The last week and a half

My kids have been very excited for the last week and a half. 

Why were they so excited?  Because Ben has been home for the last week and a half.  We have loved having him home.  Grad school is hard and lots of work so we have not seen Ben a whole lot in the last 3 months.  We missed having him around and have been looking forward to his week and a half break all summer long.

We went swimming a lot {although Ben would have like to have gone more}.  Reese was especially excited to go swimming with Ben.

 She talked about going swimming with Ben all of the time.  Although once he started throwing her high into the air I think she wasn't quite as excited to have Ben there.

The pool was perfect.  The best time to go is in the morning because you have the whole entire pool all to yourself.  It is our favorite time to go swimming.

 Benson loves swimming too.  He is my little water bug.  If you blow bubbles in the water he will laugh and then dip his face down into the water and come back up laughing, but sometimes he drinks too much water and comes up coughing and then laughing.  Ben found a fun new way for Benson to swim...

I didn't think it looked to comfortable but Ben said that Benson loved it...thank goodness for dad's and inventing new ways to make things fun!

We also had lots of play time together.  Reese got her princess clothes from Grandma and Grandpa while Ben was home so we  got play dress ups a lot.  Reese and I were the beautiful princesses and Benson and Ben were our handsome princes.

I got to wear Reese's tutu but the only place it would fit was my head, so I was an Egyptian princess!  Ben said I couldn't post these pictures of Benson with his prince crown on but they are too cute not to share.

He was the cutest prince around.   Since we had two handsome princes, we of course had to have a ball.  We turned on Reese's Sesame Street player and danced to the Sesame Street theme song.  It was quite the ball.

The thing that we were most looking forward to was our trip to San Antonio.  We drove down Tuesday morning and stayed until late Wednesday night.  Our first stop was the Alamo.

We didn't stay long because Reese ran under a rope that was blocking off a room.  We told her to come back before someone saw.  When she finally came back we told her she couldn't go into the room...she informed us that she was looking for the princess!

Then we went to the Riverwalk.  Everyone told us to go to the Riverwalk.  We loved downtown San Antonio.  We loved the atmosphere, the yummy smells, and all the restaurants lining the river.

It was a little hard to get around with the strollers, but we had fun strolling along the river and smelling all the yummy food.  We left and went and got some food at California Pizza Kitchen.  It was the most delicious food we have had in a long time.  Ben and I both agree that it was worth every dollar {I think we were a little bit hungry}.

But the main reason we went to San Antonio was to go to Seaworld.  

We have been excited to go for a long time.  Reese was especially excited to see the dolphins and she told us that she wanted to see an Octopus and some pirates.  Well I didn't know if we would see an Octopus or any pirates, but we assured her that we would see plenty of dolphins.  And dolphins we saw! 

We even got to feed and pet them.  That is something I will never forget.  They were so friendly and would swim right up to you.  Reese was a little timid at first but then picked up a fish and fed them.

We went to all the shows but Reese didn't care to sit through any of them except for the Sesame Street show that they had.

To see Reese's face made the whole trip worth it.  She was especially excited when I told her she could go down and stand by the stage.  When she looked at me she looked like she was ready to cry because she was so excited.  Elmo and Telly reached out and touched her hand.  She was all smiles!  I LOVED seeing how excited she was about everything!

By the time we headed home we had two VERY tired kids.  They slept the whole way home.

 
We loved having Ben home for the last week and a half.  It was great to have him home for dinner, have help with the kids, and just spend time with him {we even got to go out on a couple of dates}.  Hopefully this semester won't be as long and hard as last semester because we sure love having our Ben/dad around!