Benjamin's Expanding Vocabulary

Hey! It worked! Our very first video. Just a couple of weeks ago, Benjamin started saying 2-syllable words, which is a huge advancement from "da," which was his only word (if you can call it that).

When was the last time Duct Tape Saved Your Life?

Sarah feels like she has made this site into too much of a Mommy Blog and has asked me to step in/up and try to make a post that people besides grandparents will enjoy. I'm not sure I can do that, but I can at least try to write a post without mentioning Benjamin (or the fact that he went to Nursery all by himself for the first time today.) Here goes.

I have one more reason to laude the magic of duct tape. I've always known that this stuff could pretty much fix anything, but I never thought it would actually save my life. This past weekend Sarah and I decided to paint the dull white walls of our front room. After taking the Christmas tree to the curb and clearing out the furniture I felt like it was as good a time as any to finally rip those monstrous mirrors off the wall. When we first decided to buy this house we both agreed that the mirrors would be the first thing to go, but we just never got the courage to try. They're MASSIVE! But with the room totally empty and a hammer in my hand I felt empowered.

We carefully pried the mirrored borders from the edges exposing two huge, thick mirrors that just wouldn’t budge. I put the claw side of the hammer behind the mirror and began to gently pull the lever. As we listened to the glue slowly peal behind the mirror Sarah calmly said, “Wait. All the hairs on my head and neck are standing on end. We need to get some duct tape.” Fortunately for us, Sarah has a crush on one of the carpenters of our favorite HGTV show and remembered how they always duct tape the mirrors when they pull them off the walls.

After putting nearly a whole roll of duct tape zigzagged across each of the mirrors, I began again to try to leverage them off. Again I heard the glue pealing and my heart took courage, then SNAP! A huge crack shot across the top third of the mirror and nothing but a few strands of duct tape stood between me and certain decapitation. I leaped back in terror, but it wasn’t my whole life that flashed before my eyes, just Sarah’s calm words. I guess the seven years bad luck I’m sure to have will be pacified as long as I have Sarah’s wicked awesome spider sense to keep me safe (that and a good roll of duct tape.)

So I know I’m not the only one who’s had their life saved by duct tape. We’d love to hear your stories.

Here's the nearly finished project, brought to you by Benjamin himself.

Elder Ballard

Hey, so apparently blogs are now being endorsed by the church! President Ballard addressed the students at BYU-Hawaii about the Internet and how we need to use it as part of our mission to "Go forth and Serve." I especially liked this quote:
"There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches. While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions, most are much, much smaller. But all conversations have an impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the Church are established one conversation at a time."
You can read the rest of the article at: http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/using-new-media-to-support-the-work-of-the-church
I just want to commend others who have been using their blogs to discuss news and church related events and share their beliefs. I don't feel like I'm nearly as eloquent or have as many interesting things to say as most of you, but I always enjoy reading about your experiences and thoughts.

Merry Birthiversimas!

This was our very first Christmas on our own, and so much fun! Benjamin woke up at about 7 a.m., as usual, but Paul and I had already been awake a little while, partly in anticipation, and partly because I was waking up every half hour to blow my nose, suffering from a cold and a horrible NyQuil-induced sleep. Paul went into his room while I went into the front room with the camera ready to take pictures, but he wouldn't come out of his room. Finally after some coaxing, he came out, bleary-eyed and confused to see what Santa had brought him. It took a few minutes for him to warm up to the excitement, but he had a fun day.
His big presents from Santa included a climber slide thing, a Little People barn and zoo lot, and a soccer ball (which was his clear favorite). He also got nice presents from his grandparents; a Little People Noah's Ark and a green wooden marble track (my dad made this to replicate the one his grandfather made for him when he was a kid that we all still play with when we come over). He loves all his presents though, and has been playing with all of them all week.
For Christmas Eve dinner, I surprised us all with a pretty good ham. I didn't want to buy a huge 5 pound ball of meat, so I bought a ham "steak" with no clue how I was going to prepare it. Anyways, I ended up pan frying it in butter and maple syrup and it turned out pretty good! We had a nice fancy table setting and sparkling grape juice to go with our meal. It was fun. Then we told Benjamin the condensed Christmas story from Luke and put him to bed. The rest of the evening, we spent setting up Christmas, cleaning up and just relaxing by the fire. Paul was nice enough to scoop a dead bird out of the fire place and build us a nice Christmas Eve fire.
For breakfast, we enjoyed beautiful, fluffy home-made orange rolls, bacon, eggs, grapefruit and orange juice. It was a treat!
Mainly we were spoiled by our parents this year with our presents, but we also got each other some nice things. Santa brought Paul some sweet kicks for Christmas, but there's no way he could like his present as much as I liked mine. Paul surprised me with a "Magic House" year-pass, which I was SO excited about! The Magic House is one of the best-rated family attractions in the U.S and happens to be just 5 minutes down the road from us. Since it costs $7.50 for children AND adults, I've never justified going, but with the pass, it'll pay for itself in less than 4 times. So I call that my ticket to sanity for the winter since it's too cold to go to the zoo or the playground.
On the 28th, we celebrated Paul's 27th Birthday! We had a nice relaxing day together and a plain yellow birthday cake with no frosting, which was what he requested. Paul says he doesn't mind, but he celebrates his anniversary, Christmas and birthday all within 10 days. hence the term we coined for it-his birthiversimas.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is our THIRD Anniversary! I just wanted to publicly announce that I love Paul! I feel so blessed to have him in my life forever. He is so sweet and patient with me, and an incredible example of love and service. I'm so proud of him for everything that he's accomplished thus far!
These have been the best three years of my life, without question. So here are a few highlights since we've known each other.

1. A magical night of frisbee in Nottoway Park where we both grew up
2. Two proposals- one in my backyard, the next overlooking a canyon and the back of Timpanogos with the most gorgeous ring I have ever seen
3. A road trip to Oregon and surfing in November
4. One amazing wedding weekend with a reception the night before
5. Christmas in Merida
6. Living in Union Square (we call this the Marshmallow Matey's phase in our life- the little cereal indulgence we often gave into)
7. Camp out in the desert and sledding down the sand dunes
8. Finding out we were pregnant
9. My graduation and art show
10. The five months living with Paul's parents
11. Slot Canyon and Goblin Valley adventures
12. Living in Wymount (we call this the PB & C Crunch phase of our life for the same reason as mentioned above)
13. Having a baby and becoming parents for the first time together
14. Enduring one long, brutal summer of sleepless nights without AC and a newborn together
15. Road trip with Paul's family to California and a trip to the east coast for a beach vacation with my family
16. Paul's graduation/transition into the Master's program
17. Finding the perfect job in St. Louis and knowing that was where we were supposed to be
18. Paul graduating from BYU with his Master's (pending...)
19. Finding our house and moving to Kirkwood, Missouri

And too many more to mention....


Aside from our anniversary, we got a ton of snow this weekend- about six inches! There was probably only about 2 or 3 inches in these pictures, but Benjamin had a good time helping Daddy build a snowman. He likes it when we sing the "Snowman Song" and does the actions, so this was putting it all into real life for him!

Oh, and just this morning, Benjamin started saying "Uh, oh!" for the first time. Cute.

This and That

Today is Benjamin's 18 month birthday, and for any LDS person with kids that means NURSERY! I have to admit, I'm a little obsessively attached to the kid...maybe even more than he is to me, so this day brought on mixed feelings. I've actually been going to nursery with him these past several weeks because it was either that or the hall (a kid can only sit through only so much "SHHH!!"-ing and "Be reverent!"). So anyways, I thought he was doing pretty well and didn't care whether I was with him or not, and figured just maybe I could just slip out and leave him today. I was just settling into Sunday School with Paul when I heard wailing in the hall that sounded like Benjamin. Sure enough, the nursery leader had brought him to me, and so I went back with him to nursery. For the remaining two hours or so, I was being closely monitored so I couldn't pull another fast one on him. Any advice, mommy veterans?

So we've also had issues with our kitchen sink over the past month or so, and FINALLY got that resolved! I can't even tell you how nice it is to dump leftover soup down the disposal and turn on then water to wash it down. Small thrills, I know. The chain of events went something like this; we bought a new dishwasher to replace the old one, the first guy couldn't install it because he wasn't a plumber, the plumber couldn't install it because he wasn't an electrician, the electrician fixed the electrical, but couldn't install it because he wasn't a plumber, and finally another plumber installed it. Then, we started noticing the sink was backing up, so Paul decided to fix it himself. After plunging elbow deep in bilge water for a half-hour, our garbage disposal fell off the other side, and it's like a hundred years old and apparently was missing the seal, so we couldn't put it back on. So with the pipes taped off, we could still use one side of the sink (which was still clogged) but not the new dishwasher. So Paul bought a sewer snake to try to knock the blockage out himself. Though the elbow grease he put into working that thing was impressive (he worked for hours) he was getting nowhere. So we called a clog specialist, who reinstalled the broken disposal and told us we'd have to go in through the roof, but that we could rent the machine rather than pay someone $270/hour to do it. Ignoring his advice, we bought a drill to give the snake a little more force. Oh, and we replaced the garbage disposal. When the sink was backing up after just seconds of turning on the faucet, we decided it was time to call Roto-Rooter and it's now FIXED! HOORAY FOR WORKING SINKS!

Benjamin gives Daddy "kisses" by pressing his forehead into his cheek.

We got our first Christmas tree this year (it's our fourth married Christmas!) and decorated it with one inherited strand of lights, a bunch of cheap silver and white ornaments leftover from our wedding decor and a few nicer ones we've acquried over the years. But we think it looks beautiful!
This is what Benjamin does when you ask him what a fish says. Kind of a scary picture.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, November flew by! We can hardly believe Thanksgiving came and went and that it's Christmas time already. We took a long 12 1/2 hour drive out to Virginia for 9 days and had a wonderful time with both our families. Ironically, we only have one picture to show for it because the batteries in our camera died and we didn't realize we had another set of fresh ones until the drive back. Oh, well.

We started the drive on a late Friday afternoon and drove through the night in hopes that Benjamin would just sleep the whole time, but he spent half the night wanting to look around and read his books. We got in early Saturday morning and spent the week at my parent's house. My brother Nathan and Paul's family flew in on Tuesday. Highlights included TWO Thanksgiving dinners, some projects around the house, playing in an enormous pile of leaves, going to the D.C. Zoo, cousin Will's Baby Blessing, and a rather uneventful BYU-Utah Football game. We got to see Brigham and Alexandra's apartment right across the street from the zoo, and Josh and Anne's in Lexington on our way back. We had a wonderful time!