Dutch Ovening

It's not really summertime at the Duerschs' until the Dutch oven comes out. And out it came last weekend for the first time this year. (I have recently become aware that I have a terribly boring "video voice." I'm working on improving it. Sorry.)

The Chef

The Eager Observer

And if anyone cares to try Paul's oh-so-yummy Dutch-oven cheesy scalloped potatoes with ham... sorry. We ate it for dinner last night, breakfast this morning, and dinner again tonight. Like I said, it's yummy!

Bellingham, Washington

Last weekend Paul and I went to Washington to check out the town where we'll be living and to find a house to rent. It was a great get-away for us! Benjamin stayed with Paul's parents so we could have some kid-free time, which was nice for us, but since then has had a hard time letting us out of his sight.

Bellingham is located about 1.5 hours north of Seattle, 20 minutes south of Canada, on the Puget Sound. Mt. Baker (the mountain pictured on the title of our blog), is located an hour east.

So for starters, here is the house that we will be living in. It's a nice little 3-bedroom home that should suit the needs of our family perfectly. It will be nice to have our own four walls and not worry about babies waking the neighbors! It's right in town and close to Paul's work and we love that it's in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Last Sunday we attended the ward that we will be in and everyone was so nice and welcoming! We were even invited over for Sunday dinner! That sure beat the tuna sandwiches we were planning to eat in our hotel room!


And here are some pictures of the rest of our trip. Our first day there we were treated to beautiful, sunny weather; Saturday gave us a taste of wet Washington weather. But overall the weather was nice and we didn't get too wet.

These are from Chuckanut Drive and Larrabee State Park.

This shot is of some boats in Squalicum Marina

This is the Bellingham Cruise Terminal

We left Bellingham on Tuesday and spent a little bit of time in Seattle before we flew back to Provo. One of our stops was at the beautiful Seattle, WA temple.

Then we ventured downtown and saw the Space Needle.

And went to the Seattle Center House where Paul rode the Washington State animal (just kidding, it's just a slug), and we got some yummy Seattle Fudge.

Then it was a rush through 5:00 traffic in downtown Seattle to return our rental car and fly home. We were so happy to get back early enough to pick up Benjamin and take him home with us! He seemed a little surprised to see us, but very happy. And like I said, he has been very reluctant to let us leave again!

We have about 6 weeks left here in Provo. Wow! We know it will fly by, and we'll be a little sad to go. But we're very excited about Paul's new job (we visited Ebenal Construction while we were there also, and I was able to meet some people he'll work with), and we're looking forward to the next step in our family's life.

One Big Post!

The last two weeks in April were pretty busy at our house. Here are some pictures of the happenings, along with some funny Benjamin things.

Here is Benjamin riding around the living room on one of his John Deere tractor toys. A few weeks ago he started doing this with even his smallest of cars, and it's quite humorous.

My mom came up from Albuquerque for our graduation from BYU, which was April 24 & 25. Thanks, Mom! In order to accommodate our guest, since we no longer have the use of the fabulous guest rooms at Deseret Towers, we had to prep our awesome sleeper sofa, which we found at the DI for $25! Benjamin loves to check out Paul's tools, and he was a good helper while Paul was putting on new couch legs.

Sweet pants, huh? Yeah, I know.

Benjamin also loves to sweep. A couple of his favorite playthings as of late have been this broom and the plunger. He screams and throws a mega-tantrum when we take them away.

And finally, here are those graduation pictures. Thursday's processional to the Marriott Center for commencement was nice and snowy (sorry, no pictures of that). Elder Bednar gave a great, shorter-than-expected commencement address. Friday's convocation was great, too. We went to the Provo Tabernacle bright and early for the exercises for the School of Technology. I walked with Paul, and we even got to go up to get our diploma (covers) together. It was nice and short, presumably because of all the engineers involved, and there was food afterward. Perfect!

Here's a shot of the family that came. Thanks, everyone!

And here are the happy (almost) grads! (We're technically not graduated until August.)

Backtrack to Thursday. (Long story: Feel free to skip it.) My friend Laura, who was one of my RAs in T Hall last year, brought us her car to drive around while she went home to Illinois for a few days. It does a funny thing where the battery dies if it isn't driven regularly. So Thursday she brought me her car key, and in the hubbub of all that was inside my brain at the time (student check-outs, mom visiting, graduation happening, being pregnant, etc.) I didn't pay attention to where I put the key. It wasn't long before I knew that I didn't know where it was, but I wasn't too worried since I knew it was in the house somewhere. Thursday went by and I mentioned to Paul and my mom that we needed to look for they key because Benjamin was probably playing with it, but it didn't turn up and I figured we'd find it sometime on Friday.

Well, Friday began with an early morning and then was mostly consumed by my student check-outs, while my patient mom hung out in the apartment and she and Paul tried to entertain Benjamin. I was gone most of the day looking through apartments as they emptied and doing paperwork. That evening Paul and my mom tore apart the living room to look for the key, but no luck. After a late-night meeting with my RAs in preparation for an early morning of check-outs, we called it quits. And so Saturday began bright and early, with a waffle breakfast with my RAs (who I forgot to get a picture of! I'm so bummed!) and thoughts of Laura's poor car key in my head as I walked through most of my 47 apartments, wrote up damage charges (muah ha ha ha... okay just kidding), and said goodbye to my RAs. I was pretty tuckered out by the afternoon when we had a picnic lunch with my mom before she left for Albuquerque. By the evening I was starting to stress about that missing key because we had promised Laura we'd drive her car. (Don't worry, the story is almost over.)

And so Sunday rolled around and I knew we had to find the key! Laura was coming to get her car on Monday. Sunday night Paul and I said a prayer and began a diligent search of our apartment, looking through every likely place that a 19-month-old would put a little car key. Toy bin, trash cans, couch, shoes... everywhere we could think of. And as I started worrying about having to confess to dear Laura at midnight on Monday that her car wouldn't start because I had lost her key on the very day she gave it to me, I decided to ask Benjamin where it was, feebly hoping that he'd bring it to me. Instead, he went to Paul's nightstand, picked up the key to our Honda Accord, and toddled down to hallway, where he proceeded to try to shove it in a vent near the floor.

Gasp! Could it be? Was Benjamin leading us right to it?

Paul had, in fact, wondered aloud a while earlier if we should look in the vents, but it probably would have been the last thing we tried. But with Benjamin sitting there trying in vain to shove the Accord key through the slats, Paul pulled out his drill and we looked inside. And look what we found!

That's Benjamin with Laura's key, along with my student ID that's been lost since at least December, and one of my wooden spoons. If only we had thought to ask him sooner! (And, happily, we discovered that the car ran just fine, and that the battery thing is likely just a cold weather problem, and I'm pretty sure that Laura still likes us. Right, Laura?)

And after that lengthy story, here are some more cute kid pictures to cap off our Longest Post Ever.

Benjamin got this sweet ride-able tractor from some people whose house Paul worked on recently, and he just adores it! I think his dad thinks it's pretty cool, too.

Aren't these guys cute?

And that wraps up the Big Post. At least with pictures. Sorry for the lack of graduation pictures. With an active and somewhat cranky toddler, we opted to take a few and get going.

We also celebrated Paul's 25th birthday on May 1 (and some a few days later). Benjamin had fun watching me blow up balloons, and on May 4 we finally had some traditional birthday carrot cake, which we forgot to photograph.

It feels so good to be done with April! This weekend Paul and I are traveling to Bellingham, WA to scope out some potential places to live. Benjamin will be spending some quality time at Grandma and Grandpa Duersch's house (sniff from the mom, who has never left him before), which will allow us to turn it into a child-free birthday/Mother's Day/3rd anniversary vacation. Pictures to come.