The Ben Times

Archive for the ‘Ben’ Category

In a stunning feat of child development, Ben turned 12 on Tuesday. Strangely enough, this was 12 years to the day that he was born back in Indianapolis.

We had quite the small, family-oriented celebration for him. He got to choose the menu and went with steak, noodles with Italian seasoning, and chocolate lava cake. As you can see from the pictures, Donna had to get slightly creative in order to place the 12 candles, as the lava cake wasn’t supportive enough to hold them upright, thereby creating a fire hazard. In a stroke of genius, she placed the candles in a hot dog bun and presented the bun to him. Needless to say, he was quite surprised. He did manage to blow out all of the candles on the first try, thereby ensuring good wishes for the coming year.

He once again cleaned up in the present department. His biggest wish was for model rocket materials that would be compatible with the rocket he built at Space Camp this year. He now has a total of three rockets, the largest of which will shoot some 1,100 feet into the air. He also received some cool books out of the fantasy realm, a computer game, an Apollo Lunar Module model, and a very cool marble solitaire game from the grandparents.

All in all a great day. Except for the sleep: for two days in a row now he has woken up before 6:00 a.m. and has stayed up late. Mom and Dad are looking forward to a peaceful evening tonight since he should crash sometime in the next 11 minutes or so.

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With Ben continuing to get bigger, he’s within a quarter-inch of being taller than Donna, he’s old enough to go on some different kinds of outings. One of our neighbors has been kind enough to let us borrow his canoe (actually, his brothers) and we’ve been hitting Henry Hagg Lake pretty hard for the last month. The lake is heavily stocked with trout, but we haven’t had much luck catching them so far.

However, we’ve had some good experiences with other fish. Ben was able to catch a 3-lb smallmouth bass a few weeks ago. Since we have been using ultralight gear, the pole doubled-over on him and he had a blast reeling it in. The lake has produced something like the last five state records for smallmouth, so there are some pretty large ones in there. We can only hope to catch more!

On Saturday (June 5), we hit the lake in search of crappie and weren’t disappointed. We managed to bring home six in the 10-12 inch range and let several others go.

We are both looking forward to the end of school and being able to spend more time on the water this summer (being sure to wear adequate amounts of sunscreen). Be sure to look for us out on the water in a red canoe.

Some random shots of Ben opening presents on Christmas Day 2009.

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Ben’s Lego Robotics team got a terrific surprise in early December as they won an award in their regional competition. They won the prize for Best Junior Teamj, as they were comprised of only children 11 years old and younger. Three turned out to be the magic number, as they had not won the previous two years. The win means that they will be participating in the state finals in January in Hillsboro. More information about what they had to accomplish can be found from the First Lego League. Needless to say, all of the kids were extremely excited to advance and are looking forward to another month of robotics. The video shows some of the competition and the kids generally having fun.