Ben's second, 1st Haircut

Here are pictures of Ben's second, first haircut. Ben's real first haircut was done by Grandma, a week and a 1/2 ago, when she was watching the boys for us. There were no pictures taken when she snipped off 2+ inches his comb over. I was very sad, as I had been planning to take some fun pictures of how his hair fluffed up after his bath, but I guess it was not meant to be.
Ben sat in his high chair patiently watching while his big brother John demonstrated how to sit nice and still for a haircut. (It helps when you bribe the older ones with Play Station minutes.) He did not cry at the sound of the razor, and was quite interested in the cord. Near the end he started to get a bit upset as the pictures show, but that was because he was getting hungry. Anyway, now Ben has two snips of hair for his baby book. These pictures were taken by our newest award winning photographer John.

Barn Quilt

Yesterday a group of gentlemen came to the John Family Homestead to hang the Barn quilt, in conjunction with the Cass County Barn quilt project. Here is the address for the Barn quilt brochure.
http://www.elmur.org/downloads/barn_brochure.pdf.

At first when the FBLA approached us, Dad did not want to put a quilt on the barn. But I said, "Well Dad, if you put one up, some day a nice little old widow might drive up you driveway and ask to take a closer look at the quilt. I kind of forgot about it, until about a week later when Dad brought me all the paperwork completely filled out to apply for the quilt and asked me to help him pick out a quilt block. I guess the possibility of attracting a nice widow to the farm was too good to pass up. Too bad Dad did not live long enough to see it put up.

The name of the quilt is Harvest Star. Dad picked out the quilt because he liked the red, white, and blue in it. Above is a picture of the quilt and below is the sign. The quilt is a bit hard to see from the highway, but it is visible.

First Blog

Lesson learned today. You must stop bouncing to throw up. However, once you are done it is fine to start bouncing again. As I was sitting here thinking of what to write about in my first blog, I noticed my 8 month old son (who LOVES his bouncer) had just stopped bouncing for a second. I looked up just in time to see him spit up his excess supper. He did not seem to care, though, and did not even wait for me to wipe him up before resuming his bouncing. Now he is smiling and bouncing all the harder.
Ben is the sweetest baby. He was born March 20, 2008 with Down Syndrome and always has a smile on his face. His heart is good, and other than a couple of colds, has not had any other major health issues. He is truly a wonderful baby. He sleeps great and has since he was 2 months old. He rarely cries, unless he is starved, or just got run over by one of his big brothers. Developmentally he is about a month behind, but is working hard to sit up with out support and to get up on his hands and knees.
Ben's big brothers are John and Noah. They both adore him, even if they don't adore each other. They are both good students in 4th and 1st grade, and enjoy playing sports and Play Station in their spare time.