one month

Our little guy is officially one month old as of yesterday! We have thoroughly enjoyed our first month of parenthood, sleep deprivation and all. He really is just the sweetest kid. Here are about a bajillion pictures of his first month. I know it's overkill, but give me a break. He's our first. And he is stinking adorable.

I think he might have smiled at me today. Like when he was awake. Awesome.

First bath in the tub

Blessing day.

Homework...

Greatest dad ever.

One month old!!

Trevor!!

Trevor Benjamin, Big T, T money, Trev, etc was born on Christmas (7 lbs 10 oz, 19 in.), and we still haven't gotten any pictures up. So, with a bit of my free time I set up a photobucket account to get you guys some pictures so you can see him. I love this kid!

First and foremost, Becca 4 days before the day



Here he is, the first picture of his life!



The happy father



And mother



And a couple more while we were in the hospital







And getting him ready to go home



Then, the day after, we learned his bilirubin (or however the heck you spell it) was high, so we needed to put him under some lights. It was no fun, but a blessing because it helped so much and we only had to do it for one day!



He's a cute kid!







One more with mom, who was a HUGE help! Thanks again, mom.



One more with each parent





He's a keeper!

another move

We moved again! Surprise! I think this makes something like six moves since we've been married. That averages out to like 3 months per residence. Crazy. But this one will be the last for a while. Guaranteed. We were promoted to Resident Managers at Cinnamon Tree Apartments in November and it came with an awesome new 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment and we are loving it. It definitely could not have come at a better time. So here is a tour of our little apartment 8 1/2 right before we started packing up to move out. Some of the pictures are a little stretched, making the apartment seem slightly bigger than it actually is, just because without the stretching, you wouldn't be able to see a thing due to how tiny the apartment was.

Living Room/Kitchen

Kitchen

Hallway/closet

bathroom

bedroom

Entire house

Then we sold our futon and bought a new couch and loveseat. ksl is a wonderful thing. We got the furniture for pretty cheap - it is super nice, but definitely needed to be cleaned. And microfiber is not an easy thing to clean. But Ben, being the wonderful husband that he is, researched it and cleaned them all. They look incredible.

Before

After

Once we moved into our much larger apartment, we got the TV set up. It didn't look bad, but it certainly didn't look that great. The big white wall behind the TV doesn't have anything on it, so it all looked kind of bland. But, KSL came to our rescue again! For a pretty cheap price, we got a great entertainment center that makes the living room really come together. The difference it makes is huge!

Before

As a side note, while we were getting all the chords and such put together, we temporarily put the TV on one of the "towers". She must have forgotten about them, because once when standing up, she hit her face precisely on the corner of the TV, and got herself a really nice shiner. I felt bad, but at the same time it was really really funny. She was upset for a while, but she started laughing about it after some time.

Back to the point though - this is the after picture. Not too shabby

I don't know why it's suddenly writing everything bold and I can't make it stop. Anyway, we finally finished unpacking the last box a couple of days ago, and we absolutely love this place!

33 weeks down...

...less than 7 to go!

Awesome weekend

Well this weekend was awesome. No complaints whatsoever. Let's start with Friday:

After a long day with school, work and a test that I did pretty badly on, Becca picked me up and we went to a pretty good Barbecue place called Good Wood. It's near University mall. I got beef brisket, and Beck got pulled pork. The food was fantastic, but one of the main highlights was their BBQ sauce. It was SO good! And the best part is they have bottles of it at your table. By the end of our meal, the once full bottle was more than half gone. Also, Becca told them it was my birthday (which wasn't for another two days but who's counting?) and they gave us an enormous brownie sundae with whipped cream, caramel, chocolate sauce, and a cherry on top. It was dee-lish.

Then we went to Ruth and Dan's house (sister and bro-in-law), and visited with them, as well as my Mom who is in town. It was really fun to hang out with them, chat a little bit, and then watch a movie.

Then on Saturday:

I started by playing a good game of Ultimate Frisbee. It was super fun, and I had some plays that would have made the ESPN highlight reel if ultimate frisbee mattered. Afterward, Becca and I met up with my mom and we went to Rodizio grill (it's like Tucanos) to celebrate my birthday (a day early, but I'm not complaining). It was really great to spend some time with my mom, and to have Becca there as well. And the food was great to boot. Then, after we finished eating, we got down to the real treat of the day: football.

Now, I'm not sure if some people knew it was my birthday, but Saturday was pretty darn awesome. I was watching several games throughout the day, like Michigan State vs. Nebraska, Michigan vs Purdue, Illinois vs Penn State... But the two games I was really interested in were Georgia vs. Florida, and Ohio State vs. Wisconsin.

I don't generally root for anyone in the SEC. I hate most of them. But Georgia? I've always hated them much less than most, and then I married a Georgia fan. So, I've read a lot about them, I like Mark Richt more than other coaches (I can't Spurrier or Chizik.), and I enjoy watching them quite a bit. I've grown to like Georgia quite a bit, and I think Uga is pretty cool. That, and I've always hated Florida, so I was eager to watch the game. Georgia played a pretty sloppy game to be honest. But it was incredible to watch. I'm not sure if anyone reading this watched the game, but the whole game was worth it to watch 2 plays on fourth down in the opponents field. Instead of going for a field goal, they went for the conversion. And both times, they didn't get the conversion. Instead, they scored. Those were two of the nuttiest plays I've ever seen, and I was thrilled to see Richt pull in a win for the Bulldogs.

Side note: This is the first time the Gators have lost 4 straight since 1988. It makes me so happy I want to cry.

However, anyone who knows me, knows I love Ohio State. I feel like I'm writing way too much about football, so I'll keep this one shorter. Here's the skinny: Ohio State has had a rough season, despite having all sorts of talent. Wisconsin was #12 and has the most balanced offensive attack in the nation (up until last week they were averaging over 250 yards in rushing and passing per game). OSU was a huge underdog, and they played a great game, and beat Wisconsin. OSU was down 29-26 with 1:18 to go before the game ended. They got the ball, returned it 42 yards, and a few plays later, landed a 40 yard pass to win it. It was amazing, and I was jumping and screaming like mad! Go Bucks!

On to Sunday:

My birthday! 24 is a cool age, I feel. It's kind of like turning 17. Nothing special happens, but it's better than being 16. I woke up to breakfast in bed, courtesy of the greatest wife in the world. Breakfast burritos and orange juice. The unbeatable combination. She knows me so well...

Then we went to Church, and came home and she gave me my presents! I was excited, but I felt bad because I gave her nothing to work with. I didn't really want anything, but she managed to get me some good stuff! I got a Georgia T-shirt, some sweet mint gum, a homemade coupon book, a Calvin & Hobbes book, and a red pen to mark my scriptures, among other things. She really did a great job, and I was thrilled with each gift she got me. Becca is so great.

Then we went over to Ruth and Dan's again where we spent a good bit of the night, and they gave Beck and me and early Christmas present (no joke. It was made very clear to me that this was not a birthday present, but our christmas present). It was a new camera! There is a story behind that, too... but maybe I'll post it later.

The camera is awesome! So we've been taking more pictures. I realize the irony that there aren't any pictures on this post. But, in the future there sure as heck will be! The camera is waterproof, shock proof, and takes HD video and all that jazz. It makes Beck and me look like pro photographers despite not having any idea what we're doing.

In the end, I know this post seems super long, but the past few days have been so great! I feel super lucky, and very blessed, not only for the great events that happened, but that I got to have them all with my wife. She makes even the greatest events more fun and just overall much better. Life is great. There are more things happening, so I'm sure there will be another post on here shortly.

I'm 24. Not a bad start, I'd say.

Game changer

GUYS!!!!! This is huge news, and you may want to go write this down in your journal as the biggest single event in your life:

Youtube lets you play snake on their videos.

Too good to be true? I thought the same thing. But it's true! Let me explain.

We have very slow internet. So, often times a youtube video has to load. It brings up that spinning circle thing to show that it's loading. Simply press up (the directional key up) and the circle will change into a moving line of dots, and there will be a dot that you can go "eat" to make it longer. It's the game snake! And you can even play it while the movie has loaded. It's pretty awesome.

If your internet is too fast, perhaps if you jump ahead in the video and then try it, you may have a split second before it loads.

This is amazing.

we moved!

I realize I'm about 2 months late posting this, but we moved in the middle of August. It was really quite an ordeal - this post could be really long. But we should record it for posterity I think. We loved our old apartment at Harmony Square, especially because it was literally a five minute walk to campus, and they were pretty nice apartments. But we decided that with a baby on the way, we wanted a little bit more space. After selling our contract, we searched and searched for a new place to live. It was a very stressful process, and we were having an awful time finding something livable. Housing in Provo is horrible, I just want to say. People think that since so many students have to live relatively close to campus, they can find an old shack and put a lock on it and charge you an arm and a leg to live there. And they're right! That's the sad thing. People definitely overpay for housing here. Anyway...

After a long time looking for a new house, we stumbled upon a small apartment complex about 4 blocks from campus, the same price as what we were paying previously, but with two bedrooms! It was miraculous. We loved it. It was everything we had been looking for. We called up the land lord and signed a contract. I spent the next few weeks planning how it would be decorated, where we would put everything, what new furniture we could buy, etc. It was awesome.

We started packing up all our stuff the week before the big move. The Thursday before we were supposed to move in (we were moving on Saturday), I get a call from my old roommate, Becky. She works at a singles complex in Provo called Cinnamon Tree. She asked if we had found a place yet. I told her yes, and we were moving on Saturday. She proceeded to tell me that at Cinnamon Tree, they hire a couple to come live and be in charge of the cleaning checks, as well as general upkeep of the complex (cleaning the laundry rooms, the lounge, sweeping the parking lot, etc). Their old couple was moving out, and they needed to fill the position. I wasn't really listening too intently until she told me how much rent was. Not only would they pay us for the work we did in the complex, but rent would be less than half of what we were currently planning on paying. Plus, they'd knock off another hundred bucks if we could be in charge of the phone a couple weekends a month. It was unbelievable! So I called Ben, and we decided to check the place out.

Becky told us before we got there that the apartment was pretty small, so we should be prepared. "Pretty small" was a huge understatement. It is apartment #8 1/2. That's right. 8 1/2. It is teeny. We could barely walk in the door. The couple living there had a gigantic wooden table right by the door, with a piano on the other side of the room. With those two pieces of furniture, we had a hard time squeezing through the living room to see the rest of the apartment. We were crawling all over each other the whole time we were there, and starting feeling just a little claustrophobic. When we walked out, I think our minds were about made up that there was no way we could make that place work - not with a baby at least. But we went in for an interview with the manager anyway. She told us the job responsibilities, again reiterated the awesome deal that it was. We went home, not sure what to do. After a couple days of going back and forth, we decided to give the tiny apartment one last chance and went over again with a tape measure. We wrote down dimensions, drew out a floor plan and played with it until we discovered how we could get our furniture to fit. We kept discussing, and praying, and flip flopping, and finally decided it was too good of a deal - there was no way we could pass it up. So we signed with Cinnamon Tree.

We were able to sell our contract at the other place really quickly (miracle #23409 of this whole adventure) and we moved in the next Tuesday (thanks again to Ruth and Dan for letting us live at your house for a couple of days). We only had to throw out a few pieces of furniture and I believe we have succeeded in making it feel like home.

We absolutely love it here. There may be times where we get frustrated because we are on week 9 with no bathroom light, or we have to pull everything out of the kitchen cabinet in order to maneuver the cookie sheets just right to where they will fit out the door. But overall we are extremely happy with our decision to live here, and we continue to receive countless blessings as a result of that decision.

Our wreaths - there you go, Mom.