make them babysit the whole time they were here. Over the weekend we hit San Francisco. We ventured into China Town and got some silk PJs for the boys. Totally worth it.

On Sunday we took a drive out to Half Moon Bay and up to Pacifica. It was beautiful but a little chilly. We got out only a couple of times because it was a little nippy.

Ryan and Luke are both warm-blooded and didn't seem to mind.


Noah and I on the other hand were a little cold.

Luke had so much fun with Uncle Jacob and Deidre. He has set places for them at the table for weeks and still talks about them. Thanks again for the visit you guys!