Our Apartment

This last week Ben and I purchased a new headboard so I thought I'd publish some pictures of our apartment. We love living where we do. We're off Freedom Blvd in south Provo so it was hard to get used to the trains at first, however it's been a great place to live.

Our great table we got off KSL.com

The kitchen

The living room. The leather couch was my splurge purchase
when we got married. It's not striped- that's just the lighting.
I'm not into the safari look :)

The bathroom. I couldn't get myself out of the top picture. Oh well :)
This is what I look like on my day off.

Our laundry, food storage, sewing, cleaning and camping corner.

The hallway. I got the window on top of the bookshelf at IKEA for $2 as a
reject cabinet door. I put some pictures in it and now it's a great frame.

The den/guest bedroom. We decorated it with mementos from our missions.
I told Ben that was the only excuse for having
a confederate flag hanging in our house.

The Bedroom

I'm so happy to have a headboard.
Now we have something besides the window to sit and read against :)

October: A Month of Anniversaries

This month Ben & I will get to celebrate some important anniversaries, namely the day we met and our first date. Since it's a humorous and interesting story, I thought I'd put it in here.

October 7, 2009- I had been home from my mission about 3 weeks. My mission companion, Karen, came from Honduras with her mom for a visit. On Wednesday we decided to go to the Spanish TRC in the MTC, where you pretend to be investigators and the missionaries practice teaching you. When we arrived they had to split us up, so Karen and her mom were in one room while I was in another. Two sisters came to teach me, and although they were doing a great job, my attention was drawn to their teacher. He was a tall, handsome young man with glasses and popped in periodically to hear the lesson. When they finished, he came to talk to me. The first time Ben and I met we didn't speak any English to each other. We never even said our names, only where we served, who we taught, etc. The conversation lasted maybe 60 seconds and then he was gone.
I remember feeling silly; I'd been way to excited to be talking to a boy and felt I overwhelmed him. He, on the other hand (and as he later informed me), had been impressed with my Spanish as well as my rock-star guitar shirt. Who knew? :)
Ben knew my friend Cassidy and during the next few weeks figured out that she knew me. He asked her for my phone number and later called to set up a date. I was super excited.

October 24, 2009- Our first date
Ben has described me on our first date as "weird" :) In my defense, I'd only been home from my mission just over a month. When he came to pick me up from my parents house, he says I peeked out the door and after saying hello said, "You can't come in because no one else is home" (my parents were still on their mission). Anyway, we went to Macey's to pick out a pumpkin to carve, but all the decent ones were gone so we had to get a bumpy one. It seemed perfect to carve an old man's face in, so that's what we did. We went back to Ben's apartment and talked for 2 hours or so while we carved the pumpkin. Then, because I was just a missionary and missionaries take pictures of everything, I suggested we take a picture with our pumpkin. Ben, once again, thought I was weird but to be kind he pulled out his camera. So thanks to my weirdness we now have the following documentation of our first date. Anyway, we then accidentally set fire to the pumpkin when trying to put a flame in.
Ben was freaking out, and I just laughed and laughed. We finished by eating apples dipped in caramel, then Ben showed me his documentary "Dado" that he'd made at SUU. He ended up taking me home at 11 which I thought was a bad thing but I have since learned that Ben shuts down at 11. Good thing I wasn't too offended. :) Overall though, I think we both had a good time. Although, it did take Ben almost a month to ask me out again.




Ben describes his face in this picture as "Man, this girl is weird" and mine as "Hooray! I'm on a date with a boy!"

Marriage Lesson #16: Men are Men

Yesterday I went and cut 3 inches off my hair. It was getting too long, scraggly and hard to manage. I decided not to tell Ben though so I could put him to the test- Would he notice? I, like any other naive and innocent newlywed, thought "Of course he'll notice 3 inches gone!". Does anyone want to guess the end of the story? When I picked him up from school he didn't mention it so I finally asked if he noticed anything different. He looked at me, then began to guess. "Uh, you shaved your legs? That's a new shirt? You cut your hair? You dyed it? Oh, I know, highlights? Right?" Needless to say, I was a little put out and threatened to get a pixie cut next time just so that he'll notice instantly.
Although in the dog house for a few moments, he was quickly forgiven when my visiting teachers came later in the night and didn't say a word about it. Then before going to bed he said, "You know why I don't think I noticed your hair cut? Because it's the same length it was when we started dating." And he's right. Bottom line: Ben is a man, and I love him.

The End of the Summer of Dreams

The summer of 2010 is over. Last week Ben started school, ending our riotous (while righteous :) ) living. Knowing that we won't always be newlyweds and childless, we tried to take advantage of the summer months. They were short, but oh so sweet. Some of the highlights were:

• We had 3 great vacations to Belize & Honduras as well as Lake Powell and Montana. Getting to show Ben my mission was incredible, while spending time with our families was great too.
  
• Ben encouraged me to buy my first ever mountain bike off KSL.com, then regretted it after trying to teach me how to ride it. In my defense, it's hard to understand gears when you've never owned a bike with more than one speed. I told him on one of our rides, "You deserve a prize for trying to teach a DeBry woman to do something that she already wants to know how to do".
  
• We got to use the camping gear we got from our wedding or bought with wedding gift cards. According to Ben, that was the best use of the money :)
• We slept in some days, and stayed up late even more nights.
• Happy hour at Sonic was an appointment nearly twice a week. Those limeades can't be beat.

Those are the only things that come to mind, but I'm sure Ben will have some more memories. Either way it was, as Ben calls it, the summer of dreams. Now we just have to get through the Fall of "have opposite schedules with your spouse but attempt to see each other as much as possible anyway". Life is good :)

Wild Montana Skies

Last Wednesday Ben and I dropped work and all other worldly cares by the wayside and got in the car to drive to my family's cabin in Montana. It made for a fantastic vacation, but started out a bit rocky. We hit construction in Yellowstone Park so the drive that usually takes 8.5 hours took a long 11. However that's the great thing about being a newlywed- you just take things in stride and talk. It made a great opportunity to get to know each other better as we drove 35 mph and nearly hit a herd of buffalo, an elk, and a fox. Needless to say, we arrived safely at 2am.
Every year since I can remember my family has taken a week in the summer to travel to Cooke City, just a few minutes outside the Northeast entrance of Yellowstone. For both Ben and I, it was a new and memorable experience. Since we still haven't even known each other a year, it was Ben's first experience with my family at the cabin. It was new to have 15 kids running around each morning, but he took it in stride and loved it. We had a great time escaping from life and relaxing.
For me it was a sentimental experience since I have missed the last two Montana vacations due to my mission. What a sense of euphoria and excitement when we arrived and I smelled the trees, saw the mountains and heard... nothing. No cars, no ambulances, no train whistles, just the wind and the creek running below the cabin. That was a great feeling.
Some highlights of the vacation were:

• Ben dressing up like a real cowboy with my mom's DI "finds". He finally found his Morgan roots.
  
• Ben utilizing his film skills one afternoon to make a "Cowboys and Indians" movie with the kids. Good thing we're teaching the younger generation about political correctness :)
  
• Canoeing, just Ben and I, on the Broadwater. Trying to go upstream proved too much for my weak muscles.
• Horseback riding with the kids while we made fun of my brother Mark for getting knocked off his horse by a tree branch one year.
• Having my father tell of the B4 ranch and the sacrifice my grandparents made to make sure their children had the gospel.
  
• Going to the Top-of-the-World with Laura and Gordon and my dad. My dad is the world's best tour guide. The fire watch tower was also spectacular.
• Showing Ben my favorite places to play as a child.
• Church in the barn, only 2 hours long!
  
• Shooting BB guns and sling shots off the back porch. The men having shooting contests.
• The marshmallow gun war. Boys against girls never gets old.
• My mom's delicious cooking and homemade desserts.
• Ben filming the buffalo in the middle of the highway in Yellowstone. "I'm shooting, and driving, and shooting, and driving" etc.
  
• Riding up Lulu Pass to see the old miner's cabins where my grandpa used to mine and live.
  
• Late nights talking with my family with Ben asleep at my side. He's a lightweight at night :)
  
• Enjoying being together. Ben got to know my family so much better and it made me so grateful to have such great people to be with.
  

Monday morning we packed up the car and drove home, so sad to have left a piece of heaven on earth. However, because my parents had the foresight to build such a great place to stay,
we remind ourselves, "There's always next year".

Ben Gets Lasik!

Yesterday morning Ben and I woke up early (9am is early when you work the night before) so I could drive him to have eye surgery. There was no injury or problem- Ben was going to have Lasik. We'd been talking about Ben getting Lasik for months; I had the surgery done in 2007 and can't say enough good about it. Besides that, Ben's eyes haven't tolerated contacts for years so it seemed like the logical and convenient thing to do.
We arrived to a crowded waiting room where a television monitor showed a large and glazed blue eye. Soon we realized we were watching the current surgery as we saw the cornea pulled back, the lazer zapping, then the cornea folded back over and smoothed. Ben watched in astonishment and slight horror. At first I thought he might back out, but as the nurse came over to offer him a Valium he calmly refused it. What a man's man :)
We watched four more surgeries then Ben was called in. It was done quickly and Ben walked out a new man... or at least a new man without glasses. After a rough first day (hourly eye drops, plastic eye guards, pain, redness and blurred vision) Ben had had enough. Lucky for me, Ben awoke with much better vision and much less pain. I'm started to think it was worth it.

Goodbye to Ben's car

Today we put Ben's car up for sale on KSL.com and a few hours later we sold it. The moment was bittersweet- it was the car Ben picked me up in for our first date, where we sat when he first kissed me and what we rode in the night he proposed. So not only did we sell a car, we sold some memories too. But I guess that's better than donating your memories to the kidney foundation.

Our new 2005 Honda CR-V