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

Newlyweds at 3 months

Everyone says that the first year of marriage is difficult, but does that really ever deter anyone from getting married? I sure hope not. Ben and I recently celebrated our 3 month anniversary, and our discovery has been that the first 25% of the first 1.0 year of marriage is actually pretty amazing. How's that for a statistic? As a side note, statisticians say that 98% of statistics are made up... so let's just say we're madly in love.

24th of July Camping

For the 24th of July weekend we went camping up near Cascade Springs with Landon and Liesl, who we commend for bringing little baby Andelin to join us. We found a beautiful meadow to camp in with a new found friend, Rex, who insisted we borrow several items from his trailer full of camping gear. The men loved doing MANLY things like setting up the new tents, looking for firewood, and building a raging fire. My favorite part was the food: eating delicious tinfoil dinners as well as an amazing dutch oven breakfast provided by Landon and Liesl. Camping is the greatest!



The manly men (Landon and Ben) searching for firewood.












Ben making delicious tinfoil dinners. As every mountain man knows, a good head lamp makes the meat much more tender.

Lake Powell

In July we had the awesome opportunity to go to Lake Powell with Ben's grandparents and family. Athena had never been but absolutely loved it! What a beautiful place. We water skied, jet skied, sun bathed, hiked up a slot canyon, all the while staying on a beautiful houseboat. Thank you Poppa and Grams!











Where we parked the houseboat. Can you see it?






When you get married you still don't know a lot about each other. I had yet to find out that my husband is the best looking man to have water skied Lake Powell. But I could have guessed that... :)

Belize & Honduras!!!

When Ben & I were dating, I told him I wanted to take him back to my mission after we had married. He didn't seem opposed to a trip to Central America (big surprise :) ) so we bought our tickets to visit my home of 18 months even before we'd picked out a wedding photographer. Little did we know, the return to my mission would be an amazing, breath-taking, and possibly life-threatening experience. We decided not to call it our honeymoon, but a "learn-to-survive-in-Central-America-moon".

Day #1- Arrive in Belize. Visit the Altun Ha Mayan ruins, go to Orange Walk to visit members there.
Day #2- Take the Lamanai river cruise. Have a wild monkey sit in my lab. Hike up the tallest Mayan temples in Belize. Take a bus to Belmopan. Visit with the Bonilla's and many other families I love so much.
Day #3- More Belmopan visits, take a bus to Dangriga, then to Placencia. Enjoy a beautiful ocean view in a seaside cabana.
Day #4- Take the boat to Honduras. Have our passports taken away by immigration, get ripped off by a taxi driver, stay in the hotel because we're too afraid to leave, visit Andi (Ben's friend from his mission) and eat dinner at his home in Choloma, take a $25 late-night taxi ride back to the coast in a torrential rain storm while clinging to each other in the back seat.
Day #5- Bus into Tegucigalpa. See the angelic face of my mission companion. Go to dinner with Karen, Geraldine and Hermana Macias and enjoy reminiscing and great meat. Sleep at Karen's home.
Day #6- Church in Karen's branch. Fun in La Valle de Los Angeles. Quickly say goodbye to Karen and her mom after running and banging on the cabin door to catch the bus back to the coast. 5 more hours on the bus feeling exhausted. Sleep in a hole-in-the-wall hotel in San Pedro Sula for $20 American.
Day #7- Get on a bus in San Pedro Sula to catch the boat back to Belize. Hit a strike on the highway and take back roads that men charge buses to get through (think rocks in the road, chains across it, etc.). Make it just at the time the boat is leaving, wait 2 hours for the boat to leave, cry tears of joy on boat to have made it out of Honduras alive. Arrive in Placencia, Belize and take small airplane to Belize City, where the Dunford's pick us up. Ferry to Caye Caulker where we FINALLY get to relax in a hotel on the beach.
Day #8- Snorkel in the sea, get sun burnt to the max. Find ants in my backpack and all over our hotel bed, move hotel rooms. Relax in a hammock on the porch, walk the dirt path by the ocean.
Day #9- Take ferry back from Caye Caulker, taxi to the airport and fly home. Amazing, and event-filled trip :)