I think I mentioned in an earlier post that we had done a puppet show. Here's the puppet show that we did at the Lloyd family reunion. Jason attacked us a couple of times so it's a little rough around the edges.


Puppet Show from Benjamin Lloyd on Vimeo.

Perhaps the only down side to moving to our new apartment has been the fact that my 2.9 mile commute one way to work is now about 8 miles through heavily trafficked streets. I like to ride my bike to work but 16 miles every day in a notoriously wet climate? Come on. I know that you’re asking yourself right now “How in the world did Benj convince Melinda to let him buy a motorcycle?” It all started with an electric bike.One morning as I was perusing craigslist I found an electric bike that was for sale for $100. We decided to hop in the car and go check it out.

Before arriving, like any good craigslister, I had decided that I would have a limit and that limit would be no more than $80. I didn’t want it bad enough that I would pay a penny more. After checking the bike out, seeing that it was in almost new condition, I decided that I would go for it and asked the woman if she would take $80 for the bike. I’m still not sure what happened but somehow she convinced me or I convinced her to let me have it for free. As you might expect I was pretty excited. I thought that if I could ride a normal bike almost 6 miles a day then surely with my electric bike I could do three times that. Well. . . call me opportunistic but I decided to sell the bike and almost danced away after selling it for $400.

Now, $400 goes a long way to buying a used motorcycle and I must have caught Melinda in a weak moment because she didn’t put up too much fight at all. Ok, I confess, I haven’t taken motorcycle training yet and I don’t really even know how to ride a motorcycle but it sure feels cool to be a biker. I’m scheduled for training at the end of the month and then I can get endorsed and so in about a month’s time I should be bad to the bone. Insert mental image of the biker from Raising Arizona. Ride on lil’ buddy, ride on.

Motocicleta from Benjamin Lloyd on Vimeo.

Many of you have seen Jason saying cheese and trying to "smile" for the camera. I use the term smile lightly because his face usually does not resemble a smile at all.

A couple of days ago Jason and I were playing in his room and he starting demanding that we played with his toys under a blanket. He kept saying he was in a house with his toys, but it was hard to keep the blanket over our heads! I decided we needed to build him a house and since we have tons of boxes in our garage left over from our move, we made a house! Jason loved helping me paint the outside of the house and still keeps his crayons in his house to color the inside. He loves his house so much that now every time he sees it he says "oh my house!" and runs up to it and kisses it. I will add a picture of him doing it as proof. Gotta love cardboard boxes and the hours of fun it creates.

August has been a fun month for us. We moved, had family visit us here, had two family reunions, and a wedding. We moved into our new place the beginning of the month. We really love our new apartment. We could not have done it without the help of Benj's family that came here to help. Thanks again! Jason is having fun in our new backyard. When we moved in it was nothing but weeds, but we have been working hard and plan on planting grass this weekend.