It's My Ben's Birthday

Today is Ben's Birthday. He is old. Well not really, but older. I thought I would take this opportunity to post pictures I've taken of him. Well at least most of the pictures were taken by me or at least our camera. Since I'm in some of the pictures I probably did not take those, although we do have a timer on the camera...not important. On to the pictures. In no particular order here is my sexy husband.

My Ben is so handsome

Technically this was before I met him and while he was on his mission in Australia which means Christmas is in the middle of summer so no snow. He had to improvise with Mash Potatoes.

At this point we were dating and on our way to a black and white ball young single adults activity in Massachusetts.
Aw, so cute.
What's better than reading a book while floating down the swannee river on a house boat in florida?
This was a birthday hike for my friend's birthday last year. The boys had fun.

This was on a double date with an elder who served with Ben in his mission and who's last name was blanch. We were inside nuttyputty caves. Someone died in there recently so you can't go in anymore.
I love cowboys. Salt Lake in 2007 probably at the gateway mall.
...and dates with my husband. This one was in New Hampshire in the summer of 2008.
This was the night we got engaged. Ben put so much planning in it wore him out.
This was on our first date. This portion of the date took place at Jared's house. Look how young Ben looks. No wonder people asked if we were with our parents when we took a cruise for our honeymoon.
Florida family vacation '08. No, he is not actually a lifeguard nor would he be prepared to rescue from the water.
Awesome Hike, May 15th of this year. The dogs loved it.
Y Mountain hike in 2007. Too Late the Hero came through on tour. Yea for goat bones! (sick).
Who can say no to a musician?
Halloween 2005. We were dating and it was the first time my home teachers met me and Ben. Sweet.
While I was at school and after Ben visited me and then was 2000 miles away he sent me this picture.
For our anniversary in 2009 we went to Ireland. You're jealous I know.

Another town in Ireland, called Kinsale. Same trip.
Also in Ireland. We went to Foto (a petting zoo) Ben had to find the Kangaroos. The little guy is my cousin Eoin.

This is when we were dating so I'm thinking sometime in Fall 2005. That's all I've got.
This was summer of 2005. In New Hampshire. By a waterfall.
This one was after we were married. Summer of 2006 in New Hampshire before we went back to school.
February 2005. This was went Ben drove 2000 miles to be my date for Valentine's Day. He's awesome like that. I on the other hand was dressed like a slob. That's what early classes and snow did to me.
This was on our Hike May of this year. The circle of Life and it moves us all...

this is Early 2006 while in engaged before we were married. We decided ward prayer was in fact the perfect time for mac and cheese. Yum.
This was Fall of 2009. We were so excited to go to the Manti temple with some friends. We got there only to discover it was closed for renovations. So we took pictures instead.

We got married. It was epic.

This is while we were dating. I met his mission president at his mission reunion.

This was New Hampshire in 2008, Sam and Nikki got married in New York but had a reception in the shire, well actually it may have been Maine... those tricky state borders. Muscles!

Our apartment in Orem. Sometime between May of 2007 and May of 2008. Doesn't he look studly?My peter pan. SLC 2007.
It is in fact the plan of Salvation pumpkin. Ben's cool like that. Fall 2005.Ben got asked if he was half Obama, half McCain. He was in fact a politician and since they're usually tw0-faced that what he was. Halloween 2008.

We hiked the Y. Ben is awesome. The end.Ben took this picture at his school. He looks so serious. I love him.
New Hampshire! Look at that sweet background.
Orem 2007. He's so handsome.

The crew. This was our wedding day. Ben and his boys.August 2005. Ben's styling with his blond hair that I dyed.
Ben worked at a toy store once.


Happy Birthday babe! I love you.

Yikes. I'm running a 6k

I just signed up to run a 6k on October 9th at Thanksgiving Point. A few of the girls from the office are running it too. It's the Wasatch Woman Love Your Body 6K/10K 2010

Changed again

My family is coming to visit me this weekend and I felt like I needed a little bit of change. So here it is.
I Love it!

Operation New Front Door

Ben and I have been continuing our home improvements. Recently Ben and I were talking to our neighbor about how we wanted to get a new front door because the one we had left space for air to get in and it was just ugly (see above picture). She told us that the people who were renting our home before we moved in had gotten drunk one night and punched a hole through the door. Since they were renting they called the landlord to come fix it. Their landlord said they broke it and they were responsible to fix it. The renters did not have money to go buy a new door so they simply took an interior door, cut it themselves, glued the hinges on, and viola, that was our front door. Sweet right? Not so much.

That's when we decided to go look at new front doors. We found one we loved at Lowe's and recruited one of the young men in our church ward who had a truck to help us go pick it up. We got all the supplies needed to take the old door and frame out, and put in the new door and seal it etc. Ben recruited another young man in the ward who said he'd help Ben install it on his day off. Everything was set and then Ben called the Bishop of our Ward to ask if we could borrow a crowbar. He said sure and asked what size we needed. Ben explained it was for the door and the Bishop told Ben a story about installing his own door and how it has never been right ever since. He gave Ben the number of a great handyman Nick and told him to call him.

We called and Nick was willing to come do it for $200 cheaper than Lowe's or Home Depot would have charged to install the door.

This is Nick taking out our old door. Nick IS AWESOME. and it only took him a few hours take out the old and put in the new.

No Door! Even no door was an improvement over the old door.

This pretty item is our new door. It is on two totes because while Ben and I found the door to be a thing of beauty just as it was, we (I) really wanted a red front door. My house is white with black shutters and I just thought that a red door would be just the thing to make it shine.And shine it does. I LOVE IT! Ben likes it too.

Doesn't it look so pretty? Now we just say we're the house in the cul-de-sac with the red front door.

Improvements

We got new couches! They're an improvement over our old couches that were free. Our last couches my boss gave us after we helped him move and he decided his old couches didn't look nice enough for his new house. We appreciated those couches but are most excited to have these new ones which are the result of a yard sale.
Yea for yard sales! Ben and I have found BYU students often buy furniture and other items several months before they graduate and plan to take it with them, they then get prices on moving vans, realize how expensive it is and have yard sales where you can get their pretty new stuff for cheap. As a result April is a good month for us. More yard sale goodness...

We found the patio table at a yard sale brought it home and then found cheap chairs at Home depot and while we were their found this grill. We now have a patio set, woohoo! We christened the grill two weekends ago and invited over our married friends from American Fork, Mike and Chelsi. We had steak, hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and root beer floats, you know you're jealous.

A few months ago we finally bought a lawnmower. We would have bought one last year but we had just bought a house and so most of our money went to a down payment. Also the lawn was dead when we moved in so we thought we'd wait until spring to work on the lawn. It's an electric mower because, one, I hear gas mowers are hard to get the right mixture for oil and gas and two,they smell. This mower you plug in using an extension cord and it feels a little like you're vacuuming your lawn but it's entertaining to me. Maybe that will change when I've used it more than three or four times. I also thought it was cute, Ben heard me say this and he said if I called it cute I would be the one mowing and his prediction came true. Ben mowing: 1 Dara mowing:3.

I said I would post pictures when the windows were done. And I didn't but I am now. I blame it on the fact the weather was really nice and then it snowed and I didn't want to go outside to take pictures. Oh well here goes:

Here is the outside of our house after. I LOVE the new windows. And they make a huge difference with the temperature inside our home. They also look nicer than the aluminum frames from the seventies and we can't hear the kids playing in the cul-de-sac anymore. Just for comparison, although you can't tell as much from far away, is the house with the old windows.



Here is the close up so you can see the beautiful new clean windows and we have screens!

On a side note this window is so clean I came running down stairs a few weeks ago because I heard a loud bang at about 7 am when I was getting ready for work. I came down to investigate and found a bird, it's head twisted to the side, sitting outside the window. I was terrified it was dead so I asked Ben to go check. He naturally was tired and still in bed and refused. So I bugged him. He wanted to let the cats out and let them investigate but I did not want parts of a bird, feathers or otherwise, all over the front yard/porch. Ben eventually came down and looked out the window. He said the bird was not dead because he could see it blinking, then he went back to bed. The bird did not move and by the time I left for work it was slowly regaining movement. I talked and encouraged him and eventually I got to close for comfort and it shook it's head, looked at me, spread it's wings, and flew away. I'm pretty sure it was in shock so I hope it didn't land on a branch, then fall out again once it froze up from shock and it's likely concussion. I envisioned this happening my entire time at work that day.


And from inside you can see the pretty window again and...our pretty new couches.
Next up we may be having an open house... a few months late.

Home Improvements

Ben and I bought a house last July and have been so excited to have a place of our own. For the first time we can alter our surroundings. We can paint, we can replace, we can nail things into the wall, we can put up shelves. So we have.

The first things we did after we moved in was to paint. We started with the living room and the hallway going upstairs. Next we moved to the kitchen and painted there then slowly, the bathrooms, bedrooms and finally the den or Ben's place downstairs. We were so excited about our accomplishment. We showed it off when family came in to town and have friends over. We put up our pictures and got some new curtains and Ben with the help of his mom stained some wood planks and put up shelves in his Den. That was completed in January.

Now we're moving on to our next project. Ben and I filed our taxes and we were excited to get our tax credit for buying a home. Our house was built in the seventies so the windows are single pane and our utilities go right out the window quite literally. We started shopping around the got quotes from several places to get new windows. As a result we found out about a tax credit program were we can get up to 30% not to exceed $1500 of the money we spend getting energy efficient windows. Once we received our tax return (which took 7 weeks by the way), we chose our dream windows and ordered them last week. They should arrive April 8th and we're so excited. After that we'll work with an installer and after 2 days labor tops we'll have beautiful new windows! Fear not, pictures will be posted. Once that's done and the snow goes away, (It's snowing as I'm typing this) we'll have our open house and invite over some friend for some grilling goodness and some fun.

Next projects on the agenda, painting the exterior of our house this summer and after that tiling the bathroom, I love owning a house!