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!