Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Benoit Family 2009

Joe, Laura, Emily, Cameron, Dillon, and Lilly

And a few more fun photos from photo day:

Lilly catching a ride from G-daddy

Cameron

Emily

Dillon (always carrying a stick or leaf or other treasure)

How old are you?

Lilly flirting with the camera

Some pictures with Nana and G-daddy

Best buddies, looking at the pond

Lilly with Daddy

Even Lilly's worn out!!!

Did November really just pass by without me posting anything? We are alive and enjoying many holiday related goings-on. Emily was in the Apex Christmas parade and survived a very cold/wet night. Cameron and Emily will be singing in our Stake Children's Choir at out church's nativity. It's an amazing event going on this weekend. Check it out at http://www.apexnativity.org/. We're excited because Emily's school chorus teacher is attending and many neighbors attended last year and hopefully will again. I'll enjoy playing the piano as background for the event--something I always save room for because I love it!


I've been busily folding my Moravian stars and am grateful for this little side business. I have bigger plans for next year, but it will require me making a good supply of stars in the coming year. Hopefully I can do it. I'm up to 14 dozen stars ordered and made and expect the next week to be pretty busy.


I'm feeling well and am 26 1/2 weeks along. The baby moves so much it almost startles me out of my seat sometimes. I'm measuring perfect, blood pressure is low, and all is going smooth. I felt the baby have hiccups for the first time about a week ago. That is always the funniest feeling.

Lilly has been busy crafting away. She and Dillon spend most of their day creating, coloring, drawing, cutting, gluing, and glittering. Apparently, all that craftiness has worn her out because I just found this:




She was working hard!!!

Etsy Giveaway Winner Announced

Thanks to all of you who entered my Moravian Stars giveaway. We put all of the names of those who entered in a bowl, and Joe chose the winner tonight. One of my friends who entered on Facebook won the giveaway: Jill Remund Rucker, a friend of mine from GA.

An Etsy Giveaway!

Just to let my few blog readers know, I'm having a giveaway of a dozen of my Moravian paper star ornaments! Check out my Etsy shop here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/onceuponastar

The winner will receive 1 dozen 2-inch stars of the color of their choice shipped to their home. Color choices are white, gold metallic, silver metallic, or pink metallic. You can view the stars and colors on my Etsy page.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post or send an e-mail to me at benoitfam @ hotmail.com (take out spaces). Giveaway ends at midnight on Saturday, Nov. 14th. I also opened this up to my Facebook friends, just so you know. :)

Thanks and good luck! I know you'll love them!

Pumpkin Carving Time

It gets more fun every year as the kids get older. And yes that's a knife in my hand and I look like I'm crazy. Watch out for mommy!

I just love that her hair has gotten long enough for pigtails.

The finished products...Dillon's is a ghost at the bottom. His light flashes on and off so I had a hard time getting it in good light. Cameron's light inside changes from red to blue to green. Pretty cool.

State Fair Fun

We went on our 2nd annual trip to the NC State Fair yesterday. On the way home I asked the kids what their favorite part was. They said, "Everything!"

Cameron and Emily get ready to fly.

Mommy, Lilly, and Dillon on a ride. I was really surprised how much Lilly loved the rides. No fear!

Dillon, Cameron, Joe, and Lilly going down the slide.

A family favorite...watching the BMX Bike show! These guys were amazing!

Watching in the stands...

Joe, Emily, and Cameron up in the top row of Pharaoh's Fury. It went very high. (Cameron was scared.)

Emily poses with the amazing plants. She is growing up too fast.

My favorite: the yummy food! We had corn dogs, a steak sandwich, a bloomin' onion, cotton candy, and candy apples.

Can't wait for next year. I love that the kids are out of school during all these fun fall activities!

Lilly is a true girl

One of Lilly's favorite things to do with her sister, Emily, is to get her toenails painted. While everyone was downstairs getting ready for dinner, Lilly apparently decided to take matters into her own hands for the first time.

I realized it when she called for mom and held her hands out at me through the banister on the stairs. When I came to her, her fingers looked like this...

And her toes looked like this...

When I went up to my bathroom, the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. There was some nail polish on the bathroom floor and the toilet and a little on the stairs. And the nail polish was not in an easily accessible spot. Let's just say she did some climbing and maneuvering to get to it. Amazingly, she painted every single toenail and fingernail all by herself! And didn't even get any on her Sunday dress. What an independent little girl!

Here's her "I'm tired and I just got caught" pose...

And here's her "Look what fun I had" pose...

The kids are tracked out and we're looking forward to 3 weeks of fall fun! I'll post a little more often to show our adventures. Thank goodness I have my energy back for them.

Thank you, Baby!

Running on less energy the last few months has been frustrating. I've had to focus on the essentials and let other things I wish I could do just slide. Not fun. Usually I'm crossing things off my to-do list in the afternoon and evening, but that hasn't happened in a long time. Making me feel a little down on my self.

Then, things started happening lately that have helped me regain my perspective. First, a little bump and a thought of "Was that the baby?" Little bumps have turned into harder and more regular kicks. I'm so grateful to get these gentle reminders from my baby every once in a while to remind me why my body is so tired. It will pass and for now I have to accept it. It sure does help to have a baby tapping me every once in a while to say hello and remind me of what I'm doing.

I'm very excited for my ultrasound in a couple of weeks. We're not finding out what we're having, but it's so nice for us to see a glimpse of the baby. Joe will be able to go, and we're going to take Dillon and Lilly so this becomes a little more real for them, too.

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Look what greeted Joe this morning when he went to take the trash out to the curb. He said it's the biggest spider he's seen in North America. (I don't want to know what he saw in Brazil!) To give you perspective, it was about the size of his palm. Yuck! I'm glad he took out the trash today!

A Sunday Walk

We continue to find treasured spots around where we live to walk and explore. We walked the trail around Lake Pine here in Apex. Unfortunately, we weren't sure how long the trail was so we turned back just before we hit a mile. Turns out the trail was 2 miles. We'll know next time. We saw lots of turtles, ducks, and geese. The kids loved it, and it was a great way to get out and enjoy nature on a Sunday afternoon.

The girls...

The boys...

And some ponytail cuteness...

Updates

A quick update so I don't let the blog slip away into oblivion...

I'm almost 13 weeks pregnant now. I can't wear any regular pants although no strangers have asked me if I'm pregnant yet. :) My nausea in the evening has vanished (thank goodness!), but I am still soooooo tired. Everyone keeps saying, well you do have 4 kids, but I think it's really just different this time with this pregnancy. So, for now, I lay down every afternoon and am ready for bed just after the kids go to sleep at 8. Rest is good, right???

The garage door opener was found and a new cell phone was bought. Guess we'll be eating with chopsticks eventually! :)

I'm looking forward to a great little day trip with my mom tomorrow. More on that to come!

What's missing?

Current tally of things missing at our house:

1 cell phone

1 garage door opener

6 salad forks

other things to be discovered

Where did these things go?! I know the culprit. I just have no idea where she might have put them. I'm thinking the trash. She's very good about putting dishes in the sink and things in the trash, but every once in a while I've been finding a plastic bowl in the trash instead of the sink. Uh oh. It doesn't help that she's too smart for the childproof lock I've put on the cabinet where the trash is.

Good think you're cute!

Coming Soon...

We're happy to announce that a new Benoit will be arriving around March 15th!!!


We're very excited. Emily and Cameron, being older now, are thrilled beyond words. They keep asking me questions like, "Is it a boy or girl?" (We'll be waiting to find out as we have done with all our kids.) "What are we going to name it?" "Will I be in 2nd or 3rd grade when it comes?" "Can I tell so-and-so?" Dillon and Lilly don't really have a clue but will eventually. A few days after we told the kids Cameron was saying his prayer at night and after asking for a few things for the new baby he said, "And I love the baby even though it's just in mommy's tummy right now." It was a sweet moment.


Well, forgive my horrible picture. We don't have a scanner, so I took a picture of a picture. But it will have to do. There's our little baby. It was moving around lots for my peek at it. Hopefully you can make out the head, body, and little legs that are visible.


I've been feeling yucky and tired and am hoping for the next phase of pregnancy to take over soon. But the end result is worth it. There are about a bazillion of my friends at church all due within about a month of me...kind of crazy! This baby will have lots of friends!

A Week at the Beach

We visited Long Beach, NC for a week along with my parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and 2 of my cousins. Highlights of the week...

The beach house (Water's Edge) and set-up on the beach

Cameron found his hidden talent...riding the skim board. He loves skateboards and seems to have the right balance for it. In the back is my cousin Alison's dog, Luca. The kids loved Luca and Lilly learned her name. She walked around saying "Luca" a lot. Right now she's sitting on my lap going crazy over seeing her in the picture.

Here's a video of Cam on the skim board. A man down the beach was doing it, too, and was really good. He gave Cameron some lessons and showed him how to even do a spin while on it. Cameron figured that out fast, but we didn't capture it on video.

We love visiting "the point" of Oak Island. I love how Dillon's trying to figure out what to do with his fingers from his older brother and sister. At low tide there were lots of pools Lilly could wade in without waves. Emily, Cameron, and Daddy crossed the water to go to a little island. I love how it looks like Dillon's saying, "No, don't go!" in this picture. We saw the sand dredger at the point, too.

I love going to the same quiet beach every year with our family. Love the taste of some fried seafood and homemade peach ice cream. Thanks, Mamaw and Papaw for a wonderful week at the beach!

Lilly's New Ride

With Dillon learning how to ride a bike without training wheels and Emily and Cameron already off, Joe and I discovered we cannot keep up with the kids anymore when we take a walk. We got some unwanted free bikes for us through someone in the ward a few months ago. Then, we started to look for something for Lilly. I found a great thing for her, and thanks to her birthday and Nana and G-daddy, here it is.....

She loves it!!! It's called the Kangaroo Wee Ride. I love that she's in front of us when we ride. It feels safe to me especially since she's a monkey and always climbing in and out of things. We can keep an eye on her.

They're about to finish a park right down the street with lots of bike trails. We're ready now!

A Trip to the North

We had a wonderful vacation up in Massachusetts visiting Joe's family. While there, we spent some time on Cape Cod as well. We celebrated Emily's 10th birthday (a breakfast out with Daddy)...

There was some hot-tubbing with the cousins... beach time with Grampa...

seashell-finding...

beach-walking (these 2 were inseparable)...

swimming in the ocean (Is it a little cold, Cam?)...

beach baseball (Emily didn't mind swimming for the ball in the water)...

waterfall jumping into the pool...

time with fun uncles (Joe's brothers Jon and Jeff)...

lounging and relaxing...

and swimming in the pool...

All of the Benoit kids together with Sue and Joe.

It was a great trip. Also had great fun visiting with old friends in RI, visiting the Warwick Ward, and driving by our old house. Can't wait to do it again!

(Thanks to my sister-in-law Erin for some great pictures. I'm now covetting your camera!)