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.
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!
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.
And after that I went back to school, plugging along through 16.5 credits one class at a time. I learned that I do not like Spring and Summer term classes. And I learned that there are wonderful people out there who will so generously watch my child for free while I go to school (thank you, CJ, and Lori, and Melina, and Lela, and Kristal, and everyone else) and go to work (thank you, Liz, and Amy, and Nikki, and Alene, and Laura, and Betsy, and everyone else). And while I did this, my dutiful husband went to work and school himself, plugging through a great Construction Management program with often difficult classes, serving in the Bishopric, and taking great care of our family. This most recent semester, Paul took 18.5 credits on campus, with an extra 3 credits of Statistics through Independent Study. And he still worked, and he still served faithfully in his church callings. And he still took great care of his family.
