From Utah With Love

7/03/2010

Summer Fun & 4th of July!

It's been a fun week for us! Last week, Bethany got to go to her first ever baseball game in a stadium! We went to the Ogden Raptors single-A game last Sunday afternoon. Mykel, our friend who works at the church and also works at the stadium during the summer in the souvenir stand, got Bethany a Raptors baseball:

During the week, we cooled off in some hot weather by playing in the sprinkler:

And today, we celebrated Independence Day (since the 4th is on a Sunday) with a parade and a carnival! Here's Bethany with one of her favorite people, Ms. Nicole, who heads up the nursery ministry at our church:

We got LOTS of candy during the parade. Lots.

At the carnival we got to do lots of fun stuff, like ride a train:

And of course, we couldn't go to a carnival at the park without stopping at the swings on our way out:

We can't wait until next year when it's a little more fun for Samantha. The sirens woke her up at the parade, and there wasn't really much for her to do at the carnival. I wonder how they'll sleep with fireworks going on tonight...

7/02/2010

Benjer at the Baseball Game

Well, I finally got to be on the field during a professional baseball game. But it wasn't quite what I once dreamed. Our church, Washington Heights, had service at the local minor league ballpark Sunday morning to celebrate our church's week-long in-town mission trip, and so it was Washington Heights night at the baseball game later that day. Chad (our church's student pastor for grades 6-8) and I had the prestigious honor of...playing the bat race game. Chad will say that it was a tie. Unfortunately, he is mistaken.

A better view of the race was posted on Facebook; it clearly shows that I was the winner and the deserved recipient of one free pest control session.

6/25/2010

Fun in Colorado

Hello all! We had quite a vacation this month, with Jennifer and the girls spending two and a half weeks enjoying friends and family. We didn't take quite as many pictures as I would have hoped (with absolutely none of Jennifer or Benjer, and none of our whole families), but we have lots of pictures of the kids. Isn't that what you want to see anyway? ;)

Granny (Benjer's mom) took the girls, Grace, Charlie and Caroline (all cousins) to the Botanic Gardens:

Samantha spent most of the time in her stroller and was not too thrilled about the hat mommy put on her :)

And we were able to get to know our newest cousin Cayden (Jennifer's brother-Jonathan's baby):

Samantha had a different time getting acquainted with Cayden...

Apparently, this is how Cayden says "I love you!"

Samantha loved it, too :). She was happy to get to play with another baby.

We spent so much time at the park, Bethany was in heaven. Here we're swinging with Grace:

Time with "unca Jon"

We were also blessed to spend some time with our good friends, the Frazier family, before they head off to Kenya for a minimum 2-year mission. (We have posted about them earlier this year, feel free to check out their blog at http://fourfaithfulfraziers.blogspot.com/). We were blessed to get to spend about 3 days with them, just relaxing and letting the kids play. We had nothing planned it was everything we could have wanted.

The lovely faith and handsome Joel playing in some fountains:

Bethany having a blast! And the three kiddos together :)

Jim and Heather enjoying some relaxing time with Faith:

That's it for now! We love you all :).

5/09/2010

What will $15,000 get you?

Alternative to this post:

Yeah, that and $15,000 will get you a couple of shaved heads
That's one expensive haircut
I gave it to the Peach, because well, he's got hair!

The junior and senior high students at Washington Heights raised $15,876 for last weekend's 30 Hour Famine. Since they raised over $15,000, Chad and I (Benjer) had our heads shaved this morning in church. Here's what it looked like:

3/28/2010

March Family Fun

Hi family! There isn't much to update about our family these dates, except that we have such wonderful girls we can hardly stand it. Bethany is almost completely potty trained and says so many words we can hardly keep up. She is currently in a phase of loving her baby dolls and wanting to do everything with her babies that Mommy does with Samantha. And Samantha is just growing so much! She is just now 5 months old and is already in her 6-9 months clothes. You might picture a really chubby baby with that information, but she is just pretty long. She is rolling from her tummy to back and back to tummy, so we are having to be extra careful these days with what is on the floor (or in Bethany's hands). We went to the park today, since it was such a lovely day here in Utah. Samantha is old enough to enjoy it, too, which is quite a lot of fun:

Sweet sisters

We finally got Bethany's porch swing up too!

Bethany loves to feed her baby when Mama is feeding Samantha...

And then we burp them together too!

Lots of love from Utah!

Benjer, Jennifer, Bethany and Samantha

2/01/2010

Samantha's Dedication

Yesterday, we dedicated Samantha at church. It was a pretty meaningful day for us, especially since there was a day when we were not sure that we would be able to bring Samantha home, let alone to church.

The life verse we chose for Samantha is Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."