Benjamin's Story

Pauline and John came out here for Elizabeth's graduation from Americorps. We visited with them for a day and took them on a nice drive around Marin County. The weather was great and the views of the coast were beautiful.

Our friend Peter C. came into town so we joined him for dinner. After dinner, we took a short stroll and Ben seemed to be quite comfortable walking through San Franscisco, holding hands with two grown men!

Ben loved his first ever pony ride at the San Rafael farmer's market. He got to go on a short loop on the pony with mom and dad walking beside him. He seemed to think it was pretty cool!

It's not unusual for us to be in one place, but it is unusual for us to be in one photo! Here a nice woman took our photo while we were at Cline.

We stopped by Cline Winery on the way up to visit a friend in Sonoma and had the chance to take come cute photos. Ben was pretty good while we stopped for a sip, climbing all over the place. He really liked the little bridge into their garden.

We went to Ikea and got Ben a cute little table for him to play with his toys. You can see that the poor child is just deprived. In July he needed help in and out of the chair. By mid August, he gets in and out all by himself!

Jeanette took Ben near a fountain in the kids area of the Botanical Gardens so that he could cool off. The kids area was very nice, though some areas, such as this, need for some plants to grow up to cool them off a bit more.

We went to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to have a stroll around. It started out cool and drizzling, but ended up hot! Here we were in the orchid habitat.

We took a walk after a birthday dinner for Chris. Benjamin is pretty cute walking along... but he still doesn't want to walk on his own.

We had a very nice meal at Agave, a New Mexican restaurant. Ben chowed through the meat and chips, even pushing his plate at me when he wanted more. The meal was good... one of the closest to New Mexican food that we've had outside of New Mexico!

We took a time out in Centennial Park to hang out and play on the playground. Ben was having fun climbing on us and then crawling as far away from us as we would let him go.

We went to the aquarium in downtown Atlanta. It was a good place to go, though pretty busy because it was the holiday week. Ben enjoyed looking at almost all the exhibits and really liked the tanks where he could plunge his hands into the water to try to touch the fish... even the sharks!

We were heading out for some exploration of Atlanta and we decided to take some photos because we were dressed up. Here's Ben with mom and grandma. We had to take a bunch of photos because he wouldn't sit still.