Our Wonderful Lives Together: A wonderful year part I

Ben and I have had such a great year! We've had so much fun on all of our adventures. Here are some of our favorites.
January

The best thing we did in January was get married!! We had so much fun on our honeymoon, came back and finished up Winter semester and moved apartments because of an invasion of roaches!

Throughout the year we have spent time with the Nelson family, my sister Candace, Kyle and their little girl, Samantha. They are so cute and we have so much fun together!!!

February
What a romantic month! Every day until Valentine's Day I gave Ben a little surprise expressing my love to him through notes and goodies, but I was a little worried our first Valentine's Day together wouldn't be the most romantic of evenings.

You see, we were spending the night at my parents house, but the day before Valentine's I got a wonderful surprise. Actually, I woke up that morning in a horrible mood. We ate chocolate in bed the night before and after my alarm went off I found chocolate all over our sheets! Ben had already left for work that morning so I couldn't complain to him about our sheets being ruined. Frustrated and upset, I opened the door to our bedroom to get a rag from the kitchen to clean the mess up, but every negative emotion seemed to slip away as I looked down and followed the path of rose petals leading into our kitchen. I followed the path to our kitchen counter where I found beautiful red roses and, hanging on a thorn, a beautiful little locket. The letter next to the bouquet reminded me that it wouldn't matter where we were for Valentine's or any other day as long as we were together. It was romantic and beautiful and we had a wonderful time. On February 22, Ben wrote me a poem.

My Promise

I remember the time our eyes first met

That you'd be my wife, I'd never had bet

A simple little guy like me

Together with you for eternity.

I'll do my best to always preserve

The love and respect that you deserve

I'll make you happy all your life

A promise to you, my lovely wife.

March
During March we froze in our apartment. It was a super cute place, but so cold! So we turned the heat up more, making our bill shoot up to the $100's, which was so worth it. It was the month Ben and I wanted to loose weight. We tried to be vegans, ate better and went jogging together a lot. It was our second month being married and we still felt like we were on our honeymoon. Ben tried to teach me how to drive his '86 Corolla, a beast of a stick shift. He also taught me how to do push ups! I know it's kinda lame I didn't know how to do push ups; I've been doing them wrong my whole life!

April
April was one of the best months this year! For our three month anniversary I made cheesy fondue and it was delicious. I really started experimenting with cooking after that. We had so much fun eating together, gaining all the weight back that we lost ;). But the best part of the month was GOING TO DISNEYLAND!

It was actually kinda crazy and spur of the moment. We had no hotel, no real plans, but we got in the car and drove. We drove through the night and got three hours of sleep in a really scary and creepy hotel. After we got into bed, we heard a "ribbit, ribbit." Ben thought the noise was a frog, so we searched and searched for one, but we followed the "ribbit, ribbit" to the mini fridge. And then we laughed and laughed.

In the morning I was flipping through the TV channels and scram out of fear and surprise. Ben opened the bathroom door and asked what was wrong. Turns out our cheap hotel offered free pornography! AHH!! After that scaring incident, we got ready for our Disneyland adventure.

We rode almost every ride in Disneyland, including the awesome fanisyland rides meant for children, went on the best California Adventure rides and made each other laugh so hard.

Here are some of the funnies moments of our trip:

Our sick hotel- it was so funny. We were so glad we brought our own blankets so we didn't have to touch the sheets provided. We had so much fun their though, laughing about the "fridge frog" and the burning images on the TV.
Ibuprofen dissolving in my backpack, covering everything in a sick orange, grainy paste.
I accidentally hick-upped in Ben's mouth.
Trying to rock climb in the lines of almost all the rides.

Karate chopping each other. So, I'm not sure how or why we started karate chopping each other, but we've done it for months now. When one of us chops the other, that person must act "dead." The only way to come back to life is to get a kiss. This has proven dangerous at times. Once Ben actually fell over, landing on my foot, hitting his back on the wall and it really hurt both of us! Anyway, while we were standing in the Peter Pan ride line, Ben karate chopped my neck and I pretended to faint. It's a good thing he caught me or I would have fallen on my face! People stared at us and we laughed so hard.

The best ride is probably the tower of terror. We loved it...and we screamed our guts out. We looked like idiots in the photo, kinda like we're the only ones screaming, but seriously! It's so scary!!
We'll definitely be going back there soon, but next time with a hotel in mind!

May
I think we went to Flaming Gorge in May with Ben's family for a night. It was such a long drive, but we had fun camping for the first time in our super duper tent! And the food my in-laws made was so delicious!

I was sad when I looked through our photos and found we didn't have very many of this adventure, because it was the first one with my in-laws.
I have discovered that I need to write in a journal so I can remember when Ben and I do awesome things. Having said that, I know Ben took me to my first EVER baseball game sometime in the spring. We had so much fun, eating nachos and the Salt Lake Bees play against some team I've never heard of. I loved it!! I hope we can go again a bunch.

June
It has so hot this month! We would come home from work, eat Popsicles and dream of the day we could afford air conditioning. :) To cool down, we bought passes to Seven Peaks, a sad investment as we only went twice, but those two times were so much fun! Ben even talked me in to going down the really scary slides. The slides were fun, but I think my favorite parts about going to Seven Peaks were the Lazy River and the yummy food we brought in our cooler each time.

July
Okay, so Ben and I can't remember what month our beautiful sister Heather got married, but we think it was in July. If this is true, this was the most beautiful experience we had this month!

Later that month we went to San Diego! It was the Olson family's first official family reunion filled with the ocean, animals and funny memories, not to mention a little bit of drama. As soon as we arrived to the VERY expensive beach house my dad rented, complaints broke out about how dirty it was. No, there was no exaggeration there. So, we all started to clean, but then realized there was no way we could get that pit Olson suitable. SO, we left! And everyone was soooo happy! But before that, Ben and I went on a little tandem bike ride down to the beach. The bike really didn't work, but we rode it any way. And when we reached the beach the tide was coming in. It was so fun. :)
We ended up at a Marriot, way better! We were all comfortable AND there was a hot tub :). We did so many fun things while we were there including hitting the beach, shopping (almost in Mexico) at an outlet mall, visiting the zoo, and going to the temple.