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.

Windy-day Reminiscing

While things are quite in our house for a little while, I thought I'd write something. I wish I had some fun, recent pictures to show, but we've been so busy that there's nothing new on our camera. But it's all the busyness that I want to talk about.

Let's reminisce....

Almost two years ago (was it only two?) I was hired as a Hall Advisor at Deseret Towers. There was a little baby Benjamin in my tummy. That summer my studly husband played softball with the ward.


Here's me when I was six-months pregnant in 2006:

And here's what that baby looked like back then:

This is us right before the start of Fall semester 2006, right before things got very busy:

I took that semester off from school so I could spend time with this cute kid:

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.


And now, two years later, I have taken my last final exam at BYU (except for Independent Study), Paul is done with Physics for good, and we're looking forward to meeting this cute kid:


Today I took Benjamin to the duck pond south of campus, where he wanted to swim with the ducks more than he wanted to look at them, and where he wanted to eat the bread himself, rather than share with our feathered friends. We hiked with the stroller up the hill to the library, where along the way we observed hundreds of happy looking BYU students enjoying the sunny-but-windy weather and anticipating the end of finals week. After a family lunch at the Cannon Center cafeteria, I laid my tired son in his bed for a much-too-late nap, and he smiled at me while he told me all about his teddy bear.


So as I sit here quietly celebrating the almost-end of my BYU career, and the almost-beginning of Paul's new career, I feel like it's a good time to think about all the great things that have happened to us, and all the wonderful friends we have made during these past two years. And I am really, really grateful for how things have been, and for the people who have helped them to be that way.

Two Sentences

1. Never let child out of your supervision for more than a minute.
2. It is now time for a toilet clamp.

Something funny

I wanted to post this because it made me laugh. I realize that it may not be as funny to the rest of you since, as we all know, other peoples' kids aren't nearly as cute as our own. But anyway...

I was doing something or other in the kitchen the other day when I turned around to see this:

I took a video to preserve the precious moment:

As I was about to put away the camera, I looked back to see this:

Dont' worry. I took the dish sponge away from him right after this. I know it probably wasn't the cleanest thing he could put in his mouth, but it wasn't the worst thing either, right? And it was funny.

18 Months

Benjamin made his debut in the nursery at church this past Sunday. He was a little apprehensive about what was going on when other kids and parents started coming in, but jumped right in when the other kids started pulling out little chairs to sit in. As for us, we had a blissfully quiet time in Sunday School. I almost forgot that I had a child to pick up after Relief Society! Benjamin, however, did not forget that he was supposed to be picked up and got a little sad when other kids were leaving.




We had a very fun Easter with the Duersch family last weekend. The annual Easter Egg Hunt was a hit! Although, Benjamin wasn't quite as into it as I'd hoped he would be.

Benjamin had his 18-month check-up this week, and I just have to say that I'm a little sad to be leaving our pediatrician. (More on why later.) Dr. Adams has been great for our family since the day Benjamin was born and he had a little complication that necessitated his extra few days in the hospital. So, if any of you out there are looking for a pediatrician in Utah Valley, I would highly recommend Dr. R. Mitchell Adams at Utah Valley Pediatrics' North University office.

But back to the check-up...

Benjamin is still about average. He weighs a little over 24 pounds and is 33 inches tall. In case anyone is wondering, that's 29th percentile for weight and 74th for height. Maybe he needs a corndog for dinner...

And we're still plodding our way along to graduation, which is less than a month away! We're also preparing for a move this summer, which we'll post about later.

Practice

Tonight Benjamin pulled one of his old baby bottles from the drawer and brought this baby doll over to the couch so he could give it a drink. What a good big brother!

And then there were two...

Benjamin would like to introduce his little brother.

July 17, 2008

Chatterbox

Benjamin's vocabulary has exploded lately. Here are a few of the things he says:

E-I-E-I-E=E-I-E-I-O (this was the first thing he really said)

baba=ball, balloon, basketball
nana=banana, yellow, Viana
yeeHA! (when he rides his rocking horse or sees a picture of a horse)
mo=more (He also says this when he wants a treat)
Mama
Dada
wow
uh-oh
eeup=clean up
choo choo=train
baby
beebah=bellybutton
shh=shoe
eish=ice

He also chatters non-stop about this and that, and often seems to be telling us very important things.