Benjamin's Development Slideshow

During Benjamin's first year of life we took a picture of him almost every week so we could see how he grew. Here is the fruit of those labors! We know that only those who are closest to our family will come close to appreciating these pictures as much as we, Benjamin's parents, do. But hopefully you can at least appreciate the wonder of a growing baby!


Click on the picture to view the slideshow.

Merry Christmas!

Love,
Paul, Vicky & Benjamin

Spreading some holiday cheer

This is the best dancing I've ever done!

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Break Fun

I know, I know. So late to post this! I'm a lazy blogger, what can I say? Anyway, here's a rundown of our Thanksgiving holiday.


For Thanksgiving this year we traveled to Albuquerque to be with my family. Here are some highlights from our trip:

For starters, we took a lovely detour through Colorado that we've never done before. Rather than going down to Moab, we took I-70 to Grand Junction and headed to Durango. On the way we passed through a little town called Montrose and found a great park to stretch our legs in. Benjamin loved the slides and the swing!

We opted to take a drive through the Rocky Mountains, which turned out to be a GREAT idea! It was so beautiful! Here are just a few snapshots of the scenery:

We're glad we took that scenic drive and look forward to trying it in the summer sometime.

Wednesday was a perfect day to play in the park with Grandma! We went to one that was recommended to us, and Benjamin had a ball, despite the wind and slight chill.

Later that day we visited with my Dad in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. He gave me a box full of family history info that I'm excited to dive into. He also showed us my great-grandfather's Army uniform, which I didn't know he had! At some point it will be donated to a museaum in Oklahoma, so we decided to snap some pictures before then.

Thursday we had fun watching the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, and I made (and slightly burned) some pumpkin pies. We took ourselves and the pies over to my sister Sarah's house and had a fantastic Thanksgiving meal put together by Sarah, Melissa (my other sister) and my mom. So good!

And would you believe that it snowed? It did!

It was a good visit in Albuquerque, although short. We headed back to Provo on Friday so we could be in attendance at the BYU vs. Utah game on Saturday, at which Paul got to go down on the field during halftime--but that's a post for another time since this one took over 2 weeks to get up!

Happy December!

One Cute Kid

Benjamin has been a total joy ever since he was born. I just thought I would post a few of the recent classic pictures of him.

This is Viana pushing Benjamin on his Pooh Car. These two are good friends.

Here is Benjamin wearing his new pj's. He really likes them because they are football pj's with little footballs and helmets! Gooooo COUGARS!!

I am giving Benjamin a ride in Great Grandma Duersch's wheel chair.

Benjamin really likes playing in the kitchen with Mom.
How can you resist the helping face of this little guy? (How do ya like those John Deere place mats? Sweet, huh! I sure think so.)

Benjamin also loves his Nemo fish.

Clapping is a lot of fun!

"Wow, I can fit in this little space!"

Here is tired Benjamin and tired me (after a full day of classes and an in class test from 7-9 pm.) We are watching the news.

"Look I can fit in here too!"

"I'm all ears Mom and Dad!" (Vicky taught singing time in Primary today. She found these in the singing time bag.)

It is such a pleasure to be the father of Benjamin. I never knew being a parent would be so rewarding. How thankful I am to the Lord for sharing this kind of joy with me.

We're getting closer!

Paul started attending BYU in the fall of 2001. He did two semesters and then left for his mission to New England in May of 2002, returning to school in the fall of 2004. I started at BYU in the fall of 2003. I went steadily untill the fall of 2006 when I took a semester off because Benjamin was born. I also became a Hall Advisor for BYU Residence Life the summer previous to that, so when I returned to class I was restricted to going less than half time. I've been plugging away, and Paul has been working hard at school and work, and we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Come April of 2008, I will officially have a degree in Marriage, Family & Human Development. And not too long after that, in June of 2008, Paul will officially have his degree in Construction Management, with a minor in Business Management.

It hasn't always been easy, but I can honestly say that it has been quite a bit of fun! We are proof to any who doubt, that you can be married and have children and still be successful in college. We're excited for what is now to come.

Everybody else did it...

I don't think it tried very hard... What do you think?

The time has come...

As most of you know, our son Benjamin was born with a generous head of hair. He didn't lose much of it, as many kids do.

Well, for 13 months it has grown and grown. He has been long overdue for a haircut for quite some time. But tonight...

That's right! Benjamin finally got a haircut!

Here are the "before" pictures. Can you see why people have been thinking he was a girl?

First Dad trimmed around the ears.

We had to pause because all of that hair clogged up the clippers.

And in the end...

...we had a totally different boy!

A Happy Halloween

We had a fun time at Halloween this year. Here are some highlights:

A few days before Halloween we went to The Vineyard nursery to get pumpkins. This is Vicky's favorite part about Halloween. We came home with four nice ones.

It was windy and raining, but the weather made for a fun fall experience.

We ate homemade chili from a pumpkin for dinner.

And carved 10-minute jack-o-lanterns.

After mulling over what to dress Benjamin as for Halloween, we had finally decided on something we could make ourselves. This was Benjamin's costume last year:

This year he decided to take after Uncle Fui. (For those of you who didn't know, Fui Vakapuna is going to marry Benjamin's Aunt Ruth... once she graduates high school and comes to BYU, of course.) He looked pretty sharp as a BYU football player.

No trick-or-treating for him this year (what's the point?). In fact, he was pretty tired and grumpy about the whole thing, but we did manage to get some good grins with the jack-o-lanterns.

Then he showed us how to climb all the way up the stairs. He's been practicing going up AND down the stairs this week as he's sat with me in my class in the Maeser Building auditorium.

The day after Halloween, I mistakenly left my purse on the ground in our living room. Benjamin was playing down there, and suddenly I turn around and this is what I see:

His face is covered in chocolate and in his hand he is clutching two chocolate coins!

He was just having a ball! Most of the pictures I got of the incident turned out blurry because he was either running (crawling) away from me going "Mmmm... mmmmm..." or he was trying to share his wealth with the camera. I finally caught him and pried the foil wrapper out of his mouth. Then I wiped the chocolate fingerprints off the walls.

So that was our Halloween! We've really loved seeing all of your pictures of cute kid costumes. Thanks for reading this long post about our cute kid!