Benjamin – Page 32 – David & LaReita Berky

Running Cousins

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Running cousins this morning for Spanish Fork Fiesta Days celebration. After Benjamin not doing so well in the Tour de Donut on the bike, I wanted him to experience something I knew his was good at – running. So Benjamin and Samuel did the 1 mile fun run with Matt. Benjamin’s time was 8:27 and Samuel’s time was 14:05. I started running with Benjamin, but he took off when Samuel and I were slowing him down. Benjamin also decided that he wanted to run barefoot, but did opt to run in socks since that would be slightly more comfortable. This was because he wanted a pair like my Vibram 5 fingers shoes, but they are too expensive for growing feet!

The older cousins ran the 10k. Brandon with his good friend Matt, Jared, Alyssa and Holly. In fact, I think after Brandon finished his 10k, Matt’s 1 mile fun run started and LaMont wasn’t ready to run with Matt, so Brandon jumped in the race to run with Matt. What a fantastic big brother!

Benjamin the Bobcat

Benjamin is an official Tiger Cub Scout. When he turned 7, he constantly reminded me that I needed to get him signed up for Tiger cubs. So I called our local Boy Scouts of America office and found a Pack in Springville that has Tiger Cubs. Dave has been taking him every Tuesday night (same night as James’ Boy Scouts here in SF). They have been having so much fun together.

Tonight Benjamin got his Bobcat award. He was absolutely thrilled. Kept saying, “now I’m Bobcat scout! You need to get me the Bobcat hat, shirt, and, and….”

Well, not quite Ben. Had to explain that every Cub Scout has to get their Bobcat (even a Webelos) before they can earn their rank advancement (Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Webelos).

But we had lots of fun tonight!

December Updates

December 21st – massive snow storm:

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Anthony braves the storm to survey the damage:

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Building gingerbread houses:

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Halloween 2010

Traditional Halloween didn’t really happen this year for lots of reasons. It was celebrated on Sat the 30th. It started hailing at prime trick-or-treating time, so there weren’t many that came. It was just plain miserable outside. We didn’t even get our traditional fire set up out front. AND we forgot to get a picture in all their costumes. Oh well.

One notable thing was that James bought his costume this year with his own money! It was $21.34 and was a Star Wars character – like Jango Fett, but something else. This year Samuel wore a different costume each day of the week. Ben finally settled on wearing the orange jumpsuit prisioner costume and a blue wizard-looking hat. So he was the “Prisoner from Azkaban”. Yeah. Nobody realized it until we told them, then they smiled. Pretty ingenious for a 6 1/2 year old (who just finished having the book read to him). Anthony was himself, which made costuming easy. And Jacob just stayed inside with mom while she made homemade tomato soup, grilled cheese and fresh apple cider. LaReita’s cousin (well, 1st cousin, once removed) Jonathan Mitchell* was the door handler. Dave drove in the car being the back-up for the boys and friends Carlos and Cesar as they ran through the cold drizzling rain.

*Jonathan works for Dave and LaMont in the Find-A-Code business. He and his wife moved to Washington this summer. He came back here this week to do some conferencing with Dave.