What a Weekend!!

This weekend proved to be very eventful for the Duersch Family. The story is actually a pretty good one. But if you don't want to read this long blog here it is in a few phrases: Paul move's with Benjamin to Bellingham, WA; drive 1000 miles through Thursday and Friday; Vicky, still in Provo, has irregular labor contractions starting Thursday morning; Vicky can't get a hold of anyone at 4 am (Mtn. time) Saturday morning, so she drives herself to hospital (dilated to 6 1/2 cm); Vicky in Provo, calls Paul in Bellingham at 5 am (Mtn. time) because she is having baby Rhett; 2 hours after Vicky arrives at hospital, Saturday, June 28 at 7:07 am (Mtn. time) baby Rhett is born, three weeks early; Saturday afternoon Paul and Benjamin fly back to Provo (courtesy of Paul's sister Heidi). What a weekend!!

So here is the full story, from Paul. (Yes I included every detail I could so as not to forget this experience, so now you have been warned.)

On Wednesday, June 25, Vicky and I were blessed to have a number of members from our BYU ward, and Wes Truman, help us pack our moving truck. The 16 ft truck was completely packed in thirty minutes. The rest of the evening was spent cleaning our apartment. Special thanks to my sister Marianne and her family, and my Mom for helping us clean. We spent the night at my Mom's house in Orem that night.

Thursday morning around 9:30, a little later than planned, we were on our way. I drove the moving truck with my little sister Ruth as co-pilot and trip photographer. We were also towing our 4-Runner behind the moving truck. Behind the truck and 4-Runner was my other little sister Alene and her husband Kelv, with Benjmain in the back seat, driving our Honda Accord. We left Orem as my mom and Vicky cried in the driveway.

An hour later we arrived in Kaysville, UT, where my Grandmother Sanders lives. I sure enjoyed visiting with her. She is the most charitable and sweetest women I know, and I will miss her. After a brief visit with her we commenced our traveling caravan on to Idaho.

Idaho is not a very exciting state to drive through. I know that my brother-in-law Kelv may disagree, but I'm going to stick to my beliefs.

We stopped for gas in Burley, ID, at a Sinclair Gas Station at $4.09 a gallon. From there we continued to Boise, ID, where Kelv is from. It was 5 pm and Kelv's mom and dad made us dinner. Those BBQ sandwiches really hit the spot. At 6 pm we were back on the road. We filled up the truck and Accord in Boise at Albertson’s Express at $4.09 a gallon as well.

(That guy on the motor cycle passed us at least five times.) From there we continued up the Interstate through Oregon and the Blue Mountains.

Just outside of Washington State, we put in a little gas in the truck in Stanfield, at a Pilot Gas Station, at $4.15 a gallon. An hour later, at midnight Mtn time, we were at my older sister Heidi Sego's house in Richland, WA. Visiting with the Sego's was Landon's (Heidi's husband) brother Abe and his family. So it was a full house at the Sego residence.

That night I called Vicky to see how she was doing. She told me that she had been having labor contractions off and on throughout the day, but nothing was regular.

Friday morning, we had a big pancake pow wow for breakfast with a berry mix for syrup. Benjamin enjoyed chasing the Sego's "meow meows" around the house. At 11 am we left Richland heading for Bellingham. In Richland we filled up at Tesoro Gas Station for $4.17 a gallon.

The weather for the entire trip was perfect. Hardly a cloud in the sky, including in Washington. We could see Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker from Richland when we got on the interstate. The drive went really well. I don't think we passed anyone while driving that moving truck. Being only able to travel no faster than 60 mph left us being passed by all, including semi-trucks. But because of that we saw a great variety on license plates; Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, Michigan, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, Missouri, British Columbia Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii.

We hit Seattle at about 3:30 pm and were met with very heavy traffic. It didn't clear up until we passed Everett, 30 miles to the north. From there we strolled right into Bellingham with no problems, arriving at 5:30 pm. After a couple hours the truck was unloaded and the unpacking began. Ruth, Kelv, and Alene, were incredible helpers. Ruth even vacuumed and washed the carpets in our house. And Alene and Kelv unpacked our kitchen. Benjamin in the mean time was running around the house laughing and have a great time with his aunts and uncle.

Throughout the day I had been in contact with Vicky and checking on her status. Being the she was 37 weeks pregnant we were really hoping and praying that she would not go into labot until she was in Bellingham. Vicky said she was still having irregular contractions throughout the day. So she studied and took her last final at BYU, on Friday. Congratulations VICKY!! I am so proud of you for this accomplishment! Way-to-go Sweetheart!!

I spoke with Vicky late Friday night and still nothing was different with the irregularity of the contractions. These off and on contractions were frustrating for Vicky because she didn't experience anything like this with Benjamin and the nurses and doctor had previously told her to expect the same situation as what happened with Benjamin. With Benjamin, Vicky only had 5 hours of steady contractions before he was born. None of this irregular business.

Around 12:30 am (Pacific time) exhausted I finally laid my head down to sleep. The next thing I know my cell phone was ringing. It was 4:15 am (Pacific time). Vicky was on the line and she told me she was at the hospital. She said that as she went to bed Friday night the contractions finally became steady and regular, every 10 minutes. From there it went to 8 minutes apart and then to 6 minutes and then around 4 am (Mtn. time) she was down to 5 minutes apart. Vicky was tired off the contractions. So she tried to call my Mom in Orem to take her to the hospital. But Mom accidentally left her cell phone in another room that night. Vicky tried to contact Mom two more times unsuccessfully. Then she tried to contract a couple fellow Hall Advisors, but still nothing. So at around 4:45 am (Mtn. time) Vicky had had enough. She drove herself, in Ruth's car, to the hospital. Once at the hospital she had two very mild contractions and thought to herself, oh no their going away. Upon inspection from the nurses though, Vicky was already dilated to 6 1/2 cm. The baby was on the way!

Vicky and I called each other back and forth for the next two hours. During that time I was able to contact my Mom and Dad (as a note, Friday night Dad had returned from a two week business trip to Africa and France.) I contacted Mom and Dad at 6:30 am (Mtn. time). Then I called Vicky back, she told me that the nurses just broke her water and could feel the baby's ear. So I called Mom and Dad again, and told them they better grab their camera and get to the hospital. Once the doctor was ready, and with only two good contractions, out came our second son. Rhett Buehler Duersch was born Saturday June 28 at 7:07 am; three weeks early, 7 lbs 14 oz. and 19 1/4 in long. Buehler is my Grandmother Sanders' maiden name, and my middle name.

Lucky for me, I was able to be on the phone with Vicky during the final stages of labor. Between my words of encouragement, I could hear a play by play from the doctor and nurses. What an incredible feeling it was to hear the doctor quickly say, "He's out." A few moments later Rhett let out a wail of excitement, sharing with us how cold and bright his new environment was. How proud I was and am of Vicky and my new son Rhett. Me missing the birth of my second son was something that Vicky and I new could happen since she wasn't going to fly out to Bellingham until the upcoming Wednesday. Even though we talked about it and knew that he could be born during that short time apart, we didn't expect it to happen.

Mom and Dad arrived only moments later after Rhett was born. They told me that Vicky was beaming and both mother and baby were doing very well and healthy. I then called Vicky's mom, and all my siblings. Another note, my oldest sister Laurette was 38 weeks pregnant, and my older brother Jason's wife was 40 weeks pregnant at this time. Both women were pretty jealous that Vicky beat them in delivery.

My older sister Heidi and her husband Landon, insisted on flying Benjamin and I back to Salt Lake City to be with Vicky and Rhett. So they purchased me a ticket to leave Seattle at 3:30 that afternoon. The rest of Saturday for me is mostly a blur. We quickly cleaned the truck and filled it up at $4.35 a gallon at Fred Meyer Gas Station, returned the truck, moved around the boxes in the house, returned the carpet cleaner, got ready for the day, and left Bellingham. While at Fred Meyer returning the carpet cleaner, I ran into a good BYU CM buddy who had just moved from Alaska to Bellingham. Come to find out he and his family are even in our same Bellingham Ward. They are going to bring us dinner this Wednesday night when we arrive back in Bellingham.

Seattle is a 1 1/2 hour drive from Bellingham, not including Seattle traffic, so we had to get going. Since Ruth wasn't going to fly out until Monday and Alene and Kelv until Tuesday we needed somewhere for them to go. Luckily Kelv's older sister just moved to Seattle a month ago, the three of them went to her place.

Benjamin traveled very well on the Southwest flight to Salt Lake City, this was his first flight. He enjoyed the cheese nips and the juice. We ended up having a whole row to ourselves, which made life for Benjamin nice. He had room to wiggle and move. Benjamin probably spent a third of the trip standing on his seat. He also really enjoyed opening and closing the window shutter, and have the lights turned off and on.

My Mom and Dad met us at the airport and drove us back down to Provo. It was really wonderful to be back with Vicky again, and be with my newborn son. Benjamin was also very happy to be with his mother again, but not as excited about his new little brother.

Sunday morning, since Mom and baby were both still doing great and healthy, both were discharged from the hospital.

Benjamin is warming up quickly to Rhett and even held him on his lap this morning (Monday).

I feel greatly blessed from this whole experience. I know that the Lord is closely involved in our lives. How interesting it is, and not by coincidence, that so many things and events feel perfectly into place for Vicky and I. Especially with bringing Benjamin and I back to Utah. Rhett is a handsome fellow and I am overjoyed to have two wonderful sons.

As of this morning as well, we just found out that Jason's wife might have her baby tonight or tomorrow. And Laurette, my older sister has an appointment to be induced this Thursday. Both are expecting little girls.

What a weekend!!

ALL DONE!!! YEESSSSSSSSSS!!!

As of this evening I am now officially a Brigham Young University graduate. I passed my last class and can't believe that I have no more homework. What a relief! I am so happy to be done!

Fishing at Burraston Ponds

My older brother and I took our families down to Mona, UT for a fun evening fishing. We had a good time and enjoyed being outdoors. The fish were biting, but not staying on the hook well. Regardless, it was still fun to tie on different flies, cast out the fishing line again, and reel in a few fish. We finished the evening with a stop at the One Man Band Diner. What a great evening.

Happy fisherman-to-be.

Three happy fisherman and three happy fishes.

Bellingham House Pictures

Because of the requests that we have received, here are a few more pictures of the house we are moving into in Bellingham, WA. The house is small. It was built 50+ years ago. It has three bedrooms and one bathroom, on about a 1/4 of an acre. We plan to live in this house for one to two years, and in the mean time find a building lot and build a new house. In Bellingham it is actually cheaper to build a new house than to buy a house, (especially if you work for a construction company.)

Front of the house.

The front room.

The Kitchen (with Vicky and our Landlords).

Benjamin's Room.

Part of the backyard.

The house from the backyard.

The pictures make it look small, and it is pretty small. But we are very excited to have been so blessed to find a good house, only 2 miles from Paul's work, in a safe area of Bellingham, and very flexible landlords. We feel the Lord answered our prayers by allowing us to be in this house. Out of 12 other families who wanted this house, the landlord chose us because he "had a good feeling" about us. The Lord hears His children's prayers and He answers them.

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.