Merry Christmas!

Okay, so I totally edited the time stamp on this. But I intended to post it before the New Year, so I don't think the date it actually appears on the blog really matters.

We hope you all had a joyous holiday season! In an attempt to be frugal we only sent these out to select family members, with the intent to e-mail them to the rest of you. If you didn't get the e-mail, don't feel left out. No one else did either.

So here are our family's Christmas card and letter, as well as a birth announcement we made for Rhett (which was pretty much only sent to parents and grandparents).

Dear family and friends,

As another year comes to a close and we celebrate once again the birth of our Savior, our family is ever grateful for the blessings that we enjoy. This year has brought our family triumphs as well as challenges, and we have felt the Lord’s guidance and protection in all of them. Paul and Vicky both graduated from Brigham Young University feeling accomplished as well as relieved, and we moved our family to Bellingham, WA, for Paul’s first post-college job.

Two days after Paul and Benjamin left Provo, and four days before we all arrived in Bellingham together, our family was joined by Rhett Buehler Duersch on June 28, 2008. He arrived three weeks early, but was a welcome surprise! Rhett is a very happy baby who is loves his older brother tremendously and brings great amounts of added joy to our lives.

Benjamin is a feisty two-year-old who loves to repeat everything his mom and dad say but who, fortunately for us, has not done it too often in public yet. He is a great helper for Vicky, who feels blessed to stay at home and raise her two little boys, and is a sweet brother to Rhett. Benjamin loves to read books, sing songs, and play with basketballs.

We are grateful for all of you who have helped and supported us this year, as well as for old friends and new, and we wish you all the very best of things during this Christmas and the coming New Year.

Love,

Paul, Vicky, Benjamin & Rhett Duersch

We appreciated receiving cards and letters from many of our friends and family, and hope that you won't take it personally if you didn't receive them from us. It's amazing we got them out at all! We are grateful for you and hope you each find many blessings in the New Year!

Snow Day

With a few inches of fresh powder on the ground, we decided to let Benjamin tromp through the wintery wonderland of our back yard yesterday afternoon. He donned his almost-new, seven-dollars-from-Value-Villiage snowsuit that will probably fit him next year (yay!), finally found the thumb holes in his mittens after the bajillionth try, and off he went.



Paul took a moment to toss some snow around with Benjamin and pose for a picture next to the thermometer before he had to go back to work. He would much rather have spent the afternoon stomping through the snow with Benjamin.




While Rhett napped I took Paul's place in the back yard. I was really surprised at Benjamin's enthusiasm for our snowy activity. We stomped and tromped and even made snow angels. He was unfailingly thrilled every time I made a snow ball and gently placed it in his mittened hands, from which he would enthusiastically fling it to see the snow scatter in the air.



He probably would have stayed outside all afternoon despite rosy cheeks, runny nose, and the freezing wind that made his eyes water, but I managed to coax him inside with the promise of hot chocolate. I was too cold.

On another note, we went back to the pumpkin patch (which is now a Christmas tree patch) last weekend to cut down this handsome doug fir. (No pictures of that since the wind was blowing 40 mph and Benjamin was screaming. We didn't even bother taking the camera out of the car.) Paul and I strung it with some popcorn (which is slowly being munched by Benjamin) and put up our small collection of ornaments. Five days till Christmas and we're still working on putting up all our decorations and getting out our Christmas cards and such. And I just finished making Rhett's birth announcement. There's still a lot to do, but I suppose if it doesn't all get done "in time" it won't really make a difference. That's what I'm trying to tell myself, anyway.

First Snow

What is evergreen is now covered in white. This weekend we welcomed a wintry blast. Our neighbors to the north provided the extreme wind chill and the ocean to the west provided the moisture. Put them together and you get one cold storm.

Temperatures on Friday started in the 40's and by Saturday they were in the 20's with a wind chill factor dropping the temperature to 1 degree Fahrenheit. The news continues to report that this is now the coldest December since 1990.

So what did we do? Well, since this has been Paul's first open Saturday since October, we went to a tree farm and cut down a Christmas tree. Paul hung up the Christmas lights outside, covered the hose bibs, and worked on the car. After all that, we enjoyed some hot cocoa in our warm home.

This morning we were woken by phone calls that church was canceled, and there was ice on the windows of our house. As the temperatures continue to stay in the teens and single digits, we stay inside and enjoy our Mormon Tabernacle Christmas music. Maybe we'll have a white Christmas since the cold is here to stay and more snow is expected later this week.