Halloween!

We celebrated Halloween yesterday, dressing up like greasers. I had the biggest hair ever and Ben used almost all his hair grease slicking his hair back. We got lunch at In-N-Out, keeping our role as greasers, went couch shopping and headed off to Heehaw Farms.

Don't let the photo's confuse you. WE had fun, but Heehaw Farms was pretty lame, dirty and stinky. The upside: it wasn't crowded at all AND we beat the corn maze without cheating...turning right at every turn :). There was also a pretty fun slide we slid down and Ben raced a 6 year old to the end...he wants to mention that he won that race.

Later on we watched the Shrek Halloween and Aliens vs Monsters Halloween specials on TV, ordered some delicious pizza and watched a ghost hunters thing on the national geographic channel. We also got our first trick-or-treaters! They were like, 14, but still! :) After we turned the TV off, things started getting creepy. I saw something as I was getting ready for bed move past the bathroom door. I later asked Ben if it was him and he said, "No. I've been in here the whole time." Creepy!!! But it was a nice, quiet Halloween.

All grown up

Now don't get me wrong, I love Sheila Bandit. She means a lot to Ben, so she means a lot to me. In fact, whenever I try to drive it, I always get thumbs up and people really think I'm cool. The only bad thing about the Corolla is the fact that, well, it's really old. It has had a lot of work done on it, engine changes, new suspension, but for some reason, it dies...a lot. It's also really REALLY loud because of a custom exhaust system. That makes it fun around town, but not so fun driving any where more than 30 minutes away. After she started dying all the time, we decided we needed a second, more reliable car. Meet Bruce!

Bruce is a '08 Dodge Caliber R/T, named after the great white shark on Finding Nemo. He's white, awesome and a speed racer. Seriously, Bruce is the coolest car. He has removable speakers for dance parties, a drink cooler and a jammin' stereo system. Also, he is sooo smooth! He has a continuously variable transmission, which auf English means you never feel a shift.

 When we bought it, we felt so grown up. WE bought a car! It was a really cool feeling, buying our first big purchase together. We're looking forward to buying a house next.

Ben's first post

Sheila Bandit. 86' corolla GTS. Now when most people think about a 1986 Toyota Corolla they think of an old pile of rust perhaps... but not me!

This car, also known as an AE86, or in Japanese, Hachi-Roku, is the car that made drifting famous. Together this car and I have had some great times. When I first bought Sheila Bandit she didn't have a passenger seat, so whoever wanted to ride in my car had to sit in the back. I often felt like a taxi driver whilst driving people around. The first summer I had the car I made quite a few trips to the junkyard, buying old used tires that I wouldn't feel bad burning up as I practiced drifting. My favorite drift story I can remember is the day I tried to teach Julie how to drift.

We pulled into a elementary school parking lot and I get out and let her get into the driver seat. I just wanted to let her get the feel of the of the car sliding, so I told her to start driving in circles and and then to push the clutch in real fast and then pop it out while still giving the car gas! We started to slide and Julie was having the time of her life until...we slid into a curb! It bent the brake caliper and poor sheila was out of commission for a few days until I fixed it. I've driven a lot of cars in my day, fast cars, luxury cars, trucks, etc...but every time I sit in the driver seat of the drift bandit, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Pets

Ben and I have wanted a puppy ever since we got married. We really want a bernise mountain dog, but don't really have the time for a puppy...or any space for such a huge dog :). So, in order to fulfill our pet-hungry-ness, we decided to get something else:

This is Buster! We love him so much!!! We've had him for almost a year. He is a beta fish and is quite feisty. We named him after a character on Arrested Development. Although he doesn't fetch and we can't really cuddle with him, we still talk to him like he's a dog. (We're not weird!) Someday we will get a couple of dogs though, hopefully in the next couple of years.

Dis, wait for it, gusting!

After our flight home from the honeymoon, we were so excited to open our wedding presents. We had our families come to our tiny apartment and sit in the room we deemed "living room," although it was more like a closet space. Ben got some pizzas and we talked and laughed with everyone, opening our presents and talking about how awesome our friends and family were. A few days later I found out Ben had seen something with lots of little legs crawl across the pizza boxes: a cockroach!!!

Yes, our first apartment was infested with roaches! It was honestly the worst thing! I would come home from work excited to cook a delicious diner for my wonderful husband, open my kitchen cabinets and drawers and scream! There were roaches EVERYWHERE! The worst part of it was when they were in our silverware drawer. One time, there was one in my soup ladle. Another time I was in the shower and one crawled on the glass INSIDE THE SHOWER! We ended up putting everything in plastic containers and sealing them up tight. While exterminators worked on killing the never-dying, indestructible problem, Ben continued to kill them with his fists :). In fact, he and his friend Kyle found a bunch of the sickos underneath our fridge and had a "dance party" with them.

Enough was enough the night Ben and I decided to enjoy a movie in our living room. Ben had shorts on and a few minutes into the movie he felt an irritating itch on his right leg. A few seconds later there was nothing but panic. "AHHHH!" He screamed. We both jumped up as he flicked the inch long roach away from us and ran to our bedroom, jumping on our bed in horror! "That's it!" we said. "We are moving!" Our landlord was really great, giving us all our money back and apologizing for the nasty bugs. And we began to look for a new place. We went all over Provo and on our last search, we found it, right across the street from our roach-infested place.

Our new apartment was really a house the owner rented out. It was perfect! Lots of kitchen space, wood floors, a cozy bedroom and lots of storage area. We loved it the minute we walked in. We had a lot of fun in our place with family and neighbors. We even bought our first pet together, Buster.

Honeymooning

Even though Ben wanted to try and surprise me, I got it out of him where we were going for our honeymoon.

We had so much fun on our cruise to Ensenada, Mexico. While we were walking around the small city we saw some pretty funny things. As soon as we got off the boat Ben saw something swimming in the bay. We inched closer and strained to see what it was and then I heard Ben gasp, "Oh my gosh! It's a seal!" It wasn't so much excitement as it was terror. Ben doesn't have the best luck with seals. Apparently, when he was in Oregon, one tried to "attack" him in the ocean :). Any who, we laughed really hard about that.

We also saw trees that looked like pineapples, which was awesome because pineapples are delicious. After we walked past the dock area, we were greeted by a ginormous, Mexican flag. If any one was confused as to where they were, all they had to do was look up and see that thing wafting in the sky.

On our journey we saw these large heads lining the street. It was weird to see big, gold heads randomly in a city...we had to take a photo. The coolest thing at Ensenada was the blow hole. We got a tax there and our driver kept saying things like, "Mexican stop," so we felt safe ;). He was way fun. In fact, he drove past this guy who had a zebra so we got a little bonus, seeing "the only zebra in Mexico." When we got there, we walked through a long street filled with vendors yelling, "Honeymooners, honeymooners," and "100% off, come on in." It was hilarious and just added to the fun of seeing the huge explosion of water at the end of the road.

After we got a little wet, we had the best tacos in the world from a vendor and devoured amazing churros, which I almost didn't share, before heading back to the ship. Our ship had everything from hot tubs to delicious food any time we wanted. We took advantage of all the fun things, including room service (who can say no to chocolate cake at 2:00am?)

 We had an amazing time on our honeymoon and came home to an apartment full of wedding presents...and something else. Find out what it was on our next post!

Finally!

We've talked about starting a blog for months and now it's finally here. We're really excited to share our memories and adventures not only because we will be able to post our really cute photos, but because it will help us stay better connected to our family and friends. So, here it goes! Our first blog post :).

We were married January 14, 2010 in the Salt Lake City temple. We probably have the best love story ever, from meeting in a foreign land to a magical first kiss, so I'll share a super condensed version with you.
We met in Germany on our missions (It's not what you think...we never lived near each other and only met 3 times, but we talked about music and literature and found out how awesome we both are). When Ben went home, we wrote letters and he even sent me a package. The week I got home he asked me out. We went out almost every night from that point on. After an Iron and Wine concert, he kissed me where four months later, in the exact same spot, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.
We have the perfect love story. There was competition, passion, frustration, kissing, laughing, and now there is more love than any one has ever known.
So this is us!

We're in love. We're students, activists and basically we're awesome. Hope you enjoy our blog!